Hi,
Just to make things nice and simple, is it possible to split the kde tree and place all games+toys+educational (and their libs), extra artwork and extra players in kde-extra?
On current those take up about half of all the packages in the KDE tree.
I don't know about other users here, but I never install those and checking slackpkg install-new takes forever just to filter those out.

What about blacklisting them by name?

just because you didn't install all of them doesn't mean that the system have to follow your preferences
I also don't need all of the KDE packages, but i can simply remove what i don't need...

1 members found this post helpful.

Who said anything about having to follow? It was just a suggestion, and I am sure that there are enough users who might like it as well (after chatting about it with a few of them).
And I do black list what I don't use at the moment, but things might change in later releases and my blacklist is long as it is.

I agree that the current (14.0) state of KDE tree is a mess. The prevoius (13.37) was much clearer but i understand that the change was introduced by the upstream. Still, splitting to something like KDE_CORE/KDE_EXTRA is a good idea in my opinion.

1 members found this post helpful.

Over the years KDE has gone from a relatively compact (or at least as compact as a full-boat window manger/utility kit/whatever you call it) to a behemoth; all things to all people.

With addition of the "evil twins," (akonadi and that other one that I can't remember the name of right now) a few years ago, the use of which I have never understood nor want to, KDE more or less lost me for good. Switched to Xfce (which does have some problems, but I can live with 'em).

However, KDE does include some nice utilities -- KPPP, K3b, KPatience (I play 4-suit Spider when I'm waiting for stuff or bored).

I'm one of those no-eye-candy types. Black screen, 10-11 "launcher" icons, GKrellM running on the far right side of the screen, that's it. Anything that forces me to reach for the mouse is outta here. Most of what I do is done in a terminal window, browser (Firefox), mail (Thunderbird), sometimes OpenOffice (gota document stuff). Other than that, I just don't have a need for all the folderol.

Oh, yeah, I use Tellico, a really nicely done collection manager (I keep track of about 2,000 books, a bunch of DVD's and some other stuff), and it's a KDE application so gotta have it.

So, when I install Slackware, I install everything (not the language packages, though), select Xfce as the default window manager and just ignore KDE bloat so I can use some of what it offers. Disk drives are multi-hundred-gigabytes, basically who cares. I keep an eye on GKrellM and note that both cores on this box mumble along at 1%-3% on average (they run a lot higher when KDE is running, though) and, you know, why load up a processor for meaningless eye-candy and overhead indexing (or whatever the heck it's doing) when locate works just fine? Stripping it down, why bother -- lot of work for no practical gain, methinks.

It's really a case of to each his own.

Hope this helps some.

Nepomuk Strigi? Sounds like a villain from a Bond film, or summat. They seem less troublesome in the later releases than they did at first (I'm using Alien Bob's 4.10.5). And they can be disabled in System Settings.

2 members found this post helpful.

Yes! That's the one! But, hey, "less troublesome" is still troublesome, isn't it? Kinda like a little bit pregnant. And why should I be required to disable the dammed things in the first place? This isn't Microsoft after all.

Just a personal peeve. To each his own, eh?

+1.
I do pretty much the same thing, plus I like Gwenview. IMHO, it is the best Linux based viewer currently available. Easy to use, has an attractive interface, and just two clicks will load an image into The GIMP if it needs editing.

Those are the "Evil Triplets," akonadi, nepomuk and strigi. I don't even install akonadi and disable nepomuk. strigi you have to leave alone or some things in kde won't work or work properly.

I disabled it before it had a chance to become troublesome.
KDE is still my favourite, but I do log into other DE/WM's now and then for a change.

I gave KDE 4.10.5 a spin and appreciated most of it. I like the idea of a no-nonsense, one-app-per-task KDE desktop that eventually replaces KDE's Rube Goldberg apps like KMail, Amarok and KTorrent by some more lightweight stuff like Thunderbird, Audacious and Transmission. Let's see, if I can find some time for experimenting after Slackware 14.1 comes out, maybe I'll build an extra "Microlinux Enterprise Workstation" with tagfiles and the odd rebuilt package and put it on my repo.

2 members found this post helpful.

Evil Twins. LOL

Use to think that. Now I use them. While I could be wrong, I suspect some have not tried the evil twins recently. Nepomuk has improved by leaps and bounds. I find it quite useful now. I use a couple of Akonadi enabled programs too with without problems.

The problem with splitting the tree, it affects all of us. While I don't use all of those Games, Toys and Educational programs I do use some of them. I also have KDE programs installed that are not part of the tree. I could choose to remove some of those KDE programs I don't use. I just don't see a valid reason (for me at least) to remove them. I have the space, they do not bother me or affect daily use of my computers. I also like to run from a stock Full Installation of Slackware, I find it make things simple.

In regards to the 'evil twins', they did have severe performance problems in the early 4.x days (probably enough to give 4.x its early bad reputation), but starting at around 4.5 they massively improved. Now I'm running 4.10.something, and I don't ever notice them doing anything that hogs resources. All in all KDE 4 has turned out very nice.

As to the topic, I would also like to see a split KDE tree for Slackware. Yes you can blacklist individual packages, but that gets tedious, especially when you're working on a fresh install with no backups.

How, that is, in what way do you find them useful?

Thanks.


It only took what,four or five years?

True. However, the problem with deselecting all games, toys, etc is that it is no longer that clear from their names what is a game and what is an important KDE component.