KDEINIT4(8)

💖 KDEINIT4 💖

okay so bestie, this is the manual page for kdeinit4 from the KDE User's Manual, and we're gonna get into it. grab a boba. 🧋

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✨ NAME ✨

kdeinit4 — KDE process launcher. that's it, that's the whole job. 👑

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

kdeinit4 [--help] [[--no-fork] | [--no-kded] | [--suicide]] [[+programs]
         | [programs]]

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so kdeinit4 is a process launcher, and honestly it's kinda giving the famous init that UNIX uses for booting. it runs KDE programs and kdeinit loadable modules (KLMs), and it starts them more efficiently. no cap. 💅

using kdeinit4 to launch KDE applications makes starting a typical KDE application a couple times faster, and it also cuts memory consumption by a substantial amount. we love a resource-efficient icon. 🎀

here's the slay part: kdeinit4 is linked against all the libraries a standard KDE application needs. with this technique, starting an application becomes much faster, because now only the application itself needs to be linked — whereas otherwise, both the application and all the libraries it uses need to be linked. the way that saves so much work… obsessed. ✨

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✨ DISADVANTAGES ✨

okay bestie, we gotta be real for a sec. 😭 the process name of applications started via kdeinit4 is kdeinit4. yeah. all of them. that's the vibe.

you can correct this problem to a degree by changing the application name as shown by ps. however — and this is the important part — applications like killall will only see kdeinit4 as the process name.

so to work around this, use kdekillall (from kdesdk/scripts) for applications started via kdeinit4. 🫶

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

• --help — show help about options. the classic. the icon. 🎀
• --no-fork — do not fork, i.e. it does not exit until all the executed programs end. it's committed, it's in its loyalty era. 💜
• --no-kded — do not start kded. not today, kded. 🙈
• --suicide — terminate when no KDE applications are left running. dramatic name, but it's literally just the last-one-out-turns-off-the-lights behavior. 💀
• +programs — runs the programs handling requests. ✨
• programs — runs the programs without handling requests. subtle difference, huge implications, iykyk. 💅

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✨ USAGE ✨

the standard way to run this program is by simply typing one of these at the prompt:

kdeinit4 program

or

kdeinit4 +program

that's it. go off. 🌈

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✨ FILES ✨

• /tmp/kde-$USER/kdeinit4_$INSTANCE — ...

ngl the original manpage literally just writes ... for this one. no thoughts, head empty, but the path is real and we respect it. 💖

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✨ ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES ✨

• $HOME — specifies the home directory of the current user. 🏠
• $KDE_HOME_READONLY — specifies if the home directory of the current user is read only. 🔒
• $KDE_IS_PRELINKED — if set, tells kdeinit4 that the KDE programs are pre-linked.
  • (prelinking is a process that allows you to speed up the process of dynamic linking.) ⚡
• $KDE_DISPLAY — if set, tells kdeinit4 that it is running on a KDE desktop. 🦋

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✨ SEE ALSO ✨

kded, kdekillall 🌸

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✨ BUGS ✨

there are probably tons of bugs. 😭 use bugs.kde.org[1] to report them. do your civic duty bestie, the maintainers will love you for it. 🫶

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✨ AUTHORS ✨

• Waldo Bastian <bastian@kde.org> — author. 👑
• Mario Weilguni <mweilguni@sime.com> — author. 👑
• Lubos Lunak <l.lunak@kde.org> — author. 👑

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✨ NOTES ✨

1. bugs.kde.org — http://bugs.kde.org 🐛

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and that's the whole page, bestie!! this one is from KDE's world, version 0.01.01, dated 2008-10-03 — a true vintage icon from the KDE User's Manual era. periodt. 💅✨🎀🦋