[gentoo-user] Using KDE apps in a non KDE environment

[gentoo-user] Using KDE apps in a non KDE environment

[Andrew Lowe]

Hi all,
	I'm getting disillusioned with the direction KDE is taking, with
respect to forcing users to use things they don't want to. The semantic
desktop, or whatever they are now calling bits and pieces of it, is one
thing that comes immediately to mind.

	Anyway, I've decided to move on and am thinking of going to lxqt. The
problem is that I'm used to several KDE apps, kwooty, kwrite and a few
more. Is it possible to run something such as lxqt and then emerge in
kde apps where it will bring in just a few kde libraries, which I can
live with, but not the whole desktop environment?

	Thoughts greatly appreciated,

		Andrew

Re: [gentoo-user] Using KDE apps in a non KDE environment

[Alan McKinnon]

On 02/10/2015 05:31, Andrew Lowe wrote:
> Hi all,
> 	I'm getting disillusioned with the direction KDE is taking, with
> respect to forcing users to use things they don't want to. The semantic
> desktop, or whatever they are now calling bits and pieces of it, is one
> thing that comes immediately to mind.
> 
> 	Anyway, I've decided to move on and am thinking of going to lxqt. The
> problem is that I'm used to several KDE apps, kwooty, kwrite and a few
> more. Is it possible to run something such as lxqt and then emerge in
> kde apps where it will bring in just a few kde libraries, which I can
> live with, but not the whole desktop environment?

Yes. Remove all of KDE then emerge back in the apps you want, they have
deps on the libs they need. Whatever they pull in is required.



-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] Using KDE apps in a non KDE environment

[Rich Freeman]

On Fri, Oct 2, 2015 at 1:30 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 02/10/2015 05:31, Andrew Lowe wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>       I'm getting disillusioned with the direction KDE is taking, with
>> respect to forcing users to use things they don't want to. The semantic
>> desktop, or whatever they are now calling bits and pieces of it, is one
>> thing that comes immediately to mind.
>>
>>       Anyway, I've decided to move on and am thinking of going to lxqt. The
>> problem is that I'm used to several KDE apps, kwooty, kwrite and a few
>> more. Is it possible to run something such as lxqt and then emerge in
>> kde apps where it will bring in just a few kde libraries, which I can
>> live with, but not the whole desktop environment?
>
> Yes. Remove all of KDE then emerge back in the apps you want, they have
> deps on the libs they need. Whatever they pull in is required.

It is easier than that.

Edit your /var/lib/portage/world
Remove anything kde-related you're not explicitly interested in, such
as kde-meta
Add anything you are explicitly interested in, such as kwooty or kwrite
Add kde-apps/kdebase-runtime-meta

Then run emerge --depclean and watch all the other stuff go away.

No need to purge yourself of stuff like kdelibs that takes a long time
to rebuild just to add it back.  Let the dependency manager help you
out for a change.  :)

I'm not even certain you need to explicitly add kdebase-runtime-meta -
other packages might pull that in on their own but I'm not certain of
that.  Run a --depclean -p first and see what portage wants to get rid
of before going that route.  Software may-or-may not work correctly
without that virtual installed and your bugs will be closed as
invalid.  That virtual is intended to be a somewhat-minimalist one for
situations like yours, but kde applications still will tend to pull a
lot of stuff in.

-- 
Rich

Re: [gentoo-user] Using KDE apps in a non KDE environment

[Andrew Lowe]

