[gentoo-desktop] Re: KDE-Sunset : anyone home ?

[Duncan]

Philip Webb posted on Sun, 28 Oct 2012 19:55:33 -0400 as excerpted:

> I sent in a msg last week re failure of kdelibs-3.5.10-r6 to compile.
> Sadly, no-one has responded.
>
> No complaint to anyone, but is the Kde-Sunset overlay still supported ?
> If no-one remains interested in it, I can drop it & move on ;
> if someone who knows re it is still around, can they advise ?
> Without Kdelibs KDE is unusable.

It would be nice if a gentoo dev would take up trinity and get it in the 
tree, or at least in kde sunset.  But I've seen nary a hint of that.

I won't try to get anyone off of kde-sunset as I respect the reasons they 
are still on it.  However, if someone is ready to give up on it and move 
on, I do know a couple of alternatives I can suggest, and offer my help 
as I can.


Here, I'm running kde4, but with USE=-semantic-desktop, and a bunch of 
other related flags (virtuoso, rasqual, redland...) turned off.  It does 
mean avoiding anything kdepim related, including kmail, since that brings 
in akonadi, which ultimately forces semantic-desktop back on, but there 
are alternatives to kmail.  Here, I'm running (gtk-based) claws-mail for 
both mail and feeds (replacing akregator).  For those running kde3's 
amorok, clemintine is the alternative, tho I switched to something much 
different, mpd with various frontends, here.  Even with multiple 
frontends, mpd's still way lighter on resources.  But it doesn't have the 
nice database setup of amarok/clemintine.  I didn't need or use that 
anyway, so I was fine with mpd, but many will need it and for them 
clemintine is the better choice.

I had switched to kde4 long before I turned off semantic-desktop, etc, so 
I can't give a direct comparison of kde3 to kde4 without semantic-
desktop.  What I CAN say, however, is that turning off semantic-desktop 
at build-time made kde4 enough faster it was like an MS platform person 
discovering how many resources the malware had been taking.  
Additionally, while I had stated that kde4 finally matured enough to 
replace kde 3.5.10 with 4.5.4+, and that 4.5 was what really /should/ 
have been numbered 4.0, only after I turned off semantic desktop 
(basically, at my 4.6 to 4.7 upgrade), was I ready to say that kde4 had 
now not only /matched/ kde3 for me (that was with 4.5), but with semantic-
desktop turned off, it now /exceeded/ kde 3.5.10 for me.

It should thus be obvious that I'm quite happy with (now) kde 4.9, AS 
LONG AS USE=-semantic-desktop.  I'd be interested in someone that has 
stayed with kde3 via kde-sunset, now trying kde4, with semantic-desktop 
turned off, to see what their real opinion is.  And, I can help with it, 
providing hints, etc, if/when needed.  Either here or on the kde-linux or 
kde-general lists.


The other alternative I've seen reviewed is the qt4 based razorqt 
desktop.  This would most obviously and directly replace the plasma-
desktop component of kde4, altho the reviews I've seen have been on using 
razorqt on its own.  On its own, it looks to be a qt-based desktop 
comparable to one of the light gtk-based desktops such as lxde or xfce.

IMO, running a razorqt desktop with individual kde4 apps should be a good 
mix.  Were I doing it I'd probably try for what amounted to a kde4 
desktop with plasma-desktop replaced with razorqt, as kde4 is 
componentized enough that should work, in theory anyway.  However, I've 
not seen any reviews of anyone trying to pull that off, nor have I 
actually tried it myself as I'm actually quite happy with plasma-desktop 
now that it has had some time to mature.

Again, I'd be quite interested in seeing someone now on kde-sunset try 
razorqt, presumably with a few individual kde4 apps.  Again, I'd help 
them where I could, but obviously since I've not tried razorqt myself, 
I'd be limited to helping more on the kde4 side.

-- 
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