[opensuse-kde] Community Discussion - KDE Edition - openSUSE KDE

[opensuse-kde] Community Discussion - KDE Edition

Andrew Wafaa

24 Mar 2010 24 Mar '10

21:40

Aloha oh wondrous KDE Community, Some may have noticed my blog posts trying to engage the wider openSUSE Community in discussion on ways of improving how we, the openSUSE Community, work and play. The shotgun approach of hitting the whole Community seems to be going a bit slow, so I thought I would try a different approach :-) So basically I'm looking to see what you the KDE Community feel is missing, an issue, could be improved etc. Also crucially how do you think any of the issues can be resolved. As I mentioned in my blog posts, I am looking for a discussion and not a flame war. I am not in any power to resolve any issue that are present, but I do feel that we already have the tools at hand to fix most that we encounter. I will however put my noisy voice to as much use as possible and try and help out where I can. I do feel that sometimes we just shrug our shoulders and carry on regardless, and think "why bother we aren't going to get any help". If we don't make a sound case for why & how we need help there is no chance we will. So this is the first step in getting that help - defining what and how. Please help me and yourselves work out how best to improve life within openSUSE. If people would rather not make their concerns etc public, please feel free to contact me directly. What I do ask is that we please try and keep things on topic, calm and pleasant. Regards, Andy -- Andrew Wafaa, openSUSE Member: FunkyPenguin. PGP: 0x3A36312F openSUSE: Get It, Discover It, Create It at http://www.opensuse.org

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Martin Schlander

25 Mar 25 Mar

08:03

Onsdag den 24. marts 2010 22:40:18 skrev Andrew Wafaa:

...

So basically I'm looking to see what you the KDE Community feel is missing, an issue, could be improved etc. Also crucially how do you think any of the issues can be resolved.

I'm not sure exactly what kind of answers you're looking for. But here are some stray thoughts of mine about the state of the geeko nation. The main thing we're missing is a clear goal and direction. Wanting to be "the best community distro available" is too vague and can mean a ton of different things to different people. As a comparison I think Ubuntu and Fedora have goals and identities that are operational and that it's pretty clear to most people what they are and what they want to do. In terms of infrastructure, I think we're more likely to have too much of it than missing anything. Though I sometimes miss a good and easy way to get an overview of who maintains (or doesn't maintain) what packages, what jobs currently need to be done, and good handling of package requests. In terms of software I think the main things holding the distro back are: * broken ATi repo (guess we're defenseless here) * updater applet (used by ~99% of users almost daily for important tasks, but is sooo not working smooth, and obviously not a priority) * yast and zypper hiding vendor change update availability from non-experts Other than that I think we're in good shape. Just need to keep working and continually do decent releases, and we should return to former strength and more - if we can avoid more PR disasters and disastrous releases (10.1/ZMD, 11.0/KDE4.0, 11.1/11-months-of-death-by-a-thousand-bugs). -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-kde+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-kde+help@opensuse.org

Henne Vogelsang

09:58

Schlandi, On 03/25/2010 09:03 AM, Martin Schlander wrote:

...

Though I sometimes miss a good and easy way to get an overview of who maintains (or doesn't maintain) what packages, what jobs currently need to be done, and good handling of package requests.

Whats wrong with the cool new status page for projects? For instance http://bit.ly/cpk05Y Henne -- Henne Vogelsang, openSUSE. Everybody has a plan, until they get hit. - Mike Tyson -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-kde+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-kde+help@opensuse.org

Karsten König

17:59

Am Donnerstag, 25. März 2010 09:03:21 schrieb Martin Schlander:

...

Onsdag den 24. marts 2010 22:40:18 skrev Andrew Wafaa:

...
So basically I'm looking to see what you the KDE Community feel is missing, an issue, could be improved etc. Also crucially how do you think any of the issues can be resolved.

I'm not sure exactly what kind of answers you're looking for. But here are some stray thoughts of mine about the state of the geeko nation.

The main thing we're missing is a clear goal and direction. Wanting to be "the best community distro available" is too vague and can mean a ton of different things to different people. As a comparison I think Ubuntu and Fedora have goals and identities that are operational and that it's pretty clear to most people what they are and what they want to do.

