i find KDE's power manager really great

I still miss Enlightenment, since E16 has been removed from Slackware. There are a bunch of old WM like {black,flux}box, fvwm2 or WindowMaker, but nothing that is in same time light and good looking like E. E16 or E17 would be great.

But, well, I may not be very objective here

Oh we're out here, but whenever this comes up it generally degenerates into a "KDE sucks - No it doesn't - Yes it does - No it doesn't" flame-fest.

Personally I think it'd make a lot of sense to separate out KDE into a separate but closely related add-on project, not only because I don't need it, but because I also think that desynchronising KDE releases from the Slackware stable release schedule would benefit KDE users too. Eric already does this to some extent with his' ktown' build which I believe is quite popular because it's often more recent than the KDE's that ship with a stable release.

Anyway, that's just my view, which counts for very little.

Not a KDE user, but I got the impression that Ktown is more of a repo that delivers the newest, but largely untested KDE, while the version in Slackware releases may be not the newest, but is well tested.
Removing a well tested software in favor of a largely untested one doesn't sound to be the right thing for Slackware.

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TobiSGD is almost spot-on. KDE is a collection of software which needs testing before adoptation into Slackware (and other distros). By providing early-access to precompiled KDE package collections I allow people to find bugs and report then to the KDE bugtracker.
So, my "ktown repository" is not a beta testing activity for Slackware per sé. It benefits the KDE community as a whole. Other distros have similar initiatives, while other distros (Fedora is notorious) dump the new versions of KDE directly into their main repository.

By removing KDE from Slackware's core, the scope of the distro would be diminished far too much IMHO. Without GNOME and KDE, Slackware is left with light-weight desktop enviroments which will not appeal to everyone. Slackware is both a server and a desktop distro. And KDE has a bigger fan base in Slackware than people realize. If you own a relatively recent piece of hardware, then you should not be bothered by performance issues in KDE. Try to work with other distros for a while... then you'll know what a "performance issue" is.

Eric

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I wasn't suggesting that there should be untested/unstable releases of KDE, merely that decoupling the KDE releases from the slackware release schedule itself might have some merit. However, this sort of thing really wouldn't fit with Slackware's commercial model as getting a newer KDE is probably one of the driving factors for people wanting to upgrade/purchase the next version, so it wouldn't make good business sense.

(edit: the above was a cross-posting, and doesn't take into account anything Eric just said)

Just to be clear, I wasn't suggesting that KDE not be part of Slackware, I was thinking more along the lines of having a slackware-kde/ (effectively, the kde,kdei and dependencies from the l set) that goes on top of slackware-xx.x/ but has it's own development schedule. But as I said, that doesn't really make commercial sense when you think about it.

As for performance, I've never had a problem with KDE in that regard, my objections to it are more architectural in nature, but that's not a discussion for here.

You realize that Slackware does not have a "release schedule" so there is no need to de-couple anything?

A new Slackware release is done when the time is right. And that date has no connection with a KDE development cycle. The stability of the included KDE (and its impact on dependencies which have to be present in Slackware as well) is the driving factor. I don't think Slackware shipped with a "most recent" KDE release in a long while, if ever (I did not check a long way back).

Eric

Amen to that. I am happy that Mr. Volkerding does not feel pressured to get a new release out the door; the results speak for themselves.

I realize there are people who prefer something else, there had to be compelling case to drop Gnome, so KDE is the next best choice don't you think. And yes, those kind of arguments never produce positive results, and nobody really wins.

I can't speak to this intelligently, but I trust Patrick enough to go with his choices.


Your voice matters, saying nothing accomplishes nothing, only then does it count for very little. I appreciate your input, and I'm sure many others do as well. Iron sharpens Iron, so speak up : )

Yes, I chose the wrong word: s/schedule/cycle
Anyway, doesn't matter. As I said above, it doesn't fit the existing model anyway.

I'll (at least) third rg3 and Luckywolf. I don't expect anything to happen, of course, but might as well add my voice to the concept - that's probably why you rarely see it: there's generally no real point in expressing the sentiment but I don't doubt it's there in many of us. Slackware has relatively recently lost one of its cardinal virtues for me. As soon as I learned how, I used to voluntarily craft an ultra-minimalist system but I grew tired of that and started installing everything again and was happy but now I'm forced to uninstall or disable KDE, XFCE, all the *kit crap and other desktop stuff that fills my process tables and, most of all, I have to keep uninstalling gconf (which makes me see red, especially as I'd exulted when we got rid of Gnome - now it's back, though its name is XFCE) and playing whack-a-mole with all the other junk that keeps generating stuff all over the place.