On 10/03/2015 06:41 AM, Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 2, 2015 at 1:30 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 02/10/2015 05:31, Andrew Lowe wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>>       I'm getting disillusioned with the direction KDE is taking, with
>>> respect to forcing users to use things they don't want to. The semantic
>>> desktop, or whatever they are now calling bits and pieces of it, is one
>>> thing that comes immediately to mind.
>>>
>>>       Anyway, I've decided to move on and am thinking of going to lxqt. The
>>> problem is that I'm used to several KDE apps, kwooty, kwrite and a few
>>> more. Is it possible to run something such as lxqt and then emerge in
>>> kde apps where it will bring in just a few kde libraries, which I can
>>> live with, but not the whole desktop environment?
>>
>> Yes. Remove all of KDE then emerge back in the apps you want, they have
>> deps on the libs they need. Whatever they pull in is required.
> 
> It is easier than that.
> 
> Edit your /var/lib/portage/world
> Remove anything kde-related you're not explicitly interested in, such
> as kde-meta
> Add anything you are explicitly interested in, such as kwooty or kwrite
> Add kde-apps/kdebase-runtime-meta
> 
> Then run emerge --depclean and watch all the other stuff go away.
> 
> No need to purge yourself of stuff like kdelibs that takes a long time
> to rebuild just to add it back.  Let the dependency manager help you
> out for a change.  :)
> 
> I'm not even certain you need to explicitly add kdebase-runtime-meta -
> other packages might pull that in on their own but I'm not certain of
> that.  Run a --depclean -p first and see what portage wants to get rid
> of before going that route.  Software may-or-may not work correctly
> without that virtual installed and your bugs will be closed as
> invalid.  That virtual is intended to be a somewhat-minimalist one for
> situations like yours, but kde applications still will tend to pull a
> lot of stuff in.
> 

	Closing my original question, I followed Alan's advice, fiddled the
world file, and whilst not exactly "hey presto", a few emerge's, some
hand manipulation of a few files and eventually it worked.

	It's a bit of a jump, I'd become quite used to Dolphin and whilst
pcmanfm likes to think of itself as a dolphin replacement, it's a long
long way from being so. There is no autohide of the task bar, no
slideshow wallpaper option, I still can't work out automounting of usb's
and plenty more to keep you on your toes.

	So thanks for all of your suggestions.

		Andrew

Re: [gentoo-user] Using KDE apps in a non KDE environment

[Andrew Lowe]

Whoops, big mistake on my part. I misread the threading of the original
email and credited the idea to Alan Mc Kinnon. The credit should go to
Rich Freeman.

	Sorry Rich,

		Andrew


On 10/10/2015 06:56 PM, Andrew Lowe wrote:
> On 10/03/2015 06:41 AM, Rich Freeman wrote:
>> On Fri, Oct 2, 2015 at 1:30 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On 02/10/2015 05:31, Andrew Lowe wrote:
>>>> Hi all,
>>>>       I'm getting disillusioned with the direction KDE is taking, with
>>>> respect to forcing users to use things they don't want to. The semantic
>>>> desktop, or whatever they are now calling bits and pieces of it, is one
>>>> thing that comes immediately to mind.
>>>>
>>>>       Anyway, I've decided to move on and am thinking of going to lxqt. The
>>>> problem is that I'm used to several KDE apps, kwooty, kwrite and a few
>>>> more. Is it possible to run something such as lxqt and then emerge in
>>>> kde apps where it will bring in just a few kde libraries, which I can
>>>> live with, but not the whole desktop environment?
>>>
>>> Yes. Remove all of KDE then emerge back in the apps you want, they have
>>> deps on the libs they need. Whatever they pull in is required.
>>
>> It is easier than that.
>>
>> Edit your /var/lib/portage/world
>> Remove anything kde-related you're not explicitly interested in, such
>> as kde-meta
>> Add anything you are explicitly interested in, such as kwooty or kwrite
>> Add kde-apps/kdebase-runtime-meta
>>
>> Then run emerge --depclean and watch all the other stuff go away.
>>
>> No need to purge yourself of stuff like kdelibs that takes a long time
>> to rebuild just to add it back.  Let the dependency manager help you
>> out for a change.  :)
>>
>> I'm not even certain you need to explicitly add kdebase-runtime-meta -
>> other packages might pull that in on their own but I'm not certain of
>> that.  Run a --depclean -p first and see what portage wants to get rid
>> of before going that route.  Software may-or-may not work correctly
>> without that virtual installed and your bugs will be closed as
>> invalid.  That virtual is intended to be a somewhat-minimalist one for
>> situations like yours, but kde applications still will tend to pull a
>> lot of stuff in.
>>
> 
> 	Closing my original question, I followed Alan's advice, fiddled the
> world file, and whilst not exactly "hey presto", a few emerge's, some
> hand manipulation of a few files and eventually it worked.
> 
> 	It's a bit of a jump, I'd become quite used to Dolphin and whilst
> pcmanfm likes to think of itself as a dolphin replacement, it's a long
> long way from being so. There is no autohide of the task bar, no
> slideshow wallpaper option, I still can't work out automounting of usb's
> and plenty more to keep you on your toes.
> 
> 	So thanks for all of your suggestions.
> 
> 		Andrew
> 
> 

