16 January 2009 Backports for KDE 4.1.4 are available. This is the last update for the KDE 4.1 series and backport available in this website.
18 November 2008 Backports for KDE 4.1.3 are available. Known problem: if kdm does not start, install consolekit.
1 November 2008 Since Qt 4.4.3 is now in Lenny, it has been removed from backports.
15 October 2008 Add backports for Qt 4.4.3 (i386, AMD64 and PowerPC). If you are using KDE 4.1.x in lenny, you want to use a newer Qt 4 too.
14 October 2008 Backports for KDE 4.1.2 available, now including PowerPC.
13 September 2008 Backports for KDE 4.1.1 available.
21 August 2008 Add FAQ.
21 August 2008 Backports for KDE 4.1.0 available.
28 July 2008 Setup kde4.debian.net website.
The goal of these backports is to allow Lenny users to install and use the official KDE 4.1 modules (and updates of its associated depends if needed), without breaking their systems using packages from the unstable/experimental branch. Unlike with backports.org, packages do not need to reach testing to be backported, so these backports will be available as soon as the unstable packages are ready, working fine and backporters have time. Also, users can be sure they will be installing only the required packages for get KDE 4 working.
There are only plans to provide backports for the KDE 4.1.x series.
Backports will be only available for i386 and AMD64 that are the archs available to the backporters.
IMPORTANT: If you are a unstable user, you should use the packages from experimental instead.
1. Add to your /etc/apt/sources.list file the following line:
deb http://kde4.debian.net/ lenny mainIf you keep this line, packages will be updated every time there is a new release backported.
2. Run
aptitude update
3. Install either:
aptitude install kde4-minimalthen you can install just the KDE-modules you want
aptitude install kde4This might not work since Lenny is still not a stable release, and some depends might broken. In this case, install one by one the modules you need/want. (kdegraphics, kdenetwork, etc) In the moment of writing these lines, this is broken because kpackage, included in kdeadmin, needs smartpm-core that is out of Lenny
4. Optionally, install the translation package for your language if they are available:
aptitude install kde-l10n-XXreplacing XX with your language code.
From now on, when you upgrade your system, if there are available KDE 4.1 updates, they will be installed. You do not have to worry about this, packages will be some time in unstable before being backported so it will minimize possible problems in your stable system.
1 Remove the backports line from your sources.list file.
2 Remove all the base packages:
aptitude remove kdelibs5 kdelibs5-data kdepimlibs5 kdepimlibs-data
kdebase-data kdebase-bin kdebase-runtime kdebase-runtime-bin-kde4
kdebase-runtime-data kdebase-runtime-data-common kdebase-workspace
kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdebase-workspace-libs4+5
libphonon4
3 Install the minimal KDE 3:
aptitude install kdelibs kdebase kdm
4 Restart your system and the good old kdm should be on your screen again.
5 Now you can continue installing all the KDE 3 packages you like using.
You always can use aptitude install the meta package KDE, but since that installs a lot of packages I would recommend install the metapackages you really want.
The list:
kdeaccessibility kdeaddons kdeadmin kdeartwork kdeedu kdegames kdegraphics kdemultimedia kdenetwork kdepim kdetoys kdeutils kdewebdev
6 You can see the remaining KDE 4 bits on your system with
dpkg -l | grep 4:4.1.
0. When will be the backports packages for 4.1.x available?
Usually, do not expect backports being available until at least 10 days after they were available in experimental. This is needed to ensure there is not big packaging issues that can break your *Lenny* system and well, I have a real life too! =)
1. I have installed the packages from experimental and I want to use these backported packages instead in my Lenny system. How I do switch?
Remove the experimental line from your source.list and add the backports one. When backports are updated to 4.1.1 you will switch automatically to use the backports. Current packages in experimental and these backports are exaclty the same code-wise for the release of 4.1.0, but the version numbers for the backports are lower in purpose to allow easy upgrades in the future.
2. I found a bug! My configuration settings are not migrated!
No, they are not. KDE 3 stores information under .kde and KDE 4 under .kde4. You will have to copy your data. In case you switch back to KDE 3, you still will have your configuration there, but you will need to update with the information you started storing in KDE 4.
3. Do you plan provide packages for PowerPC in the future?
I do not own a PowerPC machine, so hardly.
4. Why I do get the message "WARNING: The following packages cannot be authenticated!"?
Because the repository is not signed.
5. The repository is unsigned? Or where I can adquire the key?
No, the repository is not signed, so you do not need adquire a key neither.
6. I am an user of unstable and I do not want to use experimental. Can I use these packages? When KDE 4 will reach unstable?
Yes, you can use these packages, but you might find they require depends that are only available on Lenny because they have been updated in unstable, so it will be more easy for you use experimental. KDE 4 won't reach unstable until Lenny has been released.
Please, do not file bugs in the Debian BTS, these packages are not official packages even if they are made by people involved in the official packages.
If you have questions or need help, you can send a mail to the Debian KDE users mailing list. I would suggest you include in the subject [KDE 4.1 backports] to help people filtering the email. If there is much email traffic relative to the backports, an additional mailing list could be created.