If you’ve been watching the development of KDE 4 with a lot of anticipation then you probably know that 4.0 was released over a month ago. I was going to wait for the next release of Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) to try it out, but after seeing all the rave reviews and slick screenshots, I couldn’t wait.

Fortunately, installing KDE 4 on Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) is fairly straight forward, but because I’m quite attached to a must-have terminal emulator called Yakuake, I had to jump through a few extra hoops to get both installed. So here are the steps I took in case you’re looking to do the same thing…

First, login with root access:

sudo su

Edit the package list:

cd /etc/apt/
vi sources.list

Uncomment the lines for ‘backports’ and ‘partners’ then add the following line to the bottom of the file.

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-members-kde4/ubuntu gutsy main

Save the file and exit vi.

Update the package list and upgrade the installed packages:

apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade

Now, let’s install KDE 4:

apt-get install kde4-core
apt-get install kde4

Since I can’t live without my Quake-style terminal emulator, we’ll need to install the KDE development libraries before we can install Yakuake.

apt-get install kdelibs4-dev
apt-get install yakuake-kde4

That’s it! Just restart or logout, and at the Login screen, click “Options” then “Select Session” and pick “KDE 4″. Finally, enter your username and password. Enjoy!