Re: [gentoo-user] Using KDE apps in a non KDE environment

[Philip Webb]

151002 Andrew Lowe wrote:
> I'm getting disillusioned with the direction KDE is taking
> with respect to forcing users to use things they don't want to.
> The semantic desktop or whatever they are now calling bits and pieces of it,
> is one thing that comes immediately to mind.

I took  1  look at the KDE 4 desktop & started using Fluxbox straightaway.

> Anyway, I've decided to move on and am thinking of going to lxqt.

You might like Fluxbox, which is easy to configure to taste.
I had a look at Xfce 12 yesterday & was much impressed : another option.

> I'm used to several KDE apps, kwooty, kwrite and a few more.
> Is it possible to run something such as lxqt and then emerge
> kde apps where it will bring in just a few kde libraries,
> which I can live with, but not the whole desktop environment ?

I've been doing it for years (smile).
I use 'startx' & in  .xinitrc  I have :

  xscreensaver &
  kdeinit &
  startfluxbox

This speeds things up.  I even manage to go on using  3  KDE 3 games.

The power of Gentoo !

-- 
========================,,============================================
SUPPORT     ___________//___,   Philip Webb
ELECTRIC   /] [] [] [] [] []|   Cities Centre, University of Toronto
TRANSIT    `-O----------O---'   purslowatchassdotutorontodotca

Re: [gentoo-user] Using KDE apps in a non KDE environment

[Mick]

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On Friday 02 Oct 2015 08:06:50 Philip Webb wrote:
> 151002 Andrew Lowe wrote:
> > I'm getting disillusioned with the direction KDE is taking
> > with respect to forcing users to use things they don't want to.
> > The semantic desktop or whatever they are now calling bits and pieces of
> > it, is one thing that comes immediately to mind.
> 
> I took  1  look at the KDE 4 desktop & started using Fluxbox straightaway.
> 
> > Anyway, I've decided to move on and am thinking of going to lxqt.
> 
> You might like Fluxbox, which is easy to configure to taste.
> I had a look at Xfce 12 yesterday & was much impressed : another option.
> 
> > I'm used to several KDE apps, kwooty, kwrite and a few more.
> > Is it possible to run something such as lxqt and then emerge
> > kde apps where it will bring in just a few kde libraries,
> > which I can live with, but not the whole desktop environment ?
> 
> I've been doing it for years (smile).
> I use 'startx' & in  .xinitrc  I have :
> 
>   xscreensaver &
>   kdeinit &
>   startfluxbox
> 
> This speeds things up.  I even manage to go on using  3  KDE 3 games.
> 
> The power of Gentoo !

Or give enlightenment-0.19.10 a spin.  It works nicely with KDE apps without 
pulling in thunar and a tonne of gnome libs you never wanted.

