Staying with KDE-4

[Hobbes2100]

I went to update world today and I encountered this:

[asturm]

[proteusx]

Here kglobalaccel-5.28 was installed without it wanting to pull plasma-workspace:5

Try deleting all the kde meta packages from the world file, leaving only kde-plasma/kdebase-startkde.

[asturm]

That's because you emerged it before the pkgmove. As I said, this is a temporary bug, a fix is pending, let's hope it gets merged tomorrow.

[Hobbes2100]

[asturm]

Well, it's not really that obvious as presented by Portage...

[proteusx]

@asturm, Hobbes2100

I was hit by this today when updating to plasma-5.29.0
Solved it by deleting the line:

[asturm]

Fixed in tree now.

[proteusx]

Portage tries again to break my perfectly working and stable Plasma 4 setup.
Here is the bad news:

[asturm]

You don't have to copy the files into your own overlay, after all you miss out on any updates that may (or may not) happen there. You can bulk mask all of kde-sunset adding '*::kde-sunset' to package.mask.

[proteusx]

[asturm]

Ah, indeed that is possible. Well, it is only unmaintained until someone steps up to do the work. So far, no one. Patches can be applied though if e.g. sent via bugzilla.

[Hobbes2100]

I knew this day would come, but it is very frustrating none-the-less (ever-the-more?). My hacked together, duct taped KDE system needs to either (1) go all the way "forward" to Plasma 5 and friends or (2) using kde-sunset, go "backward" to a *sane* non-hacked Plasma 4 (or hell, go back to 3.5.10 and never worry about it again! - not realistic, joking ... mostly). Note, by hacked, I'm referring to all the steps we've had to do in this thread to keep Plasma 4 going.

I really only need the most minimal of minimal KDE installs. I use konsole, juk, clementine, and the current "kicker" (the old panel app) portion of the base KDE. I often make use of KDE's auto-mounting to simplify offloading data from USB devices.

So, I guess the general path to using Plasma 4 would be:

1. mask all plasma 5 stuff
2. unmask relevant plasma 4 stuff (out of kde-sunset)
3. "go"

Possibly for simplicity - and cruft removal - sake, I'd insert a step 0: uninstall all kde related packages.

My question is about steps 1 & 2. What is the best way to mask all plasma 5 and to unmask plasma 4? Secondary question: how to undo the masking of Plasma 4 that is currently in the main portage tree? (that might be taken care of by unmasking packages out of kde-sunset).

I assume for step 1, something close to this (from other KDE5 masking threads):

[marax_faraii]

[asturm]

...especially the big kdelibs-4 blob having been split up into tiny kde-frameworks/ packages would align well with those reasons...

[augustin]

KDE * 5 is full of regressions compared to KDE 4.
It got so bad that I have recently started documenting all new regressions as I find them. I am not happy by the way a whole suite of products that had not yet reached feature parity compared to the previous stable branch was pushed down our throat by removing support (both upstream and by the various distro packagers) to that otherwise very useable branch (KDE 4).

Today, thanks to some valuable help that I received, I at last managed to patch KDE plasma 5 to get rid of a regression that was a huge usability, daily nightmare for me.
[Gory details here: http://linux.overshoot.tv/wiki/konqueror_taskbar_icon and here https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=369658 ]

Another regression that I can't wait to fix is the ability to grab a maxized window by any of its border and resize it vertically or horizontally, exactly to the dimensions we want, very quickly and very efficiently. Right now, to achieve the same within KDE Plasma 5, it is a battle of wills between me and kwin. I usually win, but not without my ego bruised. I no longer feel in control.

As a Linux advocate and as a software usability advocate, I have started a serious crusade against regression and against the loss of user application settings (plenty of such occurrences during the KDE 4 => 5 application "ugrpades").

All this to say that those of you who want to stay with KDE 4.... you are probably making the right choice... at least for now.

[augustin]

Note that the regression that I just managed to fix on my system earlier today, had been reported many times since the early KDE Plasma 5 versions, and each report was set as "Won't fix". I was disgusted when I found out today that the fix was actually so easy.


We should start a "Politics of KDE" thread!
(only joking.... partly).

[Chiitoo]

I've had a very 'hacked' KDE installation for years, where I've removed lots of the dependencies manually, and things worked OK for me (a set-up very much unsupported by upstream, and as such, not very viable for Gentoo).

Now if I try the same with “KDEFP5”, things seem to have been knit together a lot more tight-like (even if it is, as a whole, modular).

I've recently started experimenting with other options, such as xfce4, lxqt, fvwm, openbox, e, i3, awesome... but all of them feel like they're lacking some more or less minor thing I've come to use a lot in KDE (some or most of them might be possible with a number of those listed, but I've not learned how, yet).

Right now I'm running lxqt with kwin:4. If I wanted to go kwin:5, I'm immediately presented with things such as 'sys-fs/udisks' and 'sys-auth/polkit', things I really don't need. If I went “OK” with those, I might just as well go all the way with KDE. :]

I'm sure upstream has their reasons for why the window manager requires an interface to work with storage devices, but I haven't researched, nor asked about it (yet). I did give a quick go at removing dependencies at the configure system level, but really didn't give it enough time, and will need to try it again at some point.

I guess one way out might be (haven't tried) removing unneeded stuff post-merge, but one would still build unnecessary packages, which somewhat defeats the purpose.
_________________
Kindest of regardses.

[asturm]

[proteusx]

[Gatsby]

Hello Chiitoo,

[augustin]

@asturn,

I do deserve to be mocked. I shouldn't have used such a dramatic tone. I do know how lucky I am. I have been very actively involved in humanitarian campaigns, and I do know what true human misery looks like, not from personal experience, but for having actively campaigned against it. I am extremely fortunate to have the luxury of having the problems I am having. I have access to many luxuries which includes access to the technologies which we're discussing here. So, I apologize for the tone of my rant and gladly accept some mild rebuff.

However, I don't think my main point was completely understood. I blame the tone of my post for that. Allow me to try to clarify...

[augustin]

[asturm]

[Chiitoo]