First, send us any errors that you may find. Also, any suggestions that you might have, are appreciated. Better yet, send us everything that you think is unclear, and if possible, send us what you think would be a clearer solution. Our email address is <kde-faq@kde.org>.

Second, send us your solutions of those frequently-asked questions which are still not in this FAQ. We will put them in as soon as possible.

Last but not least, please make full use of this FAQ. Read this FAQ (and other relevant documentation) well before asking questions on the various KDE mailing lists or newsgroups.

Actually, it is very easy to become an FAQ maintainer, and we are always in need of fresh blood. :-) Just send us an email at <kde-faq@kde.org>.

KDE is the K Desktop Environment. It is a project initiated by Matthias Ettrich in 1996. The aim of the KDE project is to connect the power of the UNIX® operating systems with the comfort of a modern user interface.

In short, KDE will bring UNIX® to the desktop!

If you want further information about KDE, have a look at What is KDE?

KDE is a Desktop Environment for all flavors of UNIX®. While it is true that most KDE developers use Linux®, KDE runs smoothly on a wide range of systems. You may, however, need to tweak the source code a bit to get KDE to compile on a not-so-popular variant of UNIX®, or if you are not using the GNU development tools, in particular the gcc compiler.

For an almost complete list of systems KDE is running on, please refer to this list of systems for KDE

No, KDE is not a window manager. While KDE includes a very sophisticated window manager (KWin), KDE is much more than that. It is a full-blown Integrated Desktop Environment.

KDE provides a complete desktop environment, including a web browser, a file manager, a window manager, a help system, a configuration system, uncountable tools and utilities, and an ever increasing number of applications, including but not limited to mail and news clients, drawing programs, a PostScript® and a DVI viewer and so forth.

No, KDE is not a clone. Specifically KDE is not a CDE or Windows® clone. While the KDE developers have and will continue to glean the best features from all existing desktop environments, KDE is a truly unique environment that has and will continue to go its own way.

Yes, KDE is free software according to the GNU General Public License. All KDE libraries are available under the LGPL making commercial software development for the KDE desktop possible, but all KDE applications are licensed under the GPL.

KDE uses the Qt™ C++ crossplatform toolkit, which is also released (since version 2.2) under the GPL.

It is absolutely legal to make KDE and Qt™ available on CD-ROM free of charge. No runtime fees of any kind are incurred.

The main distribution site for KDE is ftp.kde.org. However, this site is often under heavy load, so you might prefer one of the KDE mirror sites.

Yes, major Linux® distributions already ship KDE. As building a distribution takes some time, they might not always contain the latest version, but for a start or to avoid downloading from the Internet, they do provide a good starting point.

You can find an up-to-date list of distributions that ship with KDE here.

Currently, the latest stable version is 3.0

The KDE 3.0 Info Page contains a lot of information specific to this release.

You can get the latest snapshots from ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/unstable/CVS/snapshots. You might also want to consider setting up your own CVS client in order to maintain the latest snapshot at all times. Please refer to Anonymous CVS and KDE for further information.

Qt™ is a product of the Norwegian company Trolltech. You can always get the latest Qt™ version from their FTP server.

And with most up-to-date Linux® distributions, Qt™ is already included. Please see Q: 4.3. for the version of Qt™ you need.

Qt™ is a C++-based class library to build user interfaces. It also includes many utility classes like string classes and classes to handle input and output. It provides most of the widgets you will see in a KDE application: menus, buttons, sliders, etc. Qt™ is a cross-platform library that allows you to write code that will compile on UNIX® systems as well as Windows® and embedded devices. You can learn more about Qt™ at http://www.trolltech.com.

So you have heard the rumors. Or you have seen the screenshots. And you are dying to get hold of KDE. But you know next to nothing about this whole “alternative OS” business. Don't worry! You only need to do some (well, maybe not some) reading, that's all!

KDE does not run on Windows® 95/98/NT or OS/2 (yet). To run KDE, you need to have a UNIX® system. Please refer to Q: 2.2. for more details.

Decide on a platform and set it up for your system. This FAQ can not help you with this, since KDE runs on many UNIX® platforms.

Finally, you are ready to commence the KDE installation. Please start reading from the next section. To get KDE, please refer to Q: 3.1. . Last but not least, if you encounter any problems while installing KDE, please do not hesitate to make use of the KDE mailing lists and newsgroups. But do bear this in mind: no question is too silly to ask, but some are too silly to answer, especially when they are already answered in this FAQ.

