My Big Arch Move

[Snowhog]

Re: My Big Arch Move

@IgnorantGuru

Thank you for all the assistance you have provided to us. Your scripting talents are greatly appreciated and I really like your ksrcubber script - used it tonight.

I hope that we will see you here now and again, so don't become a stranger.

[dibl]

Re: My Big Arch Move

u

Thank you for all the assistance you have provided to us.

I hope that we will see you here now and again, so don't become a stranger.

+1

[Qqmike]

Re: My Big Arch Move

+1
(of course)

[IgnorantGuru]

Re: My Big Arch Move

Very much appreciated, and my pleasure! I'll be around. Plus I still maintain a Kubuntu system.

[Telengard]

Re: My Big Arch Move

Hey Iguru I've been enjoying perusing your blog. You've got some interesting thoughts to share, and I especially enjoyed your piece on Root.

Arch looks interesting, though I am not sure why one would choose it over other distros. Sidux also does rolling releases for example, and that way I can keep the APT I love.

I understand your feeling that KDE4 is too heavy and complex. Even though I use and enjoy it on Jaunty, I know that it really is way more desktop than I really need. I do most of my important work in Konsole anyway, with the biggest exceptions being Firefox, SMPlayer, OpenOffice and a few other GUI apps. I still find the desktop quite useful in many ways, and if I am going to have one then I want KDE.

Perhaps I missed it somewhere, but when and how did KDE lose your trust?

[kubicle]

Re: My Big Arch Move

That's really hitting below the belt, IgnorantGuru

I don't think so - it's how I see it honestly. It wasn't so much a jab as a note to KDE that I'd don't like their direction. Of course the trouble I went through to remove all KDE components from my system should be a clue that I'm no fan of KDE4.

I'm with Greygeek on this one (although you're certainly entitled to your opinion). KDE's extensive and consistently used libraries are considered by most to be one of the strong points of KDE. It allows the apps to be relatively light-weight and results in the least amount of resource overhead when running multiple KDE applications.

Of course it may not be optimal in the special use case that you only wish to run one (or two) KDE applications, but I still think it's not the best argument for KDE being bloated.

Targets (17): clucene-0.9.21b-1 strigi-0.7.2-1 libiodbc-3.52.7-3
virtuoso-6.1.0-1 soprano-2.4.0.1-1 qca-2.0.2-2
polkit-qt-0.95.1-1 phonon-gstreamer-4.3.80-2 phonon-4.3.80-2
shared-desktop-ontologies-0.2-1 attica-0.1.2-1 kdelibs-4.4.0-4
oxygen-icons-4.4.0-1 rarian-0.8.1-1 libssh-0.4.1-1
kdebase-runtime-4.4.0-3 krusader-2.0.0-3

Installing recommended packages by default is not a kde thing, it's a distro decision (and a debian/ubuntu default), and sometimes it will install things you don't actually need. In *buntus, you can use 'sudo apt-get --no-install-recommends install krusader', that won't install recommended packages (only required dependencies) and will likely slim down the number of packages installed.

I'm running Arch on a spare machine and it's a very nice distribution (sort of reminds me of BSD), with upsides and downsides like all distributions. It's one of the best if you wish to build a light-weight installation from the ground up, which looks like what you're trying to accomplish.

[IgnorantGuru]

Re: My Big Arch Move

Perhaps I missed it somewhere, but when and how did KDE lose your trust?

You put it perfectly there - they lost my trust. Too many choices which I found highly questionable. But I think I've explored them enough for now. People in love with KDE aren't going to hear it, and that's okay. I think you'll see it grow worse though, so keep your eyes open. That's why I've been proactive about getting off the KDE track - I don't want to be dragged along.

[Telengard]

Re: My Big Arch Move

Perhaps I missed it somewhere, but when and how did KDE lose your trust?

You put it perfectly there - they lost my trust. Too many choices which I found highly questionable. But I think I've explored them enough for now.

You brought up trust in the post Followup On The Big Move « IgnorantGuru's Blog. Now I want to know what you mean by that. What were those choices? What exactly are the technical or policy reasons that KDE has lost your trust. What has KDE done which was so bad that you have abandoned it on your own PC and now advise all of us to "watch and see".

Again, I totally respect your right to run any desktop you like or none at all if you choose. I just want to understand your reasons so that I can know what evil I am supposed to be watching out for.

