How does one Install KDE on Gentoo?

[Cygon]

Hi!

I've got an old laptop on which I want to run KDE. So I picked the default/linux/x86/13.0/desktop/kde profile:

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# eselect profile list
Available profile symlink targets:
  [1]   default/linux/x86/13.0
  [2]   default/linux/x86/13.0/selinux
  [3]   default/linux/x86/13.0/desktop
  [4]   default/linux/x86/13.0/desktop/gnome
  [5]   default/linux/x86/13.0/desktop/gnome/systemd
  [6]   default/linux/x86/13.0/desktop/kde *
  [7]   default/linux/x86/13.0/desktop/kde/systemd
  [8]   default/linux/x86/13.0/developer
  [9]   hardened/linux/x86
  [10]  hardened/linux/x86/selinux
  [11]  hardened/linux/uclibc/x86

and then followed the Gentoo Wiki in installing the kdebase-meta package.

My USE flags include 'kde', 'X' and some additional stuff:

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USE="mmx sse sse2 threads ithreads"

USE="${USE} cxx acpi apm mono pam pcre ssl xml syslog"
USE="${USE} sockets soap sharedmem session xmlrpc ctype"
USE="${USE} hddtemp curl iconv mime nptl mmap"

USE="${USE} ipv6"

USE="${USE} zlib bzip2 unzip zip lzo lzma"

USE="${USE} truetype cairo graphviz gd"

USE="${USE} a52 aac flac mp3 ogg speex vorbis wavpack shorten mad gsm"
USE="${USE} exif gif jpeg jpeg2k mng openexr png svg tiff wmf raw netpbm"
USE="${USE} ffmpeg matroska mpeg quicktime theora x264 xvid mp4"

USE="${USE} mysql mysqli innodb pdo sqlite sqlite3 -gdbm -berkdb"

USE="${USE} qt4 kde X alsa -cups -java -ant samba -ldap"

However, I don't have '/etc/init.d/xdm' and I don't get it even if I 'emerge xdm' - neither is there a '/etc/conf.d/xdm' file being created.

Running 'startx' complains that I don't have any X server: "/etc/X11/xinit/xserverrc: line 2: /usr/bin/X: No such file or directory"
Am I still missing something here? What packages would one emerge to set up a basic KDE system with graphical login via XDM?

[Cygon]

According to this thread: /etc/conf.d/xdm NOT THERE I need to install 'xorg-server'.

But is that the official package I am supposed to emerge?

And how come this isn't a dependency of kdebase? Are there other X implementations KDE can run on?

[TomWij]

Yes, xorg-server is the X.org server; that is needed if you want to have something graphical (alternatively there is wayland, but I don't know if it is well supported yet), make sure to follow the configuration guide for it: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Xorg/Configuration

It is not a dependency as it is optional at run-time I think; besides that, it is usually emerged as part of following the later chapters of the Gentoo Handbook or listed as a prerequisite in a Wiki guide.

[Clad in Sky]

Another tip:
Before you go and configure xorg, try it it works out of the box. It's been good at that for some time now, unless you need something very specific.
If you have an nvidia graphics card AND don't want to use the nouveau driver, there's nvidia-xconfig.