Good luck and have fun!

You can find several kinds of binary and source packages for different distributions and operating systems on the ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/. The binary packages are not made by the KDE Team, but by the distributors themselves, or some dedicated individuals. Please refer to KDE Package Policy Explained for information about the KDE Package Policy. The only “official” release is the source tar.bz2 packages. Please refer to the READMEs and INSTALLs in the several binaries directories. For a list of the available packages for a release, refer to the relevant info page. For the latest release this is the KDE 3.0 Info Page.

For KDE 3.0, you need the Qt™ library version 3.0.2 or higher. Please make sure you download the correct Qt™. You will also need the header files, if you want to compile KDE yourself. They are all available, at no cost, from http://www.trolltech.com/download. In addition, there are optional libraries that might improve KDE if installed on your system. An example is OpenSSL which will enable Konqueror to browse web pages securely and is needed in a version >=0.9.6. These should be provided by your distributor; if not, ask for an update.

The base distribution currently consists of eleven packages. Some are required, while others are optional. Each package is available in each of the aforementioned package formats.

arts and then kdelibs should be installed before everything else, and kdeaddons last. The other packages can be installed in any arbitrary order.

Most package management tools will let you put all these packages in one directory and install them all at once, figuring out the dependencies as they go.

First of all, please make sure that you have added KDE's binary installation directory (e.g. /opt/kde/bin) to your PATH and KDE's library installation directory to your LD_LIBRARY_PATH (only necessary on systems that do not support rpath; on Linux® ELF, it should work without). This environment variable may be called differently on some systems, e.g. it is called SHLIB_PATH on IRIX®. Then set the environment variable KDEDIR to the base of your KDE tree, e.g. /opt/kde.

Even though you can use most of the KDE applications simply by calling them, you can only benefit fully from KDE's advanced features if you use the KDE window manager and its helper programs.

In order to make it easy for you, we have provided a simple script called startkde which gets installed in $KDEDIR/bin and is therefore in your path.

Edit the file .xinitrc in your home directory (make a backup copy first!), remove everything that looks like calling a window manager, and insert startkde instead. Restart the X Window System®. If you use kdm/xdm, you will have to edit the file .xsession instead of .xinitrc. And if there is no .xinitrc or .xsession in your home directory, simply create a new one with just one line containing startkde.

This should present you with a new shining KDE desktop. You can now start to explore the wonderful world of KDE. In case you want to read some documentation first, there is a highly recommended Quick Start guide available. Furthermore, every application has an online help that is available via the help menu.

In principle, this is not necessary. RPM and Debian packages should take care of all dependencies.

If you compile the source code yourself, you should take care not to compile different versions of the KDE packages. So if you install a new version, please first make and install kdesupport, then kdelibs, then kdebase.

One thing you should avoid: installing two or more versions of KDE in parallel. This might happen if you specify a different target directory for one version than for the other. The result may be unpredictable. The same is true if you have different versions of Qt™ installed at the same time. This happens easily if you already have an old Qt™ version installed with a Linux® distribution.

The most comfortable method to start KDE is to use the startkde script. Simply put the line startkde at the end of your .xsession file (or your .xinitrc or .Xclients file if you are not using kdm or xdm). Please also remove the lines that start your previous window manager. If there is no .xsession, .xinitrc, or .Xclients in your home directory, simply create a new one that contains just one line: startkde.

Yes, you can install KDE in any directory you want. What you have to do depends on the kind of packages you want to install:

You probably tried to start the X server with startkde. The X server is started with startx. startkde is the script that should be run from your .xinitrc, .xsession, or .Xclients to activate the window manager and the necessary server daemons for KDE. See also Q: 4.8. .

If you have trouble building KDE on AIX® check out Stefan Westerfeld's Running KDE on Aix page for lots of help on building KDE on this exceptional UNIX® variant.

If you can get the X Window System® to run, you should not have any problem getting KDE to run on it. In addition, you might find the following links helpful:

Assuming the default is /opt/kde and you want to move it to /usr/local/kde, here's what you have to do:

This will put all your KDE files in /usr/local/kde but everything is still accessible from /opt/kde.

There should not be any need to keep the .c and .o files, but you might want to keep the .h files, as they are used by includes if you ever want to compile your own KDE programs. But if you wish to add patches to the source programs as they become available (rather than downloading everything again), then they should stay.