IOW, I used to install a solid simple platform from which I could build up and I liked this. Now Slack has one thing in common with many other distros in that I have to tear down and tear out which is much more of a pain than building up.

I even downloaded a Crux ISO to play with again and see if I could find some Slackness in it but I never got around to it before my good computer blew up and this one is too feeble to run vbox - almost too feeble to run current Slack. Doesn't matter as I'll probably Slack for life no matter how much junk I have to remove but I'm just saying I'm not as happy a Slacker as I was and I wouldn't personally miss KDE, XFCE, or any of the desktop stuff or new-fangled *kit stuff or all the things that try to replace /etc/fstab and /sbin/init and so on. (Though, on replacing init, I was really pleased to see Pat drop the hammer on the that systemd crap or whatever it's called.)

And as somebody said somewhere, some of this isn't "Slack's fault" but is the desktop folks and certain corporate distros getting too big for their britches and trying to iron Linux into a single monolithic thing where everything is the same and making it a royal pain for distros like Slack to try to be sensibly different.

I digress. KDE bad.

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Perhaps one way to help resolve that problem is to place the KDE and Xfce associated "L" packages in the same respective directories. For example:

Move from L to KDE:
===================
ConsoleKit
PyQt
QScintilla
akonadi
attica
automoc4
libbluedevil
phonon
phonon-gstreamer
phonon-mplayer
phonon-xine
polkit-qt
qimageblitz
qtscriptgenerator
soprano
strigi
taglib-extras
virtuoso-ose

Move from L to Xfce:
====================
gconf
gnome-icon-theme
gnome-keyring
libgnome-keyring
tango-icon-theme
tango-icon-theme-extras

Or something similar.

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First let me state that I do not care that KDE stays in slackware. That said, I do not see why KDE has to be in slackware for slackware to be considered to appeal to everyone. Alien Bob makes it sound like KDE is its only hope, and that performance has to do with speed. Performance here is that my system does what I want without getting in my way. KDE does get in my way as developers in that camp think certain desktop aspects need to be forced on people. KDE does not 'mainstream' slackware just as the GNOME bundling did not matter for that either.

Just give me a good userspace that I can build up with what I want. In slackware today, the trend has been a little shaky concerning the userspace changes coming down. If KDE as a choice would put us on a cross-roads on being "mainstream" versus giving us a good base to build on, then I hope KDE is dropped. Dropping KDE isn't necessary from what I can tell today.

A lot of people here wonder if KDE should be dropped because they want it as an option to do without. Woodsman has the right idea that more separation should occur. Unfortunately I think the nature of shared libraries makes it hard to decide what is acceptable for 'l' and what would happen if an unsuspecting user doesn't pick XFCE or KDE and that would leave the user with broken programs. I think that on the slackware base package set, the best we can do is push for and educate people to use tagfiles to for the more streamlined installation. Alot of people here just tell people to run the full install. I have *never* needed to do that to get a working system my way. If someone is trying to do a custom install and you tell them just install everything, you aren't answering their questions. I would have found slackware to be irritating not knowing there is a good way to deal with it.

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The topic of this thread is: Would I understand it like some of us seem to do:my answer would be: nothing.

Reminders:
(1) You are not obliged to use all and every installed stuff.
(2) If you don't want something, nobody forces you to install it.
(3) If you installed something that you want to get rid of, you can run 'pkgtool' or 'removepkg' or 'slackpkg' to remove it
(4) That you do not like a software is not a sufficient reason to deprive others of it.
(5) If you would like to get rid of a software which is a dependency of another one that you like, you can keep both, remove both, or re-build the one you like without the dependency, if possible. SlackBuilds come handy for that.
(6) If you want to fine tune what is included in your installation, tagfiles come handy.
(7) If you would prefer a distribution like Slackware, but with a specific choice of software, derivatives are available.
(8) If no derivativs fits your needs, you can build YASD.

Which pretty much sums up to what Onebuck stated:.

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Then why don't you go get it? That's what I did.