[gentoo-dev] Re: Gnome Stabilization 3.6 or 3.8

[Duncan]

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