+1, Still I think there is no real push towards a tighter knit community with more aligned goals, the devel projects don't really interact much with each other. So stuff like their "let's be more power conservative", or "faster boot" only happens when each devel project feels like it (not like it doesn't happen at all)

...

In terms of infrastructure, I think we're more likely to have too much of it than missing anything. Though I sometimes miss a good and easy way to get an overview of who maintains (or doesn't maintain) what packages, what jobs currently need to be done, and good handling of package requests. I think anonymous access is still important (but comming, I am not pushing here), this will help gaining respect in other communities, like do good example projects as netbook reference platform. Infrastructure is too much Novell account dependent =(

...

In terms of software I think the main things holding the distro back are: * broken ATi repo (guess we're defenseless here) * updater applet (used by ~99% of users almost daily for important tasks, but is sooo not working smooth, and obviously not a priority) * yast and zypper hiding vendor change update availability from non-experts

Other than that I think we're in good shape. Just need to keep working and continually do decent releases, and we should return to former strength and more - if we can avoid more PR disasters and disastrous releases (10.1/ZMD, 11.0/KDE4.0, 11.1/11-months-of-death-by-a-thousand-bugs).

I agree, the direction and pace is good, the boosters program does good work to open up infrastructure and access for new contributorts. Karsten -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-kde+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-kde+help@opensuse.org

Andrew Wafaa

22:33

On Thu, 2010-03-25 at 09:03 +0100, Martin Schlander wrote:

...

I'm not sure exactly what kind of answers you're looking for. But here are some stray thoughts of mine about the state of the geeko nation.

I'm not necessarily looking for answers, but some guidance never hurts :-) Airing your thoughts is ideal and pretty much gets the ball rolling - thanks.

...

The main thing we're missing is a clear goal and direction. Wanting to be "the best community distro available" is too vague and can mean a ton of different things to different people. As a comparison I think Ubuntu and Fedora have goals and identities that are operational and that it's pretty clear to most people what they are and what they want to do.

So what you're saying is we need both long-term *and* short term goals that are realistic and achievable? That makes perfect sense, and I whole heartily agree. As long as we don't fix the direction or targets too much in stone then it shouldn't be a problem to achieve; I think one thing we as a community need to do better is be more agile. Any chance of examples from Ubuntu & Fedora just so that I (and maybe others) can see what you mean, please?

...

In terms of infrastructure, I think we're more likely to have too much of it than missing anything. Though I sometimes miss a good and easy way to get an overview of who maintains (or doesn't maintain) what packages, what jobs currently need to be done, and good handling of package requests.

Are you saying we have too many tools? Or is it the fact the tools are disparate and don't "blend"? In my opinion I'm not so sure we have too many, but that we don't really know how to use what we have - I'm guilty of that lack of knowledge.

...

In terms of software I think the main things holding the distro back are: * broken ATi repo (guess we're defenseless here)

Unfortunately we are pretty powerless when it comes to the proprietary drivers, and the open equivalents have way too much political baggage to make things simple. Saying that, hopefully we can work as a community and even potentially work with both upstream and fellow distros to sort things out - maybe that's what it takes to get the "sponsors" to actually start listening.

...

* updater applet (used by ~99% of users almost daily for important tasks, but is sooo not working smooth, and obviously not a priority)

If it is deemed of high enough importance by the community, then we have to get the priority raised so that we can get things fixed. We need to engage those that are able to fix it, get a dialogue going and explain clearly what is wrong and why it is so important. It may seem obvious to you and some others, but sometimes developers work in weird and mysterious ways. A little nudge can often work wonders.

...

* yast and zypper hiding vendor change update availability from non-experts

I may be mistaken, but I was under the impression that an explanation to this issue had been made. If there hasn't been one then we can always ask for one. We may not like the reasoning, but as long as the reasoning is sound and explained clearly it is one of those things.

...

Other than that I think we're in good shape. Just need to keep working and continually do decent releases, and we should return to former strength and more - if we can avoid more PR disasters and disastrous releases (10.1/ZMD, 11.0/KDE4.0, 11.1/11-months-of-death-by-a-thousand-bugs).

