What do I lose w/o KDE and Gnome?
 

The title should have said w/o KDE and Gnome lib files

I have finally got my new box configured with a fancy Slack-current install. I did it to test my box, since I couldn't seem to run some of my perif's with 10.2. I'll be reinstalling 11.0 when it comes around.

At present, I don't have KDE or Gnome on my system. I use and have been using (both on new and old box) XFCE. I already know that I am w/o all the great KDE and Gnome games. But here's my question:

What can't I run on Slackware w/o KDE or Gnome installed that I could have run seamlessly if the libraries would have been in the background?

Here's a "for instance." mpg321

ae@rain:~> mpg321 ScottRodell-YurisNight.mp3
Creating link /home/ae/.kde/socket-rain.
can't create mcop directory

It created a .kde directory for me! (I have no idea why it can't create the mcop directory. It can't even do it as root. And it doesn't matter. I just ran xine and xine worked great.)

The following is mostly subjective opinion:

The only reason to install KDE is if you intend to USE KDE. Otherwise don't bother. I use KDE. I like KDE. I do not use or like Gnome.

In my opinion, XFCE is a Gnome fork. It's what Gnome could have (should have?) been. If you run a Gnome application in XFCE, it runs like it was meant to run there. If you run a KDE application in anything other than KDE, you basicly load all of the KDE libraries, it takes forever to load, and it looks like sh*t as well because it won't behave in regard to XFCE themes. Then you say to youself (if you're smart) "if I want to use kfoo and kfoobar why not just run KDE?"

So, if you want to run XFCE, my suggestion would be to install Gnome and don't use it. Just use XFCE and, by installing Gnome, you will have all the libs you need to run Gnome and Gnome/GTK applications. You'll have a relatively light-weight environment and apps that act and look like they belong there.

My 2 cents.

In Slackware 10.2, after using KDE for some time, I switsched to Xfce.
And I de-installed all KDE packages, and deleted all KDE-created directories.
Everything works fine, QT based application (Qtiplot in my case) look a bit different
- because of some QT-KDe stuff missing, I think.
I tried to listen mp3 with with mpg321, and there was no error messages, it works.

(P.S. it is default Slackware install, no additional Gnome packages)
P.P.S Did you compile yourself mpg321 when KDE libs were present?

For new users or users who don't like the hassle of dealing with future dependency issues --

I wouldn't advise you to remove KDE even if you don't intend to use it. Just change your default window manager and pretend it doesn't exist. The reason I'm saying is because I've had bad experiences when I tried to remove KDE in the past. Many apps which might have nothing to do with KDE will break simply because they might have been compiled and linked against a KDE library (especially with custom precompiled packages). So unless you're one of those people who like to download and compile from source tarballs rather than install a custom package and can give the correct ./configure parameters, don't remove the base KDE libraries.

Don't remove KDE even if you don't intend to use it. Too many dependencies and a lot of apps use the underlying QT or KDE libraries. If you remove KDE completely you cannot run many apps which you might want (sometimes apps which should depend only on QT also depend on KDE because the author might have chosen to link with the KDE libraries).

It's best at least to have the core KDE libs.

This is good information, tho subjective.

In response to the questions: My system is a vanilla slackware-current install. I have not independently compiled/installed anything with KDE, including any of the Slackware pre-compiled apps and libraries. (I just said NO!) Slackware doesn't come with Gnome anymore, so I doubt it's an issue.

On the flip side, I asked this question in the Slackware forum because I know that vanilla Slackware was compiled by Patrick. I'm using all of his apps and libraries (and will, of course, when Slack 11.0 comes out). There are a lot of beta testers on this site who know the code he's using. Some of them prolly know whether other apps in Slack are compiled assuming KDE is present. In particular, as akus and Harishankar mentioned, Qt.

The issue comes to the front wrt my example. I didn't install a lick of KDE, and yet an old, old app like mpg321 seems to think that KDE ought to have been installed. Dunno.

In my old system, I basically did what Franklin mentioned and installed KDE and Gnome and didn't use them. Of course, that ate up my limited disk space (which only became an issue right before I bought my new system). Now, I have 800 gigs of RAID space. I could easily install both systems, but I'm not sure I want to. If the libraries are necessary for other apps, then I might as well.

--vonSt

Well, I use a fully-customized-by-me slackware system without kde or gnome. I have only two WM installed:

Fluxbox
Window Maker

(and the secound one is only installed to enable transparency stuff on the first one)

I feel myself really great. I have apps like Xfe to browse my files, xmms and mpg123 to play some music, xine and mplayer for video, leafpad and bluefish for editors, etc. I had even not installed the l/ series just to see which ones are really required, so I manually installed them. Slackware comes with GTK+ and its required libs, which is enough for a good part of programs.

Yes, some programs guess we should have kde and sometimes create dirs like /opt/kde . But they only do that, they don't bother in any other point (at least for me, not :) ).

In other words, if you don't need KDE or Gnome apps, just spit them out from your system ;)

The error message you're getting is from the aRTs sound server. The file in the .kde directory is a link to /tmp/ksocket-user, where "user" is just your username. Does that directory exist?

Nope. Since I didn't install any KDE stuff, there was nothing that would help create that ksocket-user directory.

I've never had the problem you mentioned, and I have often installed without KDE. You're using the aRTs sound server, but for some reason it can't write to the /tmp directory I mentioned.

I would have thought you would be using ALSA without aRTs, but I'm not at a Linux box and to be honest, I don't know enough about how this works to remember off the top of my head. For me it's always just worked.

While I've used (and continue to use) Window Maker, Dropline Gnome and Xfce, I have to admit I feel most productive in KDE. It's almost like the KDE developers are reading my mind when they add features.

A good example is how the filter by file type menu works in Konqueror. The list is dynamic and prepopulated with the file type present in the working directory. The Save As dialog box has a whole set of useful features as well like being able to edit the directory list in the sidebar. The list goes on.

Dennisk

To answer your original question, you only lose one thing by not installing the kde series. I have had a fully functioning slackware system w/o installing kde, with one exception. That is doing make xconfig when compiling a kernel. That requires the qt package, which was the only package from kde that I installed. Other than that, everything worked just fine.

On a side note, I do have some kde packeges installed right now. That is only because I like some of the games that come with kde. Kbounce being a favorite of mine right now. So I right now I have kde/base, kde/lib, kde/games, and kde/qt packages installed right now. Those are the only kde packages I plan on ever installing. I have tried both gnome and kde and did not like either one very much. I've chosen fluxbox for my wm.

basically you lose a few nice apps and a whole lot of bloat. ;)

Well, I don't have anything from KDE, and I tried make xconfig, and it works. I have Qt (but it is not in kde packages).

I think that to keep all this KDE staff just because I *might* need it - it's like being back using Windows.
It is not the matter of the disk space, of course.

As to the mpg321 - I really do not know what is the source of the problem.
Maybe, indeed it is because of aRts server? I deinstalled it too (I think it does depend on KDE)

On kernel 2.6.x series, if you use make gconfig which uses GTK, so you don't even need QT.

Great! Thanks a lot!