[IgnorantGuru]

Re: My Big Arch Move

@Kubicle
soprano, akonadi, nepomuk, phonon, strigi, virtuoso - these are not just libraries. They are servers which KDE wants running on my system, and goes to great lengths to keep running regardless of what a user may prefer. They're writing everything around them and creating dependencies where they don't need to be. Many of these have poor security histories, and they can consume huge amounts of RAM and CPU, drastically changing the performance of the system. I consider them a collection of de facto viruses and trojans, frankly. IMO these inclusions and others are very questionable - I don't believe they are aimed at serving the user or making the KDE experience better. Add to this the great length KDE is going to to make them difficult or impossible to remove. If this were a chess game, they are prepositioning their pieces. It's early yet so it's hard to see. And maybe you won't mind where they're going - perhaps you run Windows as well and don't mind this sort of thing. I do - that's why I left Windows, and why I left SUSE. But I can't prove it to you and I'm not trying to. It's just my interpretation from lots of little observations. At first I just thought it was poor decisions. But a pattern has emerged - one which told me it was time to get rid of KDE. Every decision and annoucement from one version to the next only convinces me of this more deeply. If I suddenly see a change of direction, I'll acknowledge that. But that's not what I've been seeing.

Linux is increasingly influenced by commercial, corporate, and other forces. Choose components carefully. And where you are denied that choice, ask why.

Installing recommended packages by default is not a kde thing, it's a distro decision

It's both, because KDE is doing the recommending (and they call them "required"), and the distros comply. Further, KDE is increasingly making programs refuse to start without them, rather than writing them in an optional way. This is an Ubuntu trend as well - don't give the user control of what is running. Try removing nepomuk with your package manager. I'd like to see that.

At any rate, if you enjoy KDE and don't mind what they're forcing you to run on your system to use it, then there's no reason for you to change.

[IgnorantGuru]

Re: My Big Arch Move

Again, I totally respect your right to run any desktop you like or none at all if you choose. I just want to understand your reasons so that I can know what evil I am supposed to be watching out for.

I'm really not trying to convince others - I'm just sharing my own working conclusions and my methods for moving away from KDE. If you've read my blog then you've heard mention of most of the issues which bug me. If you're concerned, explore some of the history and details of each component running on your system and see what you think. Frankly, I could write a whole book about what I don't like in KDE4. But I'd rather move on - I've got a whole list of alternative apps on my desk that I want to try out today, and some of them look cool! I spent enough time dealing with KDE & Ubuntu issues. That's your problem now. That why I invested the time in moving away from them - so I wouldn't have to spend my time on those issues, especially as I see them going from bad to worse.

If nothing else, just keep your eyes open to what they're doing with KDE - always good advice regardless of whether you agree with my perspective on it. Ask yourself questions like, now that a major source of Canonical's income is from Microsoft (they chose to make Bing the default search and thus are receiving money from MS for that choice), how might that financial partnership with Microsoft be affecting their decisions? Why might they consider that before they consider what is beneficial for you the user? Who's paying their bills, and their devs? I think such questions can provide very enlightening explanations for behavior.

[dibl]

Re: My Big Arch Move

Very interesting, informative discussion. I'm not a close follower of the "inside the desktop" issues, so it's great to see such informed presentations of the different issues and viewpoints, concerning the Gnome direction and the KDE direction.

From a far longer-distance perspective (i.e. a less well-informed one, admittedly), it looks to me like the Linux DE developers are observing a dramatic increase in the adoption of Linux desktops by the less technically proficient masses, over the past few years, and now smell an opportunity to lure in even more users from the MS base. If you believe that much, then these decisions to load up the DEs with "services" that will broaden the acceptability to novice Linux users is, IMHO, pretty understandable. Doesn't make the penalty to performance any more desirable, of course.

That's my two cents' worth on it, overpriced as it may be.

[toad]

Re: My Big Arch Move

Good take, dibl. But IG does have a point. Although I must say, KDE's pim information was all over the fu!#@ng place and a complete nightmare to back up. Akonadi is supposed to make at least that aspect a doddle - as it is supposed to with group clients, but that is still some way off.

I'll be watching the developments with interest myself for all the reasons mentioned.

IG - I should really bring this up in the arch thread (and will once I get off my backside), but have you found a tiling manager for openbox yet? Also, I take it you have heard of the archbang project? They have a bunch of sane defaults...

