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I love and use KDE on both my workstation and laptop. However over the decades, and especially since v4, I've seen it grow into something I barely recognise. So

I love and use KDE on both my workstation and laptop. However over the decades, and especially since v4, I've seen it grow into something I barely recognise. Some things have to change: 1/ Remove akonadi/nepomuk/mysql - a full mysql install just to provide a data store for "PIM and metadata" is ludicrous. 2/ Make sure the Semantic desktop/Semantic Search/nepomuk is optional. I respect that it maybe useful for some, but please respect that it may not be useful for all. 3/ Ditto for consolekit/policykit 4/ Ditto for KDE PIM. The moment Kopete, Konversation, Kaddressbook etc depended upon the PIM stuff, was the moment I dropped them for Pidgin. Why? See point #1 It took me 12 hours to get kdelibs-4.12.5 + the rest of kde-base built without consolekit, policykit, akonadi, nepomuk, udisks/udisks2, upower, raptor, redland, gstreamer, virtuoso, soprano and canberra. But the result is a clean, usable and fast desktop, ie. the desktop I want! If I have to do that each time I upgrade, I'm going to look at other options. I'm most definitely not alone in this, a search on any of #1-4 will find hordes of frustrated people spending time figuring out ways to remove all these unwanted features. For many users, removing all the above isn't an option. For users its complex and time consuming. Failing to make them optional (rather than default) KDE will suffer -- losing users, as memory consumed by an idle desktop triggers horrific flashbacks to darker Windows days. My perception as a user is that Gnome (minimalism uber alles) and KDE (everything and the kitchen sink) have gone to extremes and forgotten their user base.

simoncion 12y ago
> It took me 12 hours to get kdelibs-4.12.5 + the rest of kde-base built without... Gentoo and its USE flags system makes this sort of thing really easy. If you have an otherwise idle machine sitting in a closet somewhere, you could even create a Gentoo binary package builder [0] for your primary Linux machine, so you don't have to spend time building the world on your primary box. [0] You compile software on the package builder, it creates tarballs and installation instructions, then you use the package manager on another machine to install those tarballs.
- Nanzikambe 12y ago
  Actually I do use Gentoo :) Despite the USE flags KDE's own dependencies make this rather less than easy. Try remove akonadi, consolekit, polkit, kde-base/pim add "-consolekit -policykit -udisks -udisks2 -upower -raptor -redland -semantic-desktop -virtuoso -soprano -gstreamer -canberra" to your USE flags and rebuild KDE. Ended up having to create a custom ebuild, mask a whole lot of stuff and add some stuff to package.provided to make it work. > you could even create a Gentoo binary package builder [0] for your primary Linux machine I wasn't complaining about compile time, I have 20+ cores distributed for distcc compilation.

simoncion 12y ago

> It took me 12 hours to get kdelibs-4.12.5 + the rest of kde-base built without... Gentoo and its USE flags system makes this sort of thing really easy. If you have an otherwise idle machine sitting in a closet somewhere, you could even create a Gentoo binary package builder [0] for your primary Linux machine, so you don't have to spend time building the world on your primary box. [0] You compile software on the package builder, it creates tarballs and installation instructions, then you use the package manager on another machine to install those tarballs.

Nanzikambe 12y ago
Actually I do use Gentoo :) Despite the USE flags KDE's own dependencies make this rather less than easy. Try remove akonadi, consolekit, polkit, kde-base/pim add "-consolekit -policykit -udisks -udisks2 -upower -raptor -redland -semantic-desktop -virtuoso -soprano -gstreamer -canberra" to your USE flags and rebuild KDE. Ended up having to create a custom ebuild, mask a whole lot of stuff and add some stuff to package.provided to make it work. > you could even create a Gentoo binary package builder [0] for your primary Linux machine I wasn't complaining about compile time, I have 20+ cores distributed for distcc compilation.