Daniel Campbell posted on Thu, 08 Aug 2013 01:26:47 -0500 as excerpted: > [Duncan wrote...] >> Gentoo/gnome is simply working with what upstream gnome gives them, >> which for gentoo/gnome users now means a choice between gnome with >> systemd and if no systemd, no gnome either. Upstream decision that >> gentoo/gnome is dealing with too. >> >> ... >> >> So as I said, gentoo/kde-ers would be so lucky, if the gentoo/kde >> project took the same position gentoo/gnome's taking here, that they >> support what upstream offers, that gentoo/gnome's only forcing systemd >> because upstream gnome's forcing it. Were that the case, >> semantic-desktop wouldn't be forced by gentoo/kde in kde 4.11, where >> upstream still offers the same options they did in 4.10, where >> gentoo/kde offered the option as well. >> > Wow, that really sucks. I'm not posting this to the ML since I have > nothing to offer to their discussion.
The best of intents... you did. =:^\ > All this mess with GNOME and KDE > makes me happy to run vanilla X with Fluxbox, though. :P Which options > have you considered, if Gentoo/KDE doesn't re-enable the option to > disable semantic desktop? [This is probably a rather longer reply than you expected, but eh... it helps me order my thoughts and plans by putting them into words, as well...] For now, I'm carrying the necessary patches (generated by examining the diffs between the ebuilds with and without that support, updating as needed) myself. This is in fact how I can state with such certainty that upstream still provides the required options -- I'm still using them! But I started a thread on the gentoo-desktop list (which is where the kde- sunset people gathered as well as where gentoo/kde announces meetings, etc) asking if anyone else were interested in helping, with the idea of doing something like the user maintained kde-sunset overlay. That generated a number of hits, and there's a thread on the forums discussing the topic (and linking to the list thread) as well, so I'm definitely not the only one unhappy with the current situation. Tho I've let that sit for a couple weeks as "real life" got in the way, unfortunately. Meanwhile, if all goes well, the effort should be reasonably short term, as upstream kde has already announced that for kde5 they're going far more modularized, splitting off most packages to have independent releases no longer necessarily synced to the kde core release cycle and versioning, and indeed, for kde5, they're calling that core kde-frameworks-5 -- which then itself becomes a much smaller kde5, as all the newly independent packages WILL have their own release cycle and versioning. Given the further modularization for kde5/frameworks as the primary declared and apparently well under way goal (an early preview release of this core/framework is apparently already available, tho I've not tried it) and no indications to the contrary, it seems unlikely that they'd actually DE-modularize the semantic-desktop components, making them LESS optional for frameworks and the basic desktop in the supposedly MORE modularized kde5/frameworks than in current kde4, and in fact, kde's plasma desktop itself has evolved to target (non-kde) mobile deployment as its own "mobile-top" in the mean time too, so it really doesn't seem that plasma2's likely to force a dependency that even on the desktop takes enough resources to cause people to care strongly enough about getting it off their systems that they'll go to extreme lengths to do it. So I'm /reasonably/ optimistic about kde5/frameworks not requiring semantic-desktop at the global level. Which of course makes gentoo/kde's choice so late in the game (with 4.11 being declared the last 4-series feature release for many kde4 apps including the plasma-desktop itself) even *MORE* galling than it'd otherwise be! Never-the-less, realistically, I don't see myself continuing "forever" with these patches, particularly if the "kde-slim" overlay idea doesn't pan out... Should that happen, and should I be wrong about kde5/frameworks not hard- requiring semantic-desktop (or should gentoo/kde continue to hard-enable it in kde5/frameworks despite upstream's support for the option)... My current plan is in that worst-case to switch, with my "investigate- further-short-list" currently including: * The new and still evolving razor-qt/lxde-qt http://wiki.lxde.org/en/LXDE-Qt * enlightenment * Possibly something gtk-related like xfce, given how far toward the gtk side I've tipped since kde4. But currently that's all gtk2, and with gtk2's own future in doubt and gtk3's close ties to the our-way-or-the- highway gnome, so that even formerly gtk-based desktops like lxde are turning qt, for all I can see that'd be a jump from the frying pan into the fire, so I'd have to see some potential resolution to the gtk2/gtk3 issue, before considering that for anything longer term. (I've actually been wondering what claws-mail's position is on this, but I did some research on firefox about a year ago and their gtk3 implementation was still hugely missing, and I'm reasonably confident that as long as firefox remains gtk2 and at least so long as chromium doesn't eat /all/ of firefox's Linux share, gtk2's own support status can't be /terribly/ dire, so...) Of course the other big upcoming "paradigm switch" is wayland. Qt5 and kde5/frameworks already support it to some degree, and indeed, there's early experimental wayland support in the kde-frameworks preview I mentioned as well as in kde 4.11 (with a very early wayland preview of its own), and of course gtk3 has its own wayland support, but I've seen nothing about gtk2-wayland, and I suspect wayland is actually what's bringing the curtain down on continuing gtk2 support more than anything else. But I suspect the wayland switch could effectively turn the current Linux/ GUI/X world as we know it on its head -- it *CERTAINLY* has that potential -- and 2-3 years from now (or possibly by the end of 2014 (!!)) what remains of the linux desktop, with "modern" desktops on wayland by then altho X certainly won't be dead for awhile longer, very likely looking like an entirely different competitive landscape. Beyond that, my "crystal ball" goes opaque, and I really don't have much of a clue /what/ I'll be looking at in terms of desktop choices, except that I have the strong feeling some of our currently familiar desktop environment names will be replaced! But I won't even venture a guess as to which ones... Totally opaque, the crystal ball, at that point. But that's in the future. For now, I'm hoping to jump back into to the kde-slim overlay discussion, hopefully boosting it with some of the patches I've already deployed here. And if/when there's signals of any of these three: kde5/frameworks NOT going optional/modular with semantic- desktop, gentoo/kde CONTINUING their un-gentoo-line forced-semantic options into kde5/frameworks, or kde5/frameworks getting stuck in "duke- nukem-forever" mode, /then/ I'll have to see where the kde-lean overlay project is at, as well as take a deeper look at lxde-qt, enlightenment, and other options. (That's if I haven't already explored them by then. I tend to sit on stuff like that for some time, sometimes years, then all of a sudden decide I happen to have the time and the inclination, and "just do it", generally with only a day or two's inkling I might be headed that way, if that. My switch to grub2, trying lvm for a year or two, trying mdraid for several years, deploying ssds and btrfs here a few months ago, setting up bind, and setting up ntp, were all that way. By contrast, my MS->Linux switch, my kmail->claws-mail conversion, my kde3- >4 upgrade, and my konqueror->firefox switch, all were similarly intensive and ASAP focused action switches, but much more deliberatively planned ahead and generally undertaken as the externally forcing event came to pass. (After two years of planning, I actually began my full switch to Linux the week eXPrivacy came out, for instance, being similarly backed into a corner by MS as I was simply NOT going to give them their demanded remote root and possible deactivation rights, the same way I'm simply NOT going to have gentoo/kde dictate my semantic- desktop policy, tho with lots of warning it was going to occur (as similarly I had months of warning of the gentoo/kde semantic-desktop policy change from project meeting announcements on the gentoo-desktop list, before I actually needed to deal with it, when the 4.11-beta1 ebuilds came out), thus the two years...)) -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman
