In order to accomplish this you will need a CentOS VPS, this can be done with other linux distributions also, but I’ll stick to CentOS.

First of all let’s make sure we have the latest packages installed:

yum update

Now let’s install KDE:

yum install kdebase kdelibs kdeaccessibility kdemultimedia kdeadmin kdeutils kdegraphics kdenetwork kdeaddons xorg-x11-server-Xorg

Here you have a list from which you can add more, or remove:
kdemultimedia.i386 : Multimedia applications for the K Desktop Environment
kdegames.i386 : K Desktop Environment – Games
kdeaccessibility.i386 : K Desktop Environment – Accessibility
kdepim.i386 : PIM (Personal Information Manager) for KDE
kdeutils.i386 : K Desktop Environment – Utilities
kdeadmin.i386 : Administrative tools for KDE.
kdegraphics.i386 : K Desktop Environment – Graphics Applications
kdenetwork.i386 : K Desktop Environment – Network Applications
kdeaddons.i386 : K Desktop Environment – Plugins
kdeartwork.i386 : Additional artwork (themes, sound themes, …) for KDE
kdeartwork-icons.i386 : icon themes (kdeclassic, slick ….) for KDE

Now that KDE is installed, it’s time to install the vnc server:

yum install vnc-server

Next we’ll need to add an user that will be used by KDE:

useradd kusr -d /home/kusr -G users -m
passwd kusr

The final step is to configure and start the vnc server:

vncpasswd
vncserver

With the above commands you configured the password and the vnc server started, but the problem now is that it’s not using KDE.
Let’s kill the vnc server and edit the configuration file that was automatically generated:

killall -9 Xvnc
nano /home/kusr/.vnc/xstartup

Make sure the configuration file looks like this:

#!/bin/sh

# Uncomment the following two lines for normal desktop:
# unset SESSION_MANAGER
# exec /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc

[ -x /etc/vnc/xstartup ] && exec /etc/vnc/xstartup
[ -r $HOME/.Xresources ] && xrdb $HOME/.Xresources
xsetroot -solid grey
vncconfig -iconic &
xterm -geometry 80x24+10+10 -ls -title "$VNCDESKTOP Desktop" &
startkde &

The only thing I changed was the last line.
Start the vnc server once more:

vncserver

Now you are ready to use the new desktop, simply connect using your favorite VNC viewer, but remember to use the port 5901.

Claudiu Popescu

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