Die K Desktopumgebung

4.12 Is it possible to install KDE in a user directory?

You can install KDE in every directory you want. What you have to do depends on the kind of packages you want to install:

Source packages

To configure, use a command like:

 configure --prefix=/users/myhome/kde; make; make install

to install into /users/myhome/kde.

After you have installed the packages in the user directory, you should add the following to your init files. Please note that if it isn't necessary for you to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH, it's better to leave it out.

For csh or tcsh:
 setenv KDEDIR /users/myhome/kde
 
 if ( $?LD_LIBRARY_PATH ) then
    setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH $KDEDIR/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
 else
    setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH $KDEDIR/lib
 endif
 
 if ( ! $?LIBRARY_PATH ) then
    setenv LIBRARY_PATH $LD_LIBRARY_PATH
 endif  

For bash, please use:
 KDEDIR=/users/myhome/kde
 PATH=$KDEDIR/bin:$PATH
 LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$KDEDIR/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
 LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

export KDEDIR PATH LD_LIBRARY_PATH LIBRARY_PATH

RPM packages

rpm allows you to use the -prefix option to select the directory to for installtion, e.g.

 rpm -i -prefix=/users/myhome/kde package.rpm

Problems to expect

KDE will run from the users directory. There are some problems with programs that require SUID root, e.g. the programs in the kdeadmin package, but they are not meant to be run by users, so this is nothing to worry about.

However, on systems using shadow passwords, the screensavers have to be run SUID root to enable password access for unlocking the screen, so this option will not work.