I have now used FreeBSD from eh, 5.0??? But during that whole time I have never used xwindows or kde. My box's have always been servers of one type or another.
I just set up a new BSD machine(8.0), and because I wanted to install boinc I knew that I would have to also install xwindows. Just the requirements of boinc at the moment. Well, if I have to go to this much trouble I might as well have some fun and play with desktops. xorg and kde 3.5 were installed from packages(god, that is so much faster then port compiles).
Cut to the chase, a few questions.
1). Can I install further apps from the port tree using a kde windows application? Or do I still need to do these installs from the command line?
2). If I install various xwindows applications(boinc), will they automatically be reconized by kde? id: I installed firefox3, kde seen it. I was able to place it on my desktop. I'm also probably going to start looking for samba and mysql graphic managers also.
3). Thee are 4 desk tops? hu? umm, hu?
Now, I have some more questions... But they become more specific to the area the questions are in. Not for drool is just dumb as dirt for not understanding kde. linux libraries and wirelss. But I will place those questions in more specific question areas.
It sounds like you have installed the whole machine by yourself instead of picking a ready made distribution (PC-BSD would come to mind). I thought KDE did not offer package management for FreeBSD as a standard, which means you need to go into a terminal window to install the packages by hand.
In my experience the newly installed apps are recognised and displayed in the menu bar. Not always though, maybe 10% of the time you would have add them manually.
Your third question is somewhat vague. Do you mean 4 workspaces or 4 themes?
Ok, it's been a bit sense I posted that question and I have become a bit more comfortable with the kde. Wish this machine had some more guts under the hood, only a p4 but with 2 gig of mem.
kde 3.5, I have the ability to configure more then one desktop and can actually ctrl/tab my way through them. It's kind of cool, but I don't really use it. yet.
With regard to my original question, I have done everything through the command line with regard to the ports/packages.
Thank you for the followup. I'm still punting my way through this setup... But, I like it for the most part.
KDE would be the most feature rich of all the desktops and therefore requiring more RAM than most to make it snappy. I encourage you to try some of the other desktop environments as well and start to notice the differences and that they borrow from each other.
KDE is also infamous for pretending it's a management system for your whole computer instead of being a mere windowing environment. Last I saw it still had broken stubs in the control panel for configuring your linux 2.4 kernel for you.