Kalternatives is a KDE 4 application, so you need KDE 4 to run it.

To build Kalternatives, you need a KDE 4 development environment.
If you are using a distribution, please refer to its packages for the task.
In any case, take a look at http://techbase.kde.org/Getting_Started
for generic build instructions.

Kalternatives requires kdelibs >= 4.1 (but should work also with KDE 4.0,
please contact me in case).

To build it, you can do:
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$(kde4-config --prefix) -DKALTERNATIVES_DISTRO=type ..
$ make

The 'type' for the KALTERNATIVES_DISTRO variable depends on the target
distribution:
* dpkg
  - Debian
  - Ubuntu and derivates
* rpm
  - Mandriva
  - openSUSE
* rpm_2
  - Fedora

To install, either do one of:
$ sudo make install
$ su -c "make install"
$ make install
depending on how you installed KDE.

To run Kalternatives, you must run it as root, so either
$ sudo kcmshell4 kalternatives
$ su -c "kcmshell4 kalternatives"
will do it.
