Why didn't I think of this - DOH!

I very occasionally require a break from KDE and when that happens I do miss Gnome. I have tried Freerock and it did unfortunately mess with my KDE menus. I hear what the Dropline contingent say about it not being as invasive as is rumoured but during the course of researching this thread I reread Pat's entry in the change log and Dropline was the only one of the three versions on poll he urged caution with.

So CatGrampy's suggestion fits my needs perfectly. It's an official Slackware release. It only messes with KDE menus to the extent of adding Gnome applications. I can easily remove the packages if needed.

The downsides are that it's never going to be worked on for security reasons or otherwise. It's Gnome 2.6 and is therefore slower and less pleasing to the eye than Gnome 2.10. But as the Gware home page mentions, it's Gnome 2.10 itself that messes with KDE.

So for the occasional visit this suits me fine.

Thanks for the notion.

Kind regards,

dkpw

I use Dropline. I used KDE for ages cause it came with Slackware, but it just seemed less polished to me. Gnome just looks better. XFWM also looks good to me.

Anyway, I used Dropline cause Shilo recommends it and everything he does in his guide makes sense to me, so I took his opinion with Gnome.

I use Gware. Seems ok to me.

If I'm running slackware, which I'm currently not, i'm running dropline!

I decided to give GNOME another try, and since I am now running 10.2, I chose GWARE. It is easy to install, and it works just fine. The only thing that bugs me is the icon size on the desktop, which I haven't figured out how to change, but other than that, GWARE is my choice for GNOME under Slackware.

Dropline wins in every category i think.

The packages it DOES replace, it replaces because they are broken. They don't work as gnome requires. Meaning that gnome packagers who DONT replace those packages are broken in some way. (Automounting will never work on Gware, or it didn't in 2.10 at least, gnome-font-properties doesn't run correctly in freerock, etc.)

Pat is not some perfect being who can do know wrong. His packages are not automatically more stable just because he built them. There is no difference between an Xorg built by dropline or one built from pat. They are both Xorg, and they both share the same bugs/security issues that Xorg itself has.

In other words, dropline could replace EVERY one of my packages, and i would still prefer it, since i know that it's being done to provide me with the best gnome desktop possible. Which to me is more important than a desktop commissioned by pat.

Dropline fan here.

A lot of my peers have problems with speed and I don't see any reason why this should be an issue among different gnome flavours. I would rather choose fluxbox or blackbox as a substitute if I was looking for that quality.

I'm not aware of a position being advocated regarding Pat's "perfect being" status. I don't think it would be much of a stretch to say that people trust his packages since they are officially supported, and because of Pat's reputation for providing one of the most stable Linux environments available. For example, with Slackware packages you will get security updates for at least four years from the Slackware version release. I doubt that any of the Gnome flavors would be in a position to say the same for their package builds. This may not be a concern to someone who continually turns their desktop over, but for others it is a significant requirement and feature.

Pat doesn't provide security updates for KDE though.

It's not like you can no longer use pat's security updates along with dropline. Looking at slackware 9.0, i notice it does not use KDE 3.5, which means it has security vulnerabilities. Just as Dropline 2.10 does.

If you are using slackware 9.0, then sure, you do have security updates for some things, but not for KDE.

There is nothing different from Pat's support of KDE and dropline's support of gnome.

There is no big difference between all of them except size. FRG and Gware are lighter, consequently less intrusive than Dropline. More packages always mean more modifications. I'm using Dropline now and don't have any complaints.

You are completely wrong.
There are security updates of KDE packages for every release.
For example from 10.2 patches Changelog:

patches/packages/kdegraphics-3.4.2-i486-2.tgz: Patched integer and
heap overflows in kpdf to fix possible security bugs with malformed
PDF files.
For more information, see:
http://www.kde.org/info/security/adv...20051207-2.txt
http://www.kde.org/info/security/adv...20060202-1.txt
http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename...=CVE-2005-3191
http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename...=CVE-2005-3192
http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename...=CVE-2005-3193
http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename...=CVE-2005-3624
http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename...=CVE-2005-3625
http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename...=CVE-2005-3626
http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename...=CVE-2005-3627
http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename...=CVE-2005-3628
http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename...=CVE-2006-0301
(* Security fix *)
patches/packages/kdelibs-3.4.2-i486-2.tgz: Patched a heap overflow
vulnerability in kjs, the JavaScript interpreter engine used by
Konqueror and other parts of KDE.
For more information, see:
http://www.kde.org/info/security/adv...20060119-1.txt
http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename...=CVE-2006-0019
(* Security fix *)

Of course there ARE security updates of kde. Dropline releases security updates too.

But i am talking about versions that aren't 10.2. In slackware 9.0 KDE is not updated anymore and has not been for a very long time, yet KDE has definately had security issues since then(last KDE update for 9.0 was in august of 2004). KDE in older versions of slackware are no more secure than Gnome in older versions of slackware provided by Dropline/gware/freerock.

those involve only KDE packages, not proper Slackware packages as I agree with liquidtenmilion

9.0 is more then 3 years old but it still gets its updates in 2006. How do you know updates for KDE are excluded ? Because last was in 2004 ? Do you know about some official unfixed vulnerability in KDE 3.1 or it's just your plain guessing ?

I can say that I'm using Dropline, the one in development and beleave me on my PII350 dual machine is the fastest GNOME I ever had on that machine. So I propose you to wait a few days more and try the new shiny DroplineGNOME 2.14.1 and if you dont like it you can always uninstall it.

As for the packages Dropline replaces are only packages needed to do a good desktop working.

Rgds
Saxa