I'm thinking of installing KDE on Windows 7. The primary reason I'm thinking of doing this is so that I can use Kile as my LaTeX editor. Most of the time I'll be using Windows based programs on this computer so I don't want to install Linux, but when I want to edit LaTeX it would be nice to have Kile since it's the best LaTeX editor in my opinion.

I'm a little hesitant to try installing KDE on Windows since I don't really NEED it and I don't want to screw everything up. Can someone help ease my mind by answering these questions.

- How well does KDE work on Windows 7. On http://windows.kde.org/ it says that "KDE on Windows is not yet in a final state, so some applications may be unsuitable for everyday use." Do these issues only affect the KDE applications one wants to run or do they also affect applications like MS Word, etc?

- Is it possible for me to have 2 user accounts and only install KDE on one of them? This would be a safer way for me to test out how I like using KDE without feeling like I have to jump in all the way.

- If I install KDE and don't like it or decide it's too buggy, how do I go back to the regular Windows experience?

Thanks for any advice.

"KDE on Windows" does not replace the default Window GUI with Plasma Desktop. It will stay “the regular Windows experience“ anyway.
The installer will let you select specific KDE applications, although not in the most userfriendly way.
It does not modify your Windows installation, except Start Menu entries or so.

KAMiKAZOW wrote:"KDE on Windows" does not replace the default Window GUI with Plasma Desktop. It will stay “the regular Windows experience“ anyway.

All of the screenshots I've seen of people running KDE on Windows 7 seem to be running the Plasma Desktop. If that doesn't happen by default, how do they get it to happen?

If your hardware is powerful enough, you may as well install Linux with Kile on virtual machine. It will be separated from your Windows environment, so going back to "Windows experience" will be as easy as not running VM.

jonpeterson wrote:All of the screenshots I've seen of people running KDE on Windows 7 seem to be running the Plasma Desktop. If that doesn't happen by default, how do they get it to happen?

A Windows port of Plasma Deskop is availble but it has to be manually executed first.

Minio wrote:If your hardware is powerful enough, you may as well install Linux with Kile on virtual machine. It will be separated from your Windows environment, so going back to "Windows experience" will be as easy as not running VM.

Okay, I'm thinking of doing this on a machine with an intel i5 1.33 GHz processor, 4GB RAM, and a 64GB SSD hard drive. In your opinion which option would be better for this setup? I'm guessing that the processor speed shouldn't be a problem, but that the available hard drive space might be an issue with the virtual machine.

Is the 64gb ssd your only drive? It's a laptop? Not sure what the minimal drive space for a vm with a KDE install would be but it should be around 5->7gb plus something for swap. If you used a lighter environment like xfce it would be less even with the KDE require libs. Also need to consider your ram usage in windows, how much do you have available for the VM, I'd suggest a 1gb (people say they do ok with 512mb in a non-vm environment)

If you only have 64gb and only need to run 1 app I'd suggest going the Windows KDE route

jonpeterson wrote:Okay, I'm thinking of doing this on a machine with an intel i5 1.33 GHz processor, 4GB RAM, and a 64GB SSD hard drive. In your opinion which option would be better for this setup? I'm guessing that the processor speed shouldn't be a problem, but that the available hard drive space might be an issue with the virtual machine.

64 GB seems to be quite low indeed.

I had Arch Linux installed on VM. It was totally basic system - just core packages and core of KDE SC (enough to run plasma-desktop). It used 3 GB. I bet there was also cache of downloaded packages, so perhaps it could perfectly fit around 2,5 GB.
If you are interested only in Kile, then we may go into core system + simplest window manager (evilwm, icewm or something like that) + Kile (and KDE dependencies). I suppose 2 GB would be enough for such setup. 3 GB would definitely be.
But it all depends on your Linux skills. Creating Linux installation with that low HDD usage requires some knowledge - you must have some experience with command line and distribution of choice, you must know exactly what you truly need, you must be familiar with manual configuration of window manager of choice etc.
If you are new to Linux and you are not eager to learn all that stuff, then we could go with so-called "user-friendly" distros, like (K)Ubuntu or openSUSE. You will just install them, install Kile (if not already installed) and that's it. But you will need at least 6-8 GB of free disk space for them. This is because they will install tons of packages that you de facto don't need. You could install one of these and then remove all unneeded packages, but it's easier to start with core system and install what is really needed than strip already installed system of all it's bloat.

Unfortunately, I can't say what would work better (VM or KDE for Windows). You must analyze all pros and cons yourself and decide.

I would not recommend having Swap enabled on a system with a SSD drive as it will generate excessive wear.
In general for this - I would recommend trying the KDE on Windows route first, and fall back to the virtual machine if that fails.

Actually I was not able to open Krita for first ime after installation.I restarted the computer n then was able to open the start welcome page,but with unstableness problems,The welcome page was quickly shutting down.

I restarted my PC again after 5 minutes.And then Krita started working fine,sometimes.

Many a times,on opening files,Krita would close automatically.So after 15 or 30 days(Approximately),I reinstalled Krita by uninstalling it.
After reinstalling,everything was working fine in Krita.

In your case, perhaps someone might have accidentally deleted important system files in "Temp" (Temporary files folder).Temp is generally located in few sub folders of AppData.

So bad... My windows restart again and again

How this is possible that windows is restarting again and again automatically?
Surprising.Krita developers should take bugs like this seriously.