installing kde from rpms

["ramsubs" <ramsubs@pd.jaring.my>]

fellow debians:.

i know this email probably belongs to the debian-kde list, so do excuse me
for posting it here.

i ventured into debian assuming that i'd be able to use both gnome and kde
on debian. i found out that kde wasn't on the potato distribution.

i tried to convert redhat 6.2's kde rpms to .deb.  i stumbled on the advice
somewhere in dselect to use alien to convert rpm to .deb, rather than use
rpm to install directly.

well, i did that and successfully alien-ed the kde .rpms to .debs. however,
i faced some hurdles subsequently.

1. the startkde script stumbled during startx, and errored me. on examining
the startkde script a comment inside said the script was optimised for
redhat. Does anyone know where i can find a debianised startkde script, or
point me the way to originate one myself. all workarounds are welcome.

2. i'm a little stumped here. the kde site's advice on setup says that the
kde files will be located in  /opt/kde. when i installed the .debs they
didn't create a directory of that name. so the kde site's advice APPARENTLY
does not work for debian. (i assume that dselect's install would have
created the directory, but it had copied the files to some other directory.)

any enlightenment will help.

thanks, people.

ram
linux newbie