-- 
Regards,
Mick

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[gentoo-user] Re: Using KDE apps in a non KDE environment

[Grant Edwards]

On 2015-10-02, Andrew Lowe <agl@wht.com.au> wrote:
> Hi all,
> 	I'm getting disillusioned with the direction KDE is taking, with
> respect to forcing users to use things they don't want to. The semantic
> desktop, or whatever they are now calling bits and pieces of it, is one
> thing that comes immediately to mind.
>
> 	Anyway, I've decided to move on and am thinking of going to lxqt. The
> problem is that I'm used to several KDE apps, kwooty, kwrite and a few
> more. Is it possible to run something such as lxqt and then emerge in
> kde apps where it will bring in just a few kde libraries, which I can
> live with, but not the whole desktop environment?

Yes, for some value of "a few libraries".

I've used KDE apps on XFCE systems (which is gtk based).  It can be
done. It requires a lot of KDE librarys, but you don't have to use the
KDE desktop.

But, in my experience, whenever there's a major upgrade to KDE and you
have KDE apps that require different versions of libraries, or
backwards compatibility features built into libraries, it gets ugly
fast.  At that point, I ususally end up uninstalling all KDE apps/libs
and doing without for a while.

-- 
Grant Edwards               grant.b.edwards        Yow! I'm in direct contact
                                  at               with many advanced fun
                              gmail.com            CONCEPTS.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Using KDE apps in a non KDE environment

[Alan McKinnon]

On 02/10/2015 17:42, Grant Edwards wrote:
> On 2015-10-02, Andrew Lowe <agl@wht.com.au> wrote:
>> Hi all,
>> 	I'm getting disillusioned with the direction KDE is taking, with
>> respect to forcing users to use things they don't want to. The semantic
>> desktop, or whatever they are now calling bits and pieces of it, is one
>> thing that comes immediately to mind.
>>
>> 	Anyway, I've decided to move on and am thinking of going to lxqt. The
>> problem is that I'm used to several KDE apps, kwooty, kwrite and a few
>> more. Is it possible to run something such as lxqt and then emerge in
>> kde apps where it will bring in just a few kde libraries, which I can
>> live with, but not the whole desktop environment?
> 
> Yes, for some value of "a few libraries".
> 
> I've used KDE apps on XFCE systems (which is gtk based).  It can be
> done. It requires a lot of KDE librarys, but you don't have to use the
> KDE desktop.
> 
> But, in my experience, whenever there's a major upgrade to KDE and you
> have KDE apps that require different versions of libraries, or
> backwards compatibility features built into libraries, it gets ugly
> fast.  At that point, I ususally end up uninstalling all KDE apps/libs
> and doing without for a while.


With situations like this, one has to apply some intelligence (and the
reverse is also true - running gtk/Gnome apps on a KDE system). A few
simple apps like say okular or konsole will be very manageable, as they
have specific narrow functionality and are not core.

As soon as you get into apps like dolphin or, god forbid, plasma - then
the wheels come off. Both those things hook into core KDE functionality
and go to the heart of what makes KDE KDE. Plasma in the context of gtk
doesn't make any sense to me, plasma really is intended to drive the
heart of a KDE desktop. ANd god help anyone that tries to run anything
with kdepim in it - that abomination should not even run on KDE!

I have the reverse here, a few GTK apps on a KDE desktop and it's very
manageable. The main apps are handbrake, firefox, thunderbird. I see no
reason why the opposite wouldn't also be true if the admin is smart


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Using KDE apps in a non KDE environment

[Walter Dnes]

On Fri, Oct 02, 2015 at 06:30:03PM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote

> With situations like this, one has to apply some intelligence (and the
> reverse is also true - running gtk/Gnome apps on a KDE system). A few
> simple apps like say okular or konsole will be very manageable, as they
> have specific narrow functionality and are not core.

  You'd be surprised.  First some background on my system.  When I
installed it as 32-bit years ago, I went with USE="-*" like so...

USE="-* a52 aac bzip2 cxx fortran ncurses netifrc nptl nptlonly nsplugin
offensive openssl posix readline ssl threads vim-syntax zlib X dga dri
exif ffmpeg flac classic gif intel jpeg mng mp3 mpeg ogg opengl png rtmp
theora tiff truetype vorbis xcomposite webm x264 xpm xv xvid xvmc"

  When I re-did it as 64-bit, I went to "the regular way" like so...

