I don't know the disk-space requirements for building KDE or GNOME
offhand, but I'm not terribly surprised that you run out of space.  Those
packages are very big.  (I _am_ a little surprised, though.)  Although I
must ask you: What exactly do you mean by the space ``needed to install
such a system''?

I probably can't give you an answer in any case, but the question isn't
precise enough to get a simple answer.  Do you mean how much disk-space do
you need to have after the dust settles & all temporary/work/archive files
are deleted?  Or do you mean how much is needed for a simple ``cd to each
directory & `make install' without bothering to clean up afterwards''?  
Or something inbetween?


In any case, I offer a couple of suggestions:


First, you can probably cut your root partition to around 60 MB.  I'm
using a little less than 110,000 512-blocks on my root.  Repartitioning is
a bit drastic, but it's a thought that you might bear in mind.  Similarly,
you may be able to reduce your swap partition.


Second, you might try building KDE by parts.  Build things like kdelibs
first (actually, building things like the PNG library, Mesa, etc., might
be an even better first step), and once it's installed, do a ``make
clean'' on all of pkgsrc, and delete unwanted distfiles.  Then build
another part of KDE.  Work your way up the chain until you can do the main
KDE package install.

Doing it this way, you can avoid having _all_ of the distfiles (compressed
sources), extracted sources, object files, compiled binaries/libraries,
and installed binaries/libraries on your drive all at once.  This may let
you get things built and installed.  A similar strategy may be used with
GNOME.  If you're not already doing this, it may help a lot---though it
may also be a bit tedious.  It's worth trying.  (^&

You can glance at the Makefiles in each package's directory to see what
other package(s) each package depends upon.


Third: You spoke of both a laptop and a desktop (two seperate systems, I
assume, not one system serving double duty).  Do they both have the same
size hard disks?  If not, and if you haven't tried it already, you might
try to ``make package'' on your larger system, to build your own binary
package.  (I think that ``make package'' is the proper make target; I
never bother with that.)  Also, even if the two machines have the
same-size disks, you might consider networking the machines together and
using NFS.  With a bit of work (say putting the /usr/pkgsrc/distfiles
directory on one machine, and all of the build directories on another as a
starting point), you might get what you need.  Along similar lines, if you
have a CD burner, you could even put /usr/pkgsrc/distfiles onto a CD-ROM.


Fourth: One can very seriously question whether KDE or GNOME are key in a
``fully functional system''.  (^&

(Although I have GNOME and KDE installed out of curiosity, I essentially
never use them.  Most of the time, I live in a twm-managed X server.  Once
in a while, I use a plain text console.)


I hope that these comments are of some help to you.  Good luck, have fun,
and welcome to NetBSD.


  "I probably don't know what I'm talking about." --rauch@eecs.ukans.edu