Definitely a NO.

Since first use of Slackware in 2001, I have been a KDE man. It was KDE 2.x in Slackware 8.1 and it was the only DE that I felt I could work with

Skipping forward 15 years and in the last 3 years I still can't get to grips with the other DE's.

Have tried Mate, Cinnamon, XFCE, and a host of others but KDE is to me the only one that has everything that fits my needs.

Yes, this is a personal view, but Slackware does cater for all Linux users, and does so very well by being so all inclusive.

Please keep it.

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In a recent issue of Linux Magazine, there was an item (unfortunately, it's not online) in which various DEs were compared. In contrast to the conventional wisdom, Plasma was found to be one of the lightest-weight DEs, lighter than XFCE even. I wish I could provide a link, but I can't.

If you want, I can dig through my back issues and give you an MLA style citation. Might take me a couple of days.

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How did they define, "light"?

If you look through the thread that spawned this poll you'll find the question being whether or not the change from KDE versions is impacting the next version of Slackware. As it turns out, if you look at that thread, Pat mentioned KDE Plasma will happen .. the question is when.

This means there's no more debate about if KDE will continue in slackware through the next version. No more need to justify it

CPU usage.

You're going to make me look through my back issues, aren't you?

Well I guess the next question is should Slackware finally move on to Plasma, but I am not going to make another poll. Maybe Plasma might be not as heavy as I might think, but maybe it could be made lighter without Akonadi(I just really do not like Akonadi). If I were a big KDE user, I would now throw my and request that KDE4 be replaced with Plasma.

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Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Do you really think there's a chance Slackware 15 could be released without Qt5? There's just so much that depends on it nowadays, it seems crazy not to include it in a general purpose distro. On the other hand, Pat is just one guy, and I understand that the workload just keeps increasing and will continue to do so. Kind of makes me wonder how viable the BDFL model is long-term.

It started with KDE Plasma v5.12.0. With the 5.12.x series, Plasma dev's focused almost entirely on cleaning up and optimizing the code, instead of feature bloat. It made what was an OK desktop into a surprisingly svelte desktop (keeping in mind, it's still a fully featured desktop). Average RAM usage went down quite a large degree, and CPU usage went down a considerable amount as well. While overall (disk) size was only affected a negligible amount (and there were some features added during this time, so it was more than offset by that), KDE isn't the ram-swilling inefficient desktop that it was. The most impressive thing is how well KDE scales. Yeah, I boot up and at idle on my machines it's using 1 GB+ of ram by itself. Because I have 16 GB. My friend that has 4 GB boots up and it uses less than 400MB.

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With Slackware and Slackbuilds.org I don't believe it's as simple as you describe. My understanding is that (currently) SBo packages assume a FULL INSTALLATION of a stable version of Slackware.

To use SBo as you describe would add more complexity and less stability. I believe your idea would be a major shift in the Slackware/SBo technical underpinnings.

If your idea was implemented then I believe the current relatively straight forward process of building/installing an SBO package would acquire many of the dependency problems found in some other operating systems / distributions.

Imagine you're creating a Slackbuild for SBo with the changes you suggest. What is the library/program environment that you are designing for? EXACTLY what is already installed? How much effort is needed to inspect or describe dependencies? How much additional effort is required for the user to install your package?

I believe one of the shining features of Slackware/SBo would be tarnished if this new idea was implemented.

These are just my thoughts as a Slackware enthusiast, based upon my understanding of things. Don't get too excited, and please tell me how I'm wrong on this. I want to improve my understanding of Slackware Linux.

Sure, just don't install the kdepim stuff. AlienBob's ktown Plasma5 packages make it really easy because they're neatly sorted into directories on his server.

I usually add:

to my /etc/slackpkg/greylist file when using slackpkg+.

Akonadi really isn't any big deal. KDE 4 and 5 both run just fine without it excepting a very few apps. Those apps include KJots, KAddressBook, KAlarm, KOrganizer, and KMail. Some of the digital clocks won't run with Akonadi removed. The difference in footprint however is negligible comparing with and without.

It seems to me that extremely few of the people who perceive KDE 4 or 5 as bloated and heavy just haven't tried and compared it. I can easily pare down KDE 4 to where it is substantially lighter in RAM and CPU usage than stock Xfce which is largely because as Slackware delivers KDE, the stock install is only a few percent heavier than Slackware's stock Xfce. I no longer own any machines that can feel any appreciable difference in performance between the two and that includes my ancient single core AMD FX-57 Asus A8NE 2GB boxen. There was a time when KDE 4 was actually shocking to me in it's sludginess, but that time was quite short. It was long enough though that many just bailed.

For my part I am comfortable in many WM/DEs but I really can't get along without several KDE apps so while I certainly wouldn't begrudge PV a decision to bail on Plasma, I'd have to workaround to have those apps and I suspect lean rather heavily on Eric's considerable expertise. I have spent a great deal of time both testing and keeping abreast of other distros for the past 20 years but lately I simply cannot imagine getting by without Slackware as my Main. Nothing I've tried has ever come close and lately they are all further and further away from what I want and need.

I originally tried Slackware on a recommendation that went like this....

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To be fair I have, against XFCE and LXDE, and LXDE won (at least for me). Given that LXDE is pretty much dead - and I am still not too keen on LXQT yet, I was considering XFCE or MATE as I rather like MATE actually - or even TDE (KDE 3). I am still curious about Plasma, and now that I know I can remove Akonadi then I might give it another go. I don't care for the apps listed as I use Thunderbird and do not really care for anything else - I just find Akonadi annoying as it takes up unnecessary amount of ram and opens a lot of instances of itself when I list processes running under KDE4 (maybe its different in Plasma?) , I don't know is just that whenever I run KDE4 the most number of process that I always see is Akonadi, which to me seems weird and not needed.

I know also that QT5 has been floated around in adopting that - may as well then. Again I largely stayed out of the "Is Plasma finally ready to be included in --Current" debate, but I feel perhaps at this point I do not see why it isn't; especially if it is holding back a potential release (if that is even a valid point - I do not know).

-edit

To clarify further, I would not even have to do anything. Just launching KDE4 and Akonadi is in the background for no reason IMO - with multiple instances. No thanks.

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When and if PV does decide to include KDE5 I just hope that he moves all the packages that only KDE depends on into the KDE folder like he has mentioned. That would make it much cleaner for those of us who don't use/install KDE.

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Well Jeebizz, It is my position that people who choose other than KDE have every right to. I'd just prefer it if nobody felt the need to justify that choice based on an assumption that is no longer so and was only so for a short time. Since you seem to have some interest and an open mind, below I'm including two screenies I just made of KSysGuard displaying resource usage and the first is full system with zero reduction in services other than Bluetooth and Pulseaudio and the second only displaying Akonadi usage, no changes other than the filtered display. There are several instances of Akonadi exactly as you state but notice there is no cpu usage at all and the RAM is simply reserved and still totals roughly only 200KB. On my conky to the right you can see that Swap is at 0% which is where it is always even when running an intense video game with music playing in other apps including often a browser with Youtube just for the sound.

I can see how someone's work laptop might benefit from the integration of those akonadi-based comm, messaging, and scheduling apps but frankly I no longer need that, I just like the digital clock widget and the cost to have it is so small it's no sacrifice to me even though this box only sports 8GB RAM. I did once disable Akonadi to see and I just could feel no difference despite having Desktop animation speed cranked up to "Instant".

Anyway I thought you might find these real world stats interesting.

Full Size is HERE ----------

https://i.imgur.com/9WnoSI8.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/gX8BPBX.jpg

Attached Thumbnails

   

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Thats fine , but seeing the screenshots only further enforce my views against Akonadi (process list) - but again now that I know I can play with KDE WITHOUT Akonadi I am willing to give it another chance - I will remember to removepkg kdepim logging into. As for animations - that can go too I don't need it. Which now brings me to an idea - if there are any further ways of slimming KDE I am interested, already again kdepim will go.

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