No. In most cases KDE will be able to transport your settings intact. You may need to reenter passwords in some applications (such as KMail or KNode) but most other settings will be safe.

There were mixed reports of results between some previous versions of KDE. To be safe, you may like to back up your entire KDE configuration.

Settings are kept in the .kde or .kde2 subdirectory in your home directory. Copy your old .kde/.kde2 directory to a backup location, install KDE 3.0, and then copy back any necessary mail and news settings. That said, most people can make a direct upgrade, without removing the old .kde directory, without a hitch.

You need the GNU msgfmt which is part of the GNU i18n package gettext. You should be able to download it from any decent GNU mirrors.

You can uninstall your programs by typing make uninstall in the directory where you did make install. If you have already nuked away that directory, then there is only one way, and it is not good: go to $KDEDIR/bin and start deleting files one by one.

This has something to do with Unisys' LZW patent. GIF support is turned off from Qt™ 1.44 onwards by default. When you want to use GIFs and have the relevant license, recompile Qt™ with GIF support. ./configure -gif.

There is a Theme Manager in KDE 2.2.1, so please refer to the Control Center Help for further reference, or look at kde.themes.org for KDE2 themes.

There are several ways to add an application to the panel:

Just choose the desired application from the K menu and drag and drop it to the Desktop. Thats it.

For applications not listed in the K menu, use the right mouse button on the desktop and choose Create New Link to Application and fill in the configuration for the application you want to link to.

First, make sure you are allowed to mount/umount the relevant device as a user.

Then you can add any device via right mouse button on the desktop and then choosing Create New.

The icons can be found only in $KDEDIRS/share/icons or $HOME/.kde/share/icons or $HOME/.kde2/share/icons. To use icons stored in other locations, you must either copy them into one of the above-mentioned fixed KDE locations or make symlinks.

Mouse wheel support comes with Qt™ 2.0 and above, so KDE based on that will automatically support the use of the mouse scroll wheel.

System sound currently does not work on non-FreeBSD and non-Linux® systems. This is being worked on. If you use FreeBSD or Linux®, you have found a bug, so please report it.

KDE comes with a program called kstart. To start Mozilla on the second desktop and then activate it use: kstart "netscape" -desktop 2 -activate.

Please read kstart --help-all for more magic available with kstart (and there is an abundance).

$HOME/Desktop. You might need to refresh your desktop after you have saved your files.

Yes. Please refer to "The K Window Manager Handbook" for the list of shortcuts available.

Yes. Launch the KDE Control Center and select Look and Feel->Key bindings to configure window manager bindings like maximizing windows, etc.

With many X Window System® GUI, the minimize button (a little dot) will erase the window that the program is running in and create, instead, an icon on the desktop. KDE does not do this. Instead, when a window is iconified it is simply hidden (but the program is still running).

There are a few ways to access "disappeared" windows:

Provided your window is not already maximized, clicking on the maximize button with the left mouse button/middle mouse button/right mouse button will maximize fully/vertically/horizontally respectively.

By "shading" a window we mean "rolling up" a window leaving just the title bar visible. You can do this by double clicking on the window title bar.

Yes. Run KDE Control Center and select Look and Feel followed by Window Behavior and finally Advanced. There is a dialog option that allows you to set the placement policy you want.

Konqueror can be used with HTTP and FTP proxies. To set up the proxy server in Konqueror, just select Settings->Configure Konqueror... from the Konqueror menu and go to the Proxies tab.

When displaying a directory,Konqueror looks for a hidden file called .directory inside the directory. You can create such a file yourself to modify the way in which the directory is displayed. The file is simply a .desktop file. For example:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Directory
Icon=trashcan_full
EmptyIcon=trashcan_empty
Name=Trash
Name[af]=GEMORS
...
Name[no_NY]=Papirkorg
...
Comment=Contains removed files

This is the file used to describe the Trash directory. It changes the icon used to display the directory and sets the (displayed) name of the directory according to the national language

For the directories that build up the K menu, you can also use kmenuedit to change the appearance.

Normally, if you enter a URL like ftp://ftp.somehost.com, Konqueror will attempt an anonymous login to the FTP server. If you want to login as a particular user, enter a URL like ftp://username@ftp.somehost.com instead. Konqueror will ask for your password and connect to the server.

