This is the "cooker" script as appeared in PC Update (May 2005). At the time of writing (early April 2005) the cooker sources contained KDE 3.3 which worked nicely when installed on Mandrake 10.1.

Cooker now (early May 2005) holds KDE 3.4 which would appear to be a little rough around the edges yet. For me the "greeter" associated with KDM (K Display Manager) graphical login kept crashing & dumping to a console login. I could still log in & then start KDE with "startx", so it's not a show stopper, just an annoyance. It's possible to switch to using GDM (GNOME Display Manager) if you really want a GUI log in.

As Mandriva 2005LE Download Edition is now available in ISO form I'd strongly suggest upgrading to this as it includes KDE 3.3 & will probably be more stable than trying to use an early KDE 3.4.

1. Save the attached file "cooker". I'll assume you saved it to /home/Allan for the rest of the exercise.

2. Open a terminal window & "su" to root user

3. Edit /etc/inittab (e.g mcedit /etc/inittab) to change the runlevel from 5 to 3 so you start in terminal mode in case the install fails. Change the line id:5:initdefault to id:3:initdefault

4. Change to the directory you saved the file "cooker" to: cd /home/Allan

5. Run the script: bash cooker

6. Press "y" if it asks

7. If it asks to choose between several packages pick the likeliest looking one. If nothing stands out take a stab - I picked number 1 mostly.

8. Note any problems - package names of failures to download & any conflicts.

9. Sit back, relax, have a drink & restart KDE when the script finishes running after an hour or two. If necessary startx from the command line to start the GUI.

10. If KDE restart, change /etc/inittab back to id:5:initdefault

11. If it fails consult our newsgroups news.melbpc.computing.misc

This is the "cooker" script you'll be running, noting the first two lines are actually one long line (as in ....cooker ftp://.....). Download it here.

The first line is adding a source of files we're calling "cooker" to the urpmi configuration & getting those files from the pacific.net.au FTP server.

The next lines are installing various components of KDE from the "cooker" files we've just added.

The last line is removing the configuration for "cooker" files from urpmi so they can't be accidentally used.

If things have gone poorly and you wish to remove the newly installed KDE then download & run the following scripts: removal & reinstallation. The scripts are displayed below.

As root user: bash cooker_remove and then bash KDE_install

cooker_remove:

KDE_install: