[gentoo-dev] Re: Request for testing: plasma-active

[Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net>]

Chris Reffett posted on Fri, 21 Jun 2013 19:24:39 -0400 as excerpted:

> The KDE team has added Plasma Active to the KDE overlay, under the
> (provisional) category name kde-active. Plasma Active is based on KDE
> and is designed for mobile devices. We are not able to test it at
> present as none of the KDE team has a mobile device running Gentoo, so
> we would be very appreciative if community members would help us by
> testing and reporting bugs to us. To install it, add the overlay (layman
> -a kde) and emerge all of the packages in the kde-active category.

This seems like the best opportunity I'm likely to get to ask (as a kde 
user)...

Just what /is/ plasma-active as opposed to kde?  It it (essentially) a 
different desktop (umm... "mobiletop"?) entirely, built by the same 
people but with a different (mobile) target?  If kde and plasma-active 
are both installed, does a fair portion of the config carry over (do they 
use the same user config dirs?) or not?  If I run a kde app on the plasma-
active "mobiletop", does it still use it's kde settings, or does it use 
separate plasma-active settings now?

What about non-kde apps, gtk, etc?  With kde, there's a kde settings 
color option to use the same colors on non-kde apps.  Does that apply to 
plasma-active as well?

FWIW I have a netbook (generation 1.5 acer aspire one aoa150, one of the 
first with a 100-gig plus standard SATA hard drive, but still old enough 
it avoided the infamous intel netbook graphics driver issues as it still 
used the standard driver) that I'm running gentoo on, currently with kde 
4.8, IIRC.  But I don't normally use the "net" part of netbook and I've 
never (successfully) configured the wireless.  It plugs in to ethernet at 
home, but primarily it's for mobile unnetworked "stand-alone" use.

Would this be an appropriate plasma-active platform, or does plasma-
active make too many assumptions about being basically constantly net-
connected to be viable on my "unnetbook"?

So far I've stayed away from plasma-active, mostly because I assumed it 
wanted constant connection, but also because I wasn't sure about the 
above.  But if it works reasonably without a net connection and runs 
normal apps reasonably, it could be worth at least testing, giving you 
some testing and feedback as well as me some hands-on with it.

Oh, and it doesn't require semantic-desktop or the like, I hope.  Because 
I need that like I need another hole in my head.  See below.

Semantic-desktop: Just so you guys know, as I said, I need semantic-
desktop about as much as I need another hole in my head, so I'm **VERY** 
not happy with the 4.11 changes.  I spent quite a bit of time patching 
the 4.10.80 ebuilds to kill the semantic-desktop once again, and 
developed a user-epatch-like framework to automatically apply the patches 
to updates as they come in, but either due to that or due to some other 
bug in this first 4.11 beta, activities are broken (a kde restart always 
starts with a new activity, and the existing customized activities aren't 
listed so I must start from scratch every time... but the panel config 
carries over just fine... shrug).

Even if it worked, however, I'm unsure of the maintainability apart from 
upstream gentoo/kde over time.  But as I said, I need semantic-desktop 
like I need another hole in my head, and with all the changes in kde 
during the kde4 timeframe, I'm far less dependent on kde now than I was 
for the kde3 -> kde4 upgrade, so I may simply drop my kde desktop 
entirely, and switch to something else.

I guess I'll find out over time, but it would make things a *LOT* simpler 
if you'd simply reconsider forcing semantic-desktop.  Because much like 
my going to all the effort to jump to Linux and drop MS, after which 
there was no going back, there's no going back to semantic-desktop for 
me.  The additional hole in the head is a reasonable analogy in that 
regard and I'll rather be dropping kde entirely if it comes to that.  But 
I'd rather not have to do that and have to look for something else, if 
it's avoidable.  (razor-qt?  enlightenment?  Something else?)

Not that I expect it to change any decisions, but now you know the pain 
it's causing here, at least.  And I'd certainly be delighted if you /do/ 
reconsider.  Otherwise... well, maybe there'll be a kde4-sunset overlay 
and I'll have others to help too, or maybe I'll simply find something 
else eventually...

-- 
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