Running KDE with Apple's X11

Nov 16, '03 11:28:00AM

Contributed by: aranor

Over the last few days, I installed KDE from source (using darwinports), which took forever. Then I endeavored to get KDE running correctly under Apple's X11. I looked at the two hints that mention KDE already on this site, but neither offered enough information to make it work. The biggest problem with running KDE under Apple's X11 is it simply doesn't work correctly with the default window manager (i.e. quartz-wm). KDE comes with its own window manager, but it can't use it if quartz-wm is in use. After much testing, I found the best solution to the problem. First, open up the file /usr -> X11RC -> lib -> X11 -> xinit -> xinitrc in BBEdit (or your editor of choice -- make sure to run it as sudo if it can't authenticate itself). Next, comment out the two lines xterm & and exec quartz-wm. After that, add these two lines to the end:


exec /opt/local/bin/kwin &
exec /opt/local/bin/startkde
Of course, those paths assume you installed KDE using darwinports. If you installed KDE manually or through fink, you may have to change the paths. Anyway, once those changes are in place, X11 will now start up correctly with KDE and the KDE window manager. BTW, make sure to run X11 in Full Screen mode. It would be difficult to use KDE when intermingled with Aqua. The last (and most annoying) problem to getting X11 and KDE working was that I had no functioning Alt key - the Option key simply did nothing. After much fooling around, I found the following solution:

Create a file called .Xmodmap in your home directory. Open it in some editor. Add in the following two lines:

keycode 66 = Alt_L
keycode 69 = Alt_R
Save it. If you're already running X11, type the following in:
xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap
Otherwise, just start X11. Now option will act as Alt.

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