# The &kde; User Guide

The KDE Documentation Team
2004 2005 The KDE Documentation Team
&FDLNotice;
2004-06-16
0.0.1

A general user guide to &kde;

Please report any problems with this document to kde-doc-english@kde.org.

KDE desktop handbook tutorial

## Introduction

### Welcome to the &kde; User Guide

This User Guide aims to provide an overview of the entire &kde; experience. We assume here that you have a standard, working installation of a complete &kde; desktop environment, and the accompanying packages. This book should be your first point of reference for any simple &kde; configuration question, or to find out how to perform a common task.

#### What this book aims to be

The first place to look and a one stop shop for all questions you have regarding your &kde; experience.

A Quick Start Guide to commonly performed tasks - In most cases, you do not need to know the details of how to configure every option in an application, in order to get down to work. You will find step-by-step guides which will work in most common situations, along with links to sources of further information in case you have any problems.

There are also some tips and tricks showing you the most useful and impressive features of &kde;, and ways to save you time and effort.

#### What this book is not

The User Guide is not intended to be a replacement for the application manuals. You should turn to the handbook for help with specific program configuration and troubleshooting issues not covered in this book. If the answer is outside the scope of this book, we will tell you here precisely where to look for further help.

You may also have a variety of third party packages, and some of these applications are mentioned briefly here, but we normally cover only the applications provided as part of a &kde; release. This is not a judgment on the value of third party applications, and in fact many of them are excellent.

The User Guide is not specific to a distribution, and covers a default &kde; installation. Your local installation may be customized by your distribution provider, or by yourself, and so our advice here is generic. You may have to adjust paths in order to locate the files that are discussed.

#### Conventions used in this book

We'll use the following formatting conventions to make it clear what we're referring to:

Type of Text | Style | Example
--- | --- | ---
Text appearing in the &GUI; (on buttons, &etc;) | Light gray background | Settings
Names of keys | Bold font | &Ctrl;
Menu entries | Menu Name->Menu Item | File Quit
Key combinations (pressed simultaneously) | Modifier Key+Action Key | &Ctrl;Q
Text you should enter | Bold, fixed width font | `ls -al kde/`
Text you should replace as appropriate | Italic green font | user

#### System Locations

You may need to know the following system locations:

&kde; prefix

  &kde; installs into its own directory tree, which you can find by running the command ``kde-config` `--prefix``. This directory is referred to by the environment variables $`KDEDIRS` and possibly $`KDEDIR`.

&kde; user-specific settings

  The environment variable $`KDEHOME` points to the directory where &kde; should find user-specific settings. If it is not set, the default value of `~/.kde` is used.

#### Overview, or Where to look in the User Guide

Here's an overview of what's in the User Guide:

contains an introduction to the basic use of &kde;, such as , and the tools that you'll be using in all &kde; applications, like . If you're new to &kde; or even computers in general, you will probably find this section helpful.

explains some important components of a &kde; installation and how they fit together: &kde;'s multimedia and networking capabilities are extensive, and not covered thoroughly here, but there's a taster of both of them in this part of the User Guide. At the end of this part, you'll find a guide to tweaking &kde; just that little bit more, in .

highlights &kde;'s suite of Internet applications. &kde; includes a powerful web browser, &konqueror;, a full-featured email client, &kmail;, a news reader, &knode;, and many more applications to make your Internet experience easier and more productive. This part of the User Guide contains information about setting up these applications.

is a reference guide to some &kde; features which will be useful to administrators setting up multi-user systems. This part also has information that may be useful to &kde; users with single-user systems: where configuration files are stored, what environment variables affect &kde;, and so on. The KIOSK framework is the &kde; system which allows administrators to limit what users can do in &kde;. It is potentially useful in many situations, but especially for running single-function kiosks with, for example, just a web browser, hence the name.

## The Desktop

### The Basics

The desktop is just the name for the layout of the screen when you start &kde;. It looks something like this (on your own system, it might look slightly different, but the main features should be the same):

Desktop
A default desktop layout

Let us look at the most important parts:

- Most of the screen is taken up by the background. At the moment, there is a picture making up the background. This picture is usually referred to as the wallpaper, and you can change it to make &kde; suit your taste.

  Background
  Wallpaper

- In the top left-hand corner are two icons: Trash and Home. Clicking on these will open your `Trash` folder and Home folder, respectively. You can add more icons to the desktop so that you can open your favorite programs, or access removable media, with just one click.

- At the bottom is the &kde; Panel, also known as &kicker;. The Panel contains several useful ways of interacting with &kde;. It houses the &kmenu;, from where you can open any &kde; application installed on your computer, it shows all the programs that are currently running, as well as the time, and more. Take a look at for more information about the &kde; Panel.

  Panel

&Philip.Rodrigues;

#### Logging In and Logging Out

Basic KDM & startkde stuff.

There are two ways to log into &kde;: graphically and via the command line. We'll look at them both briefly:

##### Logging in Graphically

If you see a screen a little bit like the one below when you start up your computer, then you are all set for logging in graphically. Just enter your username in the Login text box and your password in the Password text box. Your password will not be shown as you type it; it will probably be shown as asterisks. When you have entered that information, click on the Go! button, and &kde; will start up. The &kde; splash screen will appear, and keep you informed about the progress of &kde; startup, and when it is done, &kde; will be ready to use.

login
&kdm;

##### Logging in via the Command Line

If you prefer using the command line, you can log in to &kde; with the `startx` command. Add the line `exec startkde` to the `.xinitrc` file in your home directory (create it if it does not exist), save the file, and then run `startx`. &kde; should start in the same way as if you had logged in graphically.

startkde
startx

##### Logging Out

Once you have finished using &kde; for the moment, you will want to log out until next time. The easiest way to do this is to click on the &kmenu; at the bottom left of your screen, and then select the Logout item. A dialog with the text End session for username will appear. To confirm that you want to log out, click on the Logout button. If you change your mind, and decide to carry on using &kde; for now, hit Cancel.

Related Information

- The &kdm; Handbook has information about using and setting up the &kde; graphical login manager. You can read it in &khelpcenter; or by entering `help:/kdm` in &konqueror;'s Location bar.

logout
&getting-help; &windows-how-to; &the-filemanager;
&panel-and-desktop; &programs-and-documents;

## &kde; Components

&control-center; &base-kde-applications;

### Multimedia With &kde;

&removable-disks; &playing-music; &playing-audiocds; &playing-movies;

### &kde; the Multiuser Desktop

&your-kde-account; &kde-as-root; &switching-sessions;

### Networking with &kde;

&file-sharing; &networking-with-windows; &shared-sessions;

### Graphics, Printing, and Fonts

&printer-setup; &printing-from-apps; &pdf-files; &font-installation; &creating-graphics;
&konsole-intro; &kde-edutainment; &accessibility; &under-the-hood;

## &kde; and the Internet

&net-connection-setup; &email;

### &konqueror;

Intro to the browser

&internet-shortcuts; &browser-fine-tuning;
&usenet; &messaging-intro;
&kde-office; &kde-for-admins;

## More Tools

&migrator-dictionary; &standard-menu-entries; &glossary;

### Troubleshooting Problems

Problems that aren't

Frozen apps (how to kill them)

Things won't open

That scary crash dialog

Reporting Bugs

More Resources

&troubleshooting-network-x; &troubleshooting-no-open;

### Contributing to &kde;

Some basic information to get encourage people to contribute to &kde;, information about what's available, and how to get started.

## Credits and Licenses

&credits-and-license;

### License

&underFDL;
&documentation.index;