[IgnorantGuru]

Re: My Big Arch Move

From a far longer-distance perspective (i.e. a less well-informed one, admittedly), it looks to me like the Linux DE developers are observing a dramatic increase in the adoption of Linux desktops by the less technically proficient masses, over the past few years, and now smell an opportunity to lure in even more users from the MS base. If you believe that much, then these decisions to load up the DEs with "services" that will broaden the acceptability to novice Linux users is, IMHO, pretty understandable. Doesn't make the penalty to performance any more desirable, of course.

I think you're hitting the core there dibl. Also, the 'services' you speak of are also used for other purposes - backdoors, etc. Adobe products are a good example - to me they are trojans. I think they are designed by someone to be that. Having seen the patterns of security 'problems' and lack of fixes it's hard for me to come to any other conclusion. As most of us know, Windows is loaded with backdoors by design. I'm still amazed at the security experts who are confused as to why MS doesn't fix known security flaws for so long. Obviously because their 'clients' are still using them! And it stands to reason as Linux is more widely adopted that there will be pressure to create similar 'issues'. I think KDE has been hijacked for this purpose. That to me explains the great emphasis on searching and indexing everyone's files with these questionable 'services', and its spraying of user data all over the system. I'm amazed how little cleaning is required with non-KDE apps. All the KDE apps seem to be trackers! Like Windows, to me its becoming a Big Brother OS, and that necessarily translates into poor security and poor performance (see Windows for an example). And besides backdoors and eavesdropping, you also have the RIAA, DRM, and media-control folks with agendas in Linux now as well. So it's money, power, and control issues, just like everything else in our world.

I'm also not fond of the whole DE approach in Linux, especially when the DE designers start to create an exclusive system of their own. It's one thing if it's a collection of apps that people can remove or add to their liking, like LXDE. KDE is becoming a version of Linux that is following the Microsoft model of creating an exclusive OS. I think it is a bad precedent for Linux, which has always been modular. That model is being deliberately attacked by the KDE4 approach in my view.

Fact is, you don't need a Linux 'desktop'. You can just use X, a window manager, and whatever apps and services you want. A DE is a collection of components that someone else has chosen for you. When they take it so far that you can't remove some of those components without losing most of your apps, something is wrong.

[IgnorantGuru]

Re: My Big Arch Move

IG - I should really bring this up in the arch thread (and will once I get off my backside), but have you found a tiling manager for openbox yet? Also, I take it you have heard of the archbang project? They have a bunch of sane defaults...

I tried Awesome briefly, but I didn't really 'get it' - not that that has to do with Openbox. So in a word, no. I'm pretty happy with OB as it is, but I may give some other approaches a try. One thing that migrating from KDE has shown me - there are all kinds of cool apps, WMs, and other gizmos out there!

Haven't heard about archbang - I'll have a look. I'm still playing catchup after all these system changes. And this morning my PCManFM mod is not showing the Open With... right-click submenu, even after a reboot. So I'm not sure when that broke or why but I want to look at it. I could have sworn it was working yesterday.

[kubicle]

Re: My Big Arch Move

@Kubicle
soprano, akonadi, nepomuk, phonon, strigi, virtuoso - these are not just libraries. They are servers which KDE wants running on my system, and goes to great lengths to keep running regardless of what a user may prefer.

Some of these libraries have daemons associated with them to access the functionality (phonon is just a multimedia layer though), most of the daemons (like strigi and virtuoso) can be disabled (and even uninstalled) if the functionality they provide is not desired. I have no need for strigi myself (and don't have the daemon installed).

Many of these have poor security histories, and they can consume huge amounts of RAM and CPU, drastically changing the performance of the system. I consider them a collection of de facto viruses and trojans, frankly. IMO these inclusions and others are very questionable - I don't believe they are aimed at serving the user or making the KDE experience better.

I'm not going to start arguing with you. As I said in the beginning, you're entitled to your opinion...even if I don't agree with you. But I do find it objectionable to pull things out of a hat and portraying them as facts (like "Many of these have poor security histories")... that's what conspiracy theorists do.

To conclude, I'm glad you've gotten a system you like to work with. As have I, I can assure that KDE let's me run my system like I want to run it, without forcing me to do anything I don't want to do.