Indeed, there is no room for relaxing. At least not yet, maybe we can kick back on the beach with a cool drink once we have conquered the world :-D Thanks for you're input, I and hopefully others appreciate it. Regards, Andy -- Andrew Wafaa, openSUSE Member: FunkyPenguin. PGP: 0x3A36312F openSUSE: Get It, Discover It, Create It at http://www.opensuse.org

Martin Schlander

26 Mar 26 Mar

07:59

Torsdag den 25. marts 2010 23:33:07 skrev Andrew Wafaa:

...

On Thu, 2010-03-25 at 09:03 +0100, Martin Schlander wrote:

...
The main thing we're missing is a clear goal and direction. Wanting to be "the best community distro available" is too vague and can mean a ton of different things to different people. As a comparison I think Ubuntu and Fedora have goals and identities that are operational and that it's pretty clear to most people what they are and what they want to do.

So what you're saying is we need both long-term *and* short term goals that are realistic and achievable? That makes perfect sense, and I whole heartily agree. As long as we don't fix the direction or targets too much in stone then it shouldn't be a problem to achieve; I think one thing we as a community need to do better is be more agile. Any chance of examples from Ubuntu & Fedora just so that I (and maybe others) can see what you mean, please?

I mean we need one main, long term goal and purpose, that can be summed up in a single sentence - which is operational enough to guide technical priorities and decision making, as well as focus marketing. Ubuntu have their bug #1 - breaking MS dominance. Wanting to be the "Linux for hobbits". Fedora is all about bleeding edge and free software. What is openSUSE about? Some say it's bleeding edge for geeks and testbed for SLE... some say it's quite stable and user friendly... some say it's for experts... some say it's professional and polished. But it can't be all those things at the same time, and the result is we have people pulling in different directions cuz there's no real agreement on what openSUSE should and shouldn't be. Personally I'd like to see openSUSE as "the professional and productive GNU/Linux for home users" - I think we're in a good position to do that, but there are definitely forces pulling in different directions.

...

...
In terms of infrastructure, I think we're more likely to have too much of it than missing anything. Though I sometimes miss a good and easy way to get an overview of who maintains (or doesn't maintain) what packages, what jobs currently need to be done, and good handling of package requests.

Are you saying we have too many tools? Or is it the fact the tools are disparate and don't "blend"? In my opinion I'm not so sure we have too many, but that we don't really know how to use what we have - I'm guilty of that lack of knowledge.

I'm not sure e.g. why we need lizards in addition to planetsuse, or how much value users.o.o/connect ads, also how many different version control systems hold openSUSE related stuff now, berlios, gitorious, forgesvn, others? I think our infrastructure could be leaner - making things easier for new contributors and for the admins.

...

...
* updater applet (used by ~99% of users almost daily for important tasks, but is sooo not working smooth, and obviously not a priority)

If it is deemed of high enough importance by the community, then we have to get the priority raised so that we can get things fixed.

The thing is the community won't deem it important. Cuz any active community member knows enough to use zypper or yast to install some patches. But if openSUSE is supposed to be succesful beyond a few geeks and enthusiasts, the updater applet is very important. I can hardly go to a lug meeting or a forum without people complaining about it to me - and I can't blame them I must say.

...

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* yast and zypper hiding vendor change update availability from non-experts

I may be mistaken, but I was under the impression that an explanation to this issue had been made.

Explanations only help the handful of geeks and enthusiasts that listen - and it doesn't change the fact that too much work and knowledge is required to perform vendor change updates for single packages. I haven't checked the state in factory/11.3 yet though - maybe it has been improved sufficiently already. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-kde+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-kde+help@opensuse.org

Karsten König

08:13

Am Freitag, 26. März 2010 08:59:40 schrieb Martin Schlander:

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Torsdag den 25. marts 2010 23:33:07 skrev Andrew Wafaa:

...
On Thu, 2010-03-25 at 09:03 +0100, Martin Schlander wrote:

...
The main thing we're missing is a clear goal and direction. Wanting to be "the best community distro available" is too vague and can mean a ton of different things to different people. As a comparison I think Ubuntu and Fedora have goals and identities that are operational and that it's pretty clear to most people what they are and what they want to do.

So what you're saying is we need both long-term *and* short term goals that are realistic and achievable? That makes perfect sense, and I whole heartily agree. As long as we don't fix the direction or targets too much in stone then it shouldn't be a problem to achieve; I think one thing we as a community need to do better is be more agile. Any chance of examples from Ubuntu & Fedora just so that I (and maybe others) can see what you mean, please?