They are used by all KDE applications (since they are implemented in KApplication and all good KDE programs create a KApplication object before they even look at the command line arguments).

A standard line for a KDE application looks like this: foo ... %i %m -caption \"%c\". Pretty confusing, but it has been designed in that way so that it can integrate legacy, non-KDE applications as smoothly as possible. Konqueror, when executing the line above, will extend the command to foo -icon something.png -miniicon something_mini.png -caption \"The Foo\". Both the icon and the mini-icon as well as "The Foo" are properties defined in the .desktop file. If the icons are not defined, they simply default to the executable name foo.

This way a user can change these things in kmenuedit for his or her applications. -caption is important, because no user will accept that the menu item Editor starts something called kedit-0.9pl4-build47. Instead, he expects a window called Editor. Furthermore these names are localized, i.e. an American user launches CD-Player and gets a window called CD-Player while a German user launches CD Spieler and gets a window called CD-Spieler.

right mouse button click on the Konqueror icon and choose Preferences. Under the Execute tab you would probably find something like kfmclient openProfile filemanagement; just append file:/whereever/you/want with the directory you would like Konqueror to start in.

There is no need to import anything at all. Netscape® bookmarks are automatically available under the Bookmarks menu in Konqueror with no configuration on your part necessary. The Bookmark Editor is able to convert Netscape® bookmarks to the format used by Konqueror, if you want this.

Fire up the KDE Control Center and select Web Browsing->User Agent. Add the desired user agent accordingly.

Choose Settings->Configure Konqueror->Konqueror Browser from Konqueror's menubar. Note that you have to be viewing a web page for the Settings menu not to be grayed out. If it doesn't work, please check the Konqueror + Java HOWTO.

This new policy attempts to block intrusive JavaScript popup windows. If the user does not click on a button or submit a form to trigger the popup, then the popup is not permitted. Some sites will open a second new window from within the first and in that case, the second window will not show.

Make sure you have Javascript enabled, and the default JavaScript web popups policy set to Ask or Allow. The Smart policy is not always sufficient for some banks. Many banks also require Java™ support. You can find more help on enabling this at http://www.konqueror.org/.

It is because you did not enable GIF support in Qt™. Please see Q: 4.18. for more details.

Simply right click on the file and select Rename or click once on an already selected file.

There are two ways to set the language KDE uses in the messages it will display:

Yes, you can configure it using the KDE Control Center Peripherals Keyboard Layout configuration dialog.

First, you need to change to the “xdm runlevel” (runlevel 5 on Red Hat® systems, 3 on SuSE®) by editing your /etc/inittab file. In the file, you should have a line saying id:3:initdefault:. Change it to id:5:initdefault:. Now, at the end of the file, comment out the following line: x:5:respawn:/usr/bin/X11/xdm -nodaemon and replace it with x:5:respawn:/opt/kde/bin/kdm -nodaemon.

For changes to take effect immediately, type init 5 (for Red Hat® systems) at the shell prompt.

For FreeBSD, you should edit the file /etc/ttys and change one of the lines that look like

ttyv8   "/usr/X11R6/bin/xdm -nodaemon"  xterm   off secure

Open the KDE Control Center and choose LookNFeel->Desktop. You can now choose the behavior of mouse clicks on the desktop. To have the K menu open from a single left mouse button click, change the entry labeled Left button to say Application Menu.

Go to http://kde.themes.org/ or http://www.kde-look.org.

If you are using Konqueror, do this instead: first, open a Konqueror window and choose Edit->File Type. Find the type you want to change (e.g. text/english or image/gif), click the right mouse button, select General, and set the application preference order to whatever you want.

The login managersxdm and kdm do not run a login shell, so .profile, .bash_profile, etc. are not sourced. When the user logs in, xdm runs Xstartup as root and then Xsession as user. So the normal practice is to add statements in Xsession to source the user profile. Please edit your Xsession and .xsession files.

You need to install TrueType® font support into your X Window System®. Please take a look at x.themes.org for the fonts, and xfsft: TrueType® Font Support For X11 or X-TrueType® Server Project Home Page for the font servers.

If you have a bunch of TrueType® fonts from Microsoft® Windows®, edit the XF86Config file to get the fonts from the font folder. Then just tell KDE to use these new fonts with the font administrator utility.

Yes and no. For details, look here: http://www.koffice.org/kword/euro.phtml.

