What's the difference between KDE packages?

So I'm going to install KDE in Precise. I found that there wasn't an entry for Plasma Desktop (only KDE apps) in the software center, so I fired up Synaptic to look for the packages.

However, now I'm finding way too many of these. There's kde-standard, kde-workspace, plasma-desktop, plasma-netbook, kde-plasma-desktop...

I went and looked online, but with differing instructions, too. I think the most common were between "install kubuntu-desktop" and "add the kubuntu-ppa/backports repo" (which is probably not the one I want).

My question is... what's with all these different packages? Is there any difference between them? Which one should I install?


I've checked the packages that apt-get install would install for each of these. These aren't complete lists, but only list the differences from my Unity (ie., without any KDE programs) setup.

plasma-netbook and plasma-desktop differ only by whether they install the netbook or the desktop interface. kde-workspace is identical to plasma-desktop.

kde-plasma-desktop will install a few KDE programs: Dolphin, Konqueror, kde-baseapps, konsole, kwrite, and kde-passwd.

kde-standard installs a bunch of stuff on top of kde-desktop: Akregator, Ark, Dragonplayer, gnupg, Kaddressbook, Kate, KDE wallpapers, Kmail, etc.

kubuntu-desktop installs even more than kde-standard. kubuntu-desktop is the package you would download from the Ubuntu website if you wanted Kubuntu, but if you only want the Plasma interface, not any of the default programs, plasma-desktop might be sufficient.