I mean we need one main, long term goal and purpose, that can be summed up in a single sentence - which is operational enough to guide technical priorities and decision making, as well as focus marketing.

Ubuntu have their bug #1 - breaking MS dominance. Wanting to be the "Linux for hobbits".

Fedora is all about bleeding edge and free software.

What is openSUSE about? Some say it's bleeding edge for geeks and testbed for SLE... some say it's quite stable and user friendly... some say it's for experts... some say it's professional and polished. But it can't be all those things at the same time, and the result is we have people pulling in different directions cuz there's no real agreement on what openSUSE should and shouldn't be.

Personally I'd like to see openSUSE as "the professional and productive GNU/Linux for home users" - I think we're in a good position to do that, but there are definitely forces pulling in different directions.

I agree, I've always seen openSUSE as the calm backwaters where things move without too much or to few changes, using obs can get your ship into more rough waters for the waters you care about but that's it. Fedora sometimes can't do without burning up their own fleet somehow and ubuntu, well they are the goonsquad of the distributions I guess, where still canonical gives the orders (ubuntu is your personal army...) Btw I think openSUSE shares alot of familarities with Mandriva =)

...

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...
In terms of infrastructure, I think we're more likely to have too much of it than missing anything. Though I sometimes miss a good and easy way to get an overview of who maintains (or doesn't maintain) what packages, what jobs currently need to be done, and good handling of package requests.

Are you saying we have too many tools? Or is it the fact the tools are disparate and don't "blend"? In my opinion I'm not so sure we have too many, but that we don't really know how to use what we have - I'm guilty of that lack of knowledge.

I'm not sure e.g. why we need lizards in addition to planetsuse, or how much value users.o.o/connect ads, also how many different version control systems hold openSUSE related stuff now, berlios, gitorious, forgesvn, others? I think our infrastructure could be leaner - making things easier for new contributors and for the admins.

+1, I prefer the way trac handles things like this, nearly everything works with tickets, feature requests, bugs, release coordination etc, on opensuse we have things like openfate which give another tool noone has a good overview over, things get lost their quickly, if we'd do the features in bugzilla the same people assigning bugs could assign features. I am not saying openFATE is a bad tool, we just aren't capable of making good use yet Karsten -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-kde+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-kde+help@opensuse.org

Thomas Schmidt

11:17

On 03/26/2010 08:59 AM, Martin Schlander wrote:

...

Torsdag den 25. marts 2010 23:33:07 skrev Andrew Wafaa:

...
On Thu, 2010-03-25 at 09:03 +0100, Martin Schlander wrote:

...

I'm not sure e.g. why we need lizards in addition to planetsuse, or how much value users.o.o/connect ads, also how many different version control systems hold openSUSE related stuff now, berlios, gitorious, forgesvn, others? I think our infrastructure could be leaner - making things easier for new contributors and for the admins.

There should be just berlios (svn) and gitorious (git). We moved to those because forgesvn is going to be shut down. Most of our current development happens on gitorious now, berlios is used as an archive for projects that didn't get converted to git, and for projects where the maintainers had strong objections against switching to git. Greetings http://gitorious.org/opensuse https://developer.berlios.de/projects/opensuse/ -- Thomas Schmidt (tschmidt [at] suse.de) SUSE Linux Products GmbH :: Research & Development :: Tools "Don't Panic" Douglas Adams (1952 - 11.05.2001) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-kde+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-kde+help@opensuse.org

Bruno Friedmann

14:00

On 03/26/2010 08:59 AM, Martin Schlander wrote:

...

Torsdag den 25. marts 2010 23:33:07 skrev Andrew Wafaa:

...
On Thu, 2010-03-25 at 09:03 +0100, Martin Schlander wrote:

...
The main thing we're missing is a clear goal and direction. Wanting to be "the best community distro available" is too vague and can mean a ton of different things to different people. As a comparison I think Ubuntu and Fedora have goals and identities that are operational and that it's pretty clear to most people what they are and what they want to do.