Many KDE users report problems using kppp. But before you complain about kppp, make sure you have already checked the following:

The kppp documentation can be accessed through the KDE Help Center, or by going directly to the documentation directory, usually $KDEDIR/share/doc/HTML/default/kppp. Last, but not least, the kppp homepage is at http://devel-home.kde.org/~kppp/.

Now, if you still encounter problems, here's what might help you solve them:

KMail has its own home page at http://kmail.kde.org where an FAQ is available.

Start the KDE Control Center and in Look and FeelStyle uncheck the apply KDE settings to non-KDE apps checkbox and click Apply.

Pop up the minicli window (Alt+F2 by default) and type man:command. It even unpacks on the fly if the man pages are gzipped.

Or you can use the KDE Help Center if you are using KDE 2. Simply start the KDE Help Center by clicking on the icon (the blue book with the yellow key) on the toolbar. Once the KDE Help Center has loaded, the window on the left will contain an entry called Unix manual pages. Click once on this entry, and you can browse through all the installed manual pages on your system.

To move a window, use Alt+left mouse button. Alt+right mouse button will resize the window. Last but not least, Alt+middle mouse button raises/lowers the window. The KDE Control Center allows you to change these mouse bindings.

There is a standard keybinding (Ctrl+Alt+Esc) that gives you a skull/crossbones cursor. Click that cursor on a window to kill it. The keybindings are viewable/changeable from the KDE Control Center.

Qt™ is a very sophisticated toolkit that provides everything that is needed to build a modern user interface. Qt™ is written in C++, thus allowing object-oriented development which ensures efficiency and code reuse in a project the size and scope of KDE. In our opinion there is no better toolkit available for UNIX® systems and that it would have been a grave mistake to try to build KDE on anything but the best.

There are a number of toolkits available. To provide a consistent user interface and to keep used resources such as memory to a minimum, KDE can use only one of them. Qt™ was selected for the reasons mentioned above.

It is! As of September 4, 2000, version 2.2 of the Qt™ libraries were licensed under the GPL, thereby fulfilling all aspects of “free software”.

Yes and no. Konsole has the ability to simulate transparency by redrawing the background of the window inside the Konsole window. This gives the illusion of transparency, but if you place Konsole on top of another window, the transparency is lost. Eterm should work fine under KDE if you desire more complete transparency.

Create them using your favorite image manipulator, for example, GIMP, or the KDE Icon Editor and put them in $KDEDIR/share/icons(/mini) or $HOME/.kde/share/icons(/mini).

Use kmenuedit. To access it use the right mouse button on the K button and select Preferences....

Yes, and it is none other than your favorite file manager, Konqueror. You can drag and drop remote files into local directories.

Simply click on the K button and select Logout. In addition, if you right click on an empty area of the desktop, you will be presented with a menu containing logout as one of the options.

KOrn will do the job. If you are not connected, it will just sit there (idling).

We recommend to always use the latest stable release. If you don't, it will probably be difficult to get answers to your questions. If you have a problem with an old version, the answer will probably be “Please upgrade and try again”. Note that new versions also sometimes fix security problems.

The simplest method is to use your mouse:

Click on the K button and select System->Appfinder.

It stands for Concurrent Versions System. It is a version control system and is based on RCS (Revision Control System), but offers more functionality. It is used to maintain source code under development. It will keep multiple versions of things (handy if you broke something and have to back up and get a clean old version), and allows people remote access over the Net to pick up the latest source code and even to check in new files if they have permission. It is also open source (you pay for support if you want it), and since it is free it is the system of choice for people writing more free products, such as KDE.

Yes, you need to have a multi-headed X server (e.g. MetroX or XFree86 4.0 and above) and a KDE >= 2.2.1

You should upgrade to XFree86 4.2.0 for this to work properly.

Fire up your KDE Control Center. It comes up with an Info Screen including the version of KDE The KDE version is also included in the application's About dialog.

You can use the KDE libraries to write “commercial and closed source” as well as “commercial and open source” software. If you write open source software you can use the Qt™ free edition. But if you write closed source software you may not use the Qt™ free edition; you need to obtain the Qt™ professional edition from Troll Tech.

If you want more information, please contact Troll Tech directly.

Go see http://artist.kde.org.

Yes. But future versions of LyX will be GUI independent. Check the progress of the various GUI frontends here.

You might want to subscribe to the various KDE mailing lists available, especially kde-cvs, which lists all commits done to the KDE CVS repository. Check http://lists.kde.org if you want to read without subscribing.

