how do i start a program from the terminal?

tone33 · n00b Joined: 13 Sep 2008 Posts: 38

I'm coming from kubuntu in which i could start a program... say "kate" from a terminal. This is handy when making changes to a root access only config file from my normal user account. In Gentoo w/KDE 3.5.9 I get this:

tone33 · n00b Joined: 13 Sep 2008 Posts: 38

so i just figured out that i can do this through the Run Command. I'm curious as to why i can't from Konsole.

skellr · Posted: Mon Sep 15, 2008 12:56 am Post subject:

It's probably not in your PATH yet, if this is a new install It should work next time you login. or 'source /etc/profile' from your current shell.

tone33 · n00b Joined: 13 Sep 2008 Posts: 38

i executed source /etc/profile and it works now. what exactly does that command do?

skellr · Posted: Mon Sep 15, 2008 4:48 am Post subject:

/etc/profile is a shell script that is used for setting up environment variables when you login. The PATH variable is basically a list of directories of where to look for something. KDE installs into /usr/kde witch is not in the default path.

So when KDE gets installed, new environment variables are put into /etc/env.d. Then env-update is ran and it reads files in /etc/env.d and then updates /etc/profile.env witch is read by /etc/profile.

If you read /etc/profile.env it will probably make more sense than I atm.