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-4.0 or higher (at least the libraries, if you are a gnome fan, you can also run Kwave if the proper libs are installed).

qt-4.1 or higher (normally comes with KDE4)

ALSA 1.0.14 or higher (for record/playback)

id3lib-3.8.1 or higher (for ID3 tags)

mad-0.15 or higher (optionally for MP3 import)

flac-1.1.0 or higher (for FLAC import/export)

libsamplerate-0.1.3 or higher (sample rate conversion)

about 64 MB memory for starting Kwave (but this may vary depending on your platform and configuration)

cmake-2.4.6 or newer

A C/C++ compiler. GCC-3.4 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 KDE4 development environment: "kdelibs4-devel", "kdemultimedia4-devel", "kdesdk4".

The Qt4 development environment, the package is normally called "qt4-devel" or similar.

id3lib-devel-3.8.1 or higher

fftw-3.x

mad-devel-0.15 or higher (if you have the permission to use MP3 code)

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.