# KDE now available on EPEL 8 playground
Many thanks to all those who have helped make this happen.
## Why playground only
KDE on EPEL 8 really needs to be in modules.[1] So we don't have to
pull all the KDE packages out of normal EPEL8, we have chosen to only
have them in EPEL8 playground, until modules are available in EPEL8.
## How to install
### First: install epel-release
rpm -Uvh
https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm
### Second: Enable epel-release-playground
vi /etc/yum.repos.d/epel-playground.repo
( set enabled=1 for epel-playground )
### Third: Enable codeready-builder-for-rhel-8 [2]
subscription-manager repos --enable codeready-builder-for-rhel-8-x86_64-rpms
### Fourth: install KDE
dnf group install "KDE Plasma Workspaces"
(Optional) dnf group install kde-desktop
(Optional) dnf group install kde-apps
(Optional) dnf group install kde-media --skip-broken
(Optional) dnf group install kde-education
(Optional) dnf group install kde-software-development
(Optional) dnf group install kf5-software-development
### Fifth: Set sddm / KDE as desktop manager and desktop [3]
dnf install switchdesk system-switch-displaymanager
switchdesk kde
system-switch-displaymanager sddm
systemctl set-default graphical.target
## Non-Essential, but major Packages that didn't build
calligra (An integrated office suite)
-- too many dependencies to build at this time.
telepathy (and everything depending on it)
-- python2 based and required python2-dbus, which isn't in RHEL8
## Footnotes
[1] - Modules needed due to packages not in CRB, QT5 5.11, and a few
other smaller reasons.
[2] - There are several KDE critical packages in codeready-builder
[3] - Currently gdm does not like to start plasma, use sddm instead