Comments on: KDE in Gentoo, an update

By: direvus

direvus — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 19:09:55 +0000

Unfortunately, the only version of knetworkmanager available from kde-testing is 9999, and it depends on qt 4.6.0.

Since knetworkmanager was dropped from the stable tree, things have been difficult. I was able to build the 0.7_p20090427 version from rbu’s overlay, although this required a lot of manual intervention to get working (the Manifest in his overlay is out-of-date), see comments on http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=253788.

This version leaves a lot to be desired. It won’t compile with OpenVPN support, and the configuration dialog crashes if you try to set up a WEP connection. According to the last comment in the bug I linked, a fully functional knetworkmanager is currently targeted for KDE 4.4 (?!) and the poster generously suggests “Meanwhile, use wicd”. As far as I can tell, wicd doesn’t support OpenVPN either, so I guess I’m just hosed?

While all of this is going on, those of my friends using Ubuntu seem to be having no trouble continuing to use their OpenVPNs with KDE 4. I’m not sure how exactly Ubuntu has pulled this off given the upstream situation, but in any case I’m envious!

By: Mat

Mat — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:27:06 +0000

I understand perfectly that Gentoo is dropping support for KDE3, many other distributions are doing the same or have already done it.

What it’s sad is that KDE4 is no replacement for KDE3 for many users. Low end computers, users with special needs, KDE3 applications not ported… The list is too long. I think at least binary pacakages of the current KDE3 versions should be available in every linux distribution.

By: wired

wired — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:53:53 +0000

You can try the live ebuild of kde-misc/knetworkmanager available in the kde-testing overlay Although I think that trunk doesn’t work with 4.3.3, you might need to get an older revision.

By: Tim

Tim — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:35:08 +0000

According to news.kde, upstream finally released a kde4 compatible version of KNetworkManager last week. I think it depended on KDE 4.4, but hopefully that means it will be back into the tree soon.

By: Jens

Jens — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 08:45:33 +0000

Hi, though I am favorite of dropping KDE 3.5 from gentoo (i stepped over to 4.3 before it went stable), I miss now one applet from old KDE: KNetworkManager. It has been already kicked out of portage, but I was not able to find an equally functional substitute (and I do not want to pull in half of gnome in order to use nm-applet. I reactivated it by using the old ebuild (fortunatley I make backups ) and it seems to work well for me with current KDE 4.3 stable, but obviously it’s a temporary patch.

Anyone knows of a real working alternative?

By: wired

wired — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:56:47 +0000

KDE doesn’t depend on gstreamer.

Maybe something else on your system depends on it?

Try running “equery d gstreamer” to find what pulls it in

By: Robert Cabrera

Robert Cabrera — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:09:40 +0000

Is it possible for Gentoo to release KDE ebuilds that don’t require gstreamer? I find the dependency ridicules. Xine is the only backend to phonon that works for me. My laptop uses an AC’97 codec for sound, very common for laptops.

Alsa works beautifully, pulseaudio runs poorly (lot’s of crackles and pops with lack of synchronization), jack and gstreamer don’t work at all. They haven’t worked with any distro I’ve ever tried and they haven’t worked with any version of KDE I’ve ever used, yet gstreamer remains a “hard” use flag that can’t be unselected.

Can’t the Gentoo KDE development team just release ebuilds without requiring gstreamer? Or just give a choice between gstreamer or xine, so I’m not forced to compile and install something I can never use?

Thanks for all of your efforts in making KDE in Gentoo a success.

Ciao

By: dfsqffdqsfq

dfsqffdqsfq — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:11:46 +0000

kde people really dropped the ball. It’s ridiculous.

I know in OSS you can never complain, you just have to go fix it yourself. And equally in OSS it’s always somebody elses fault. but meh. Why can’t we just keep a good thing working.

By: Trizt

Trizt — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:54:22 +0000

As it’s dead up stream, thats the reason I don’t believe in a community driven “keep it working” overlay, it will be as maintained as Gnome was after that horror story gnome2 was released. For me dual X (not twin/dual view) is essential for usage of my main desktop and it’s almost a “wontfix” upstreams as none of the developers seems to be interested of this feature (sure you can always do that yourself, but for me that includes to learn kde4/qt4/xorg, it’s a bit too much up hill).
The big problem with these big changes is that, that developers seems to get so much into making new eye candy that they forget what the existing user base wants. Another things that is missing in KDE4 is a way to properly import data from KDE3, it’s a pita to remember passwords which you set 10 years ago or loose history for kopete and so on.

Don’t take it as a criticism over you decision to give up KDE3, more a criticism for the eye candy policy of the KDE4 developers (how useful is that snow effect?).

By: Arne Babenhauserheide

Arne Babenhauserheide — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 12:27:54 +0000

Since KDE 4 is now stable (I hope it will also be stable for ppc, soon – my wife still has KDE 3.5 on her iMac), I think your decision is perfectly justified and right – and doesn’t even need to be defended – on one condition: Does the transition work completely smoothly now, with all data migrated automatically, so users only see “wow, it now looks far better, and everything still works”?

I switched from KDE 3.5 in the pre KDE 4.1 days, and I still remember that the migration was kinda rough…