USE="X apng bindist ffmpeg jpeg png truetype x264 x265 xorg -acl -berkdb
-chatzilla -cracklib -crypt -gallium -gdbm -gmp-autoupdate -graphite
-gstreamer -iconv -introspection -ipc -iptables -ipv6 -libav -llvm -nls
-openmp -pam -pch -roaming -sendmail -tcpd -udev -udisks -unicode
-upower -xinerama"

  When Xpdf was deprecated, I eventually settled on mupdf, which is nice
and lightweight.  I skipped okular, because it brought in a big chunk of
KDE.  Just for ####s and giggles, I had a look today at what would be
required to build okular on my system.  Repeat emerge commands showed
that my package.use would require the following extras...

dev-qt/qtcore qt3support
app-text/poppler qt4
dev-qt/qtsql qt3support
dev-qt/qtgui qt3support
sys-apps/dbus X
media-video/vlc dbus ogg vorbis
sys-libs/zlib minizip
sys-libs/ncurses unicode
sys-auth/consolekit policykit
dev-qt/qtdeclarative qt3support
dev-qt/qtopengl qt3support

  File-attached is the "emerge -pv okular" output.  To summarize...
Total: 53 packages (50 new, 3 reinstalls), Size of downloads: 329,492 KiB

...because a pdf-reader really needs libogg, libvorbis, www-misc/htdig,
qtcore-4.8.6-r4, 2 versions of qtgui, qt3support, qtwebkit, libdbusmenu,
strigi, spidermonkey, phonon, vlc, polkit, consolekit, etc, etc.

  Similarly, gnumeric is a great spreadsheet, but it's being loaded
with a ton of egregiously unnecessary GNOME dependancies, via gtk3
and goffice.  Remember when Bill Gates showed how IE.EXE was an
eensy-weensy-teensy-itty-bitty little program that you could easily
remove?  But he failed to mention that it was merely an interface to a
whole bunch of Windows libraries that were continuously running in the
background.  Similarly, gnumeric has been adding hard dependancies on
various GNOME libraries over time.

  I try to keep a minimal profile.  Every so often, stuff like dbus,
harfbuzz, ghostscript, etc, etc, have been added as hard dependancies
to gnumeric.  I'd be willing to contribute money to developers who would
fork gnumeric, and move it off of GTK and on to FTLK (Fast Light Tool
Kit) http://www.fltk.org/index.php and get rid of hard dependancies on
a bunch of GNOME stuff.

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>
I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Using KDE apps in a non KDE environment

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Fri, 2 Oct 2015 16:33:09 -0400, Walter Dnes wrote:

>   File-attached is the "emerge -pv okular" output.  To summarize...
> Total: 53 packages (50 new, 3 reinstalls), Size of downloads: 329,492
> KiB
> 
> ...because a pdf-reader really needs libogg, libvorbis, www-misc/htdig,
> qtcore-4.8.6-r4, 2 versions of qtgui, qt3support, qtwebkit, libdbusmenu,
etc.

That's because Okular is not a PDF reader, it's a "Universal document
viewer", so it needs to support a lot of formats and protocols. That
does mean that if you need a simple PDF reader and don't run KDE, Okular
may well be way OTT, but it is very good at handling PDFs and forms.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

A real programmer never documents his code.
It was hard to make, it should be hard to read

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Using KDE apps in a non KDE environment

[Walter Dnes]

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On Fri, Oct 02, 2015 at 04:33:09PM -0400, Walter Dnes wrote
> 
>   File-attached is the "emerge -pv okular" output.  To summarize...
> Total: 53 packages (50 new, 3 reinstalls), Size of downloads: 329,492 KiB

  Oops; forgot the attachment.  Here it is...

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>
I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications

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