Requirements

In order to successfully use Kwave, you need:

a computer running Linux (Kwave might also run under some other operating system, but we have never tested this, please let us know if you get it working under some other platform / operating system)
working sound playback (not really required for using but what would you do with a sound editor if you can't hear the result of your work?)
KDE-3.1 or higher (at least the libraries, if you are a gnome fan, you can also run Kwave if the proper libs are installed).
qt-3.1 or higher (normally comes with KDE3)
id3lib-3.8.1 or higher (for ID3 tags)
mad-0.15 or higher (for MP3 import)
flac-1.1.0 higher
about 32 MB memory for starting Kwave (but this may vary depending on your platform and configuration)

For a more complete and up-to-date list, please consult the README file that is included in the source distribution or can be found here: "http://svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/kwave/trunk/README?view=markup". This file also contains some special hints for getting Kwave running and/or building Kwave under some distributions.

If you intend to compile Kwave from the sources, you will need at least:

cmake-2.4.6 or newer
A C/C++ compiler. GCC-2.95.3 works fine, some older and any newer version (like gcc-4.1 and newer) work too.
The glibc2 (libc-6) development environment. On SuSE systems the package is called "libc", on other systems it might be called "libc-devel".
The KDE3 development environment: "kdelibs3-devel", "kdemultimedia3-devel", "kdesdk3".
The Qt development environment, the package is normally called "qt3-devel" or similar.
id3lib-devel-3.8.1 or higher
mad-devel-0.15 or higher
flac-devel-1.1.0 higher
If you intend to get the Kwave sources via SVN, you will also need a current subversion package.
...many other packages, please take a look at the "README" file included in the source package.