The KDE homepage is located at http://www.kde.org. If you prefer a local mirror, there are several to choose from. For a current list of web site mirrors sorted by location, please visit http://www.kde.org/webmirrors.html.

Well, there are more than one. Each focuses on a different aspect of KDE. Some of them are for the developers, so they are not discussed in detail. Some of the more important lists that users might be interested in are:

For the complete list of mailing lists available, please refer to http://www.kde.org/maillinglists.html.

Please note that it is not a good idea to ask questions which are already answered in this FAQ.

To subscribe, send an email to list-request, that is:

The email must contain subscribe your_email_address in the subject.

To unsubscribe, send an email to list-request, that is:

The email must contain unsubscribe your_email_address in the subject.

There is also a complete list of all KDE-related mailing lists, and a web interface for subscribing and unsubscribing located at http://master.kde.org/mailman/listinfo.

Yes, there is a searchable mailing list archive hosted by Progressive Computer Concepts. The URL is http://lists.kde.org. There you will see a directory listing of the mailing lists. Note that you can only do a subject/author search at this level. You probably will not find what you want doing this kind of search.

To do a body search, you have to enter one of the mailing lists. Just click on the folder you want to search (e.g. “kde” or “kde-user”) and then the pull-down menu by the search box will default to “Body” searches. To be thorough, you should probably search the “kde”, “kde-user”, and “kde-devel” folders.

Yes, there is! It is at comp.windows.x.kde. In addition, there is also a German newsgroup at de.alt.comp.kde. Please note that it is not a good idea to ask questions which are already answered in this FAQ.

Yes. Here is a list of them:

KDE is a free software project that lives from voluntary contributions. Everybody is encouraged to contribute to KDE. Not only programmers are welcome. There are many ways in which you can help to improve KDE:

There are several places to look for more information if you want to get involved in the development. The first step is to subscribe to some of the mailing lists. You will soon see something that can be improved or added.

There is a bug tracking system available at http://bugs.kde.org. The system features a wizard to submit new bug reports and a list of all known bugs.

The easiest way to submit a bug is to select Help->Report Bug... from the menu bar of the application with the bug. This will open a small dialog box with a link to the bug tracking system. Please make sure to follow the instructions of the bug reporting wizard.

Everybody is encouraged to develop software for KDE. What you should do first depends strongly on your experience, e.g. whether you have already learned C++ or have experience with the Qt™ toolkit and so on.

To get into KDE programming, you will need some basic tools: automake, autoconf, and egcs. You should look to http://developer.kde.org/ for more tips.

Another excellent resource for learning KDE programming is the Qt™ online tutorials. These are installed along with Qt™. To view them, open $QTDIR/html/index.html in Konqueror and bookmark it. The tutorials can be found under "Using Qt". The source code for each lesson can be found in the $QTDIR/tutorial directory.

There is, however, one thing that everybody interested in programming for KDE should do: subscribe to the developers mailing list. To subscribe, you have to send an email to kde-devel-request@kde.org with the subject subscribe your_email_address.

The KDE project uses CVS to develop the core parts of the software. Usually, when you have changed one of the parts (e.g. fixed a bug), and you want to commit this change, the best way is to create a patch against a current snapshot and send this patch to the developer/maintainer of the respective program.

If you are doing this more or less regularly, you can ask Stephan Kulow, <coolo@kde.org> for direct access to the CVS server. But be aware that more users will slow down CVS access for all developers, so we want to keep the number of people with direct CVS access reasonably small. But feel free to ask!

Yes. It is possible to get read-only access to the CVS repository with cvsup or cvs utility. You can find more information about how to set up cvsup for the KDE repository from How to use cvsup to get KDE.

In addition, anonymous CVS service is also available. To find out more about how to set up and use anonymous CVS, please see here.

Yes. The main KDE server is normally very busy. Please take a look at http://www.kde.org/cvsupmirrors.html and http://www.kde.org/anoncvs.html for the list of available mirrors.

Once you have selected a new cvsup server, simply replace

 
*default host=cvs.kde.org

 
*default host=cvsup.your.new.host

The instructions to change the anoncvs server can be found on http://www.kde.org/anoncvs.html, too.

Look at the The KDE Translators' and Documenters' Web Site to see whether your program is already translated (most are). Otherwise you will find information there on how to do it yourself.