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Bug 31 - Enhancement: Side-by-side installation of KDE 3 and KDE 4
Summary: Enhancement: Side-by-side installation of KDE 3 and KDE 4
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: TDE
Classification: Unclassified
Component: tdebase (show other bugs)
Version: 3.5.10
Hardware: Other Linux
: P5 enhancement
Assignee: Timothy Pearson
URL:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2009-01-07 14:25 CST by Wouter Deconinck
Modified: 2013-04-05 17:36 CDT (History)
6 users (show)

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Description Wouter Deconinck 2009-01-07 14:25:22 CST 
I spent some time today trying to get KDE 3 (from the ppa) and KDE 4 (from the intrepid repos) installed side-by-side.  I don't know what your goals in that respect are (debugging a single KDE 3 session naturally receives a higher priority), but it would be nice to be able to run a KDE 4 session and a KDE 3 session on the same machine interchangeably.

Because a KDE 3 session and a KDE 4 session use a different $KDEHOME and set the $PATH differently, the sessions would call applications with equal names in KDE 3 and KDE 4 correctly (e.g. konsole-kde3 in KDE 3 and /usr/bin/konsole in KDE 4), so in theory this seems like a reasonable thing to attempt.  Because of the location of the KDE 3 binaries, it would be more difficult to call KDE 3 apps from a KDE 4 session, or KDE 4 apps from a KDE 3 session.

At the moment the installation of kdebase (necessary for a basic KDE 4 session) is blocked by a few KDE 3 applications required by kdebase-kde3.  For example konsole is blocked by konsole-kde3 (konsole-kde3 -> Conflicts: konsole) even though there are no overlapping files.  Both install and work fine together.

For other apps (e.g. kappfinder) there are overlapping shared data files (which I noticed you dpkg-diverted in a few instances).  Maybe setting $kde_icondir to /usr/kde3/share/icons (or even $kde_datadir to /usr/kde3/share, or $prefix to /usr/kde3) for KDE 3 could work in those cases, and avoid listing a huge number of diverts (also for autostart etc).

If you let me know what your goals are, I could provide some help trying to get KDE 3 and KDE 4 running on the same machine.  A first milestone would be to get kdebase and kdebase-kde3 installed simultaneously (so that one can login into a KDE 4 session).  From there I could try to solve what conflicts remain.
Comment 1 Timothy Pearson 2009-01-21 09:39:34 CST 
Yes, KDE4 and KDE3 should be interchangeable and run side by side.  I have just uploaded a new version of kdebase-kde3 that should divert the remaining files and allow installation of kdebase; however that has not yet been tested.  I will leave this bug open and assigned in case you or anyone else runs into any more KDE3/KDE4 conflicts or problems.
Comment 2 Wouter Deconinck 2009-01-21 13:48:39 CST 
Parallel installation confirmed working (didn't try to login with KDE4 yet).
Comment 3 Rob Funk 2009-02-27 12:39:52 CST 
I installed KDE 3.5 and use it daily (thank you!), then added backports to sources.list to get KDE 4.2.  Installing kdebase (4.2) went mostly fine (there was a network-manager conflict that I let go to KDE4), but trying to install kubuntu-desktop (with recommendations) pulled in lots of packages that conflict. It wanted to remove:
  amarok-common-kde3 amarok-engine-xine-kde3 amarok-engine-yauap-kde3
  amarok-kde3 ark-kde3 desktop-effects-kde-kde3 k3b-data-kde3 k3b-kde3
  kaddressbook-kde3 kdebase-kde3 kdebase-runtime-data-common-kde3
  kdepim-kio-plugins-kde3 kdepim-kresources-kde3 kdepim-wizards-kde3
  klipper-kde3 kmail-kde3 kmailcvt-kde3 kmix-kde3 knotes-kde3 kontact-kde3
  korganizer-kde3 ksmserver-kde3 ksnapshot-kde3 ksystemlog-kde3
  ktorrent-kde3 kubuntu-desktop-kde3

There are more if I try to install the KDE4 kdepim, which would be essential for me to be able to try KDE4 as a replacement for KDE3:
  akregator-kde3 kaddressbook-kde3 kdepim-kio-plugins-kde3
  kdepim-kresources-kde3 kdepim-wizards-kde3 kmail-kde3 kmailcvt-kde3
  knode-kde3 knotes-kde3 kontact-kde3 korganizer-kde3
Comment 4 Karthik 2009-05-16 07:26:56 CDT 
I did install both kde and kde3 side by side and everything was OK when I used kde3-kdm (or kdm-kde3) as the window manager. This was my eeepc. At some point I got more RAM so I decided to free some space and uninstall kde3. This means I had to change the display manager from kde3 to kde(4-version). For some reason, it did not work and I lost my X-server and since this eeepc was my only machine I reinstalled it. 

Could you try and uninstalling kde3 and see if jaunty can successfully revert back to kde(4)

Many thanks - kde3 worked brilliantly in my 512mb RAM eeepc.
Comment 5 Sissy 2010-05-19 10:44:00 CDT 
I've installed KDE 3.5 and KDE 4 side-by-side and everything seems to work great for the most part.  However, I can't seem to get a network manager for KDE 4.  It seems that the KDE3.5 installation removed knetworkmanager in favor of knetworkmanager-kde3, which seems sensible, but I can't use the kde3 version under v. 4.  If I try to install either knetworkmanager or wicd in KDE 4, it wants to remove knetworkmanager-kde3.

Is there a way to get KDE 3.5 and KDE 4's network managers to coexist peacefully?
Comment 6 Darrell 2012-06-21 13:06:18 CDT 
Is this request still valid or can we close? We have done significant work in the past several releases to ensure Trinity and KDE4 coexist peacefully. Add the recent XDG and menu updates, along with continual conflict reduction efforts, and there should be no problems with using one desktop or the other.
Comment 7 Darrell 2013-04-05 16:23:07 CDT 
Can we close this report as resolved?
Comment 8 Timothy Pearson 2013-04-05 17:36:27 CDT 
(In reply to comment #7)
> Can we close this report as resolved?

I think so, as new TDE programs can even use core KDE libraries as needed.  That alone speaks volumes of how far TDE has come in the interoperability realm. ;-)