So what you're saying is we need both long-term *and* short term goals that are realistic and achievable? That makes perfect sense, and I whole heartily agree. As long as we don't fix the direction or targets too much in stone then it shouldn't be a problem to achieve; I think one thing we as a community need to do better is be more agile. Any chance of examples from Ubuntu & Fedora just so that I (and maybe others) can see what you mean, please?

I mean we need one main, long term goal and purpose, that can be summed up in a single sentence - which is operational enough to guide technical priorities and decision making, as well as focus marketing.

Ubuntu have their bug #1 - breaking MS dominance. Wanting to be the "Linux for hobbits".

Fedora is all about bleeding edge and free software.

What is openSUSE about? Some say it's bleeding edge for geeks and testbed for SLE... some say it's quite stable and user friendly... some say it's for experts... some say it's professional and polished. But it can't be all those things at the same time, and the result is we have people pulling in different directions cuz there's no real agreement on what openSUSE should and shouldn't be.

Personally I'd like to see openSUSE as "the professional and productive GNU/Linux for home users" - I think we're in a good position to do that, but there are definitely forces pulling in different directions.

I would prefer professionnal and productive GNU/Linux for professionnal (People making money with their computer) This type of people would paid support and have a big interest in a lean tool. We have loose some of these people with some lazy release of geecko. We must made a stop to that. Home users are very volatile in terms of market. my 2 cents -- Bruno Friedmann -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-kde+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-kde+help@opensuse.org

todd rme

15:42

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Currently the packages like kdeedu, kdeadmin, and kdegames do not do much beyond just installing the libkdeedu and libkdegames packages, which is fairly redundant. I think it would be better if these installed the software that is part of the respective KDE svn repositories. So, for example, installing kdeedu would install all of packages built from software in the kdeedu svn repository. This would also simplify the kde4-games ymp, it would just need to depend on the kdegames package and any other games not packaged with a KDE sc, instead of all the games individually.

there are patterns for that, they are the proper way to go for package bundles

Then we should probably get rid of those packages, since they don't do anything useful.

They are basicly the same as the kdelibs package, kdelibs itself doesn't do anything useful either (I think, maybe there are some applications but let's not go down to hair splitting) They contain the library every game / admin / edu package requires so if I only want khangman I get khangman and kdegames You could name it libkdegames or so, but it's like the repo names, changing requires annoying work =)

As I said, there already is a libkdegames. All kdegames does is depend on libkdegames. That is why I said it was redundant. It also suggests the kde games, but since suggestions don't seem to do anything in yast2, that doesn't really help any. -Todd -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-kde+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-kde+help@opensuse.org

todd rme

15:43

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There may be a good reason for this, but a common complaint is that sub-pixel rendering for fonts is not turned on by default in opensuse in KDE, unlike in most distributions, resulting in ugly fonts.

I think that's a legal thing again as these use patented concepts.

So it is legal to include it in the software, but not to enable it?

I think opensuses font libraries don't even support it, so enabling shouldn't change anything. But I don't track all the legal issues, novell barely documents what's blocked by legal department =/ Even if they'd release a fontlib with enabled subpixel hinting the kde devel group wouldn't notice right away, inter group communication still looks somewhat flaky from the outside =)

Once again, if KDE doesn't support it, then there should probably be some indication of that when you try to change the setting, or just block people from changing the setting at all. -Todd -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-kde+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-kde+help@opensuse.org

todd rme

25 Mar 25 Mar

16:45

On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 5:40 PM, Andrew Wafaa wrote:

...

So basically I'm looking to see what you the KDE Community feel is missing, an issue, could be improved etc. Also crucially how do you think any of the issues can be resolved.

Overall I am very happy with KDE on opensuse. There are some issues, though, but none that I would consider critical. First, the layout of the repositories. The most basic thing is I think we need separate KDE3 and KDE4 backports repositories. Currently the backports repository is a mix of KDE 3 and KDE 4 software, and without hunting through the dependencies it is impossible to tell what is KDE 3 software and what is KDE 4 software. For people wanting to keep a clean KDE 4 system this a hassle, especially when there are KDE 4 alternatives available. I also think that the naming of the "playground" repository is misleading. KDE's playground has a specific meaning, which is not the same a the opensuse KDE playground repository. I think if we are using the same names as KDE, it should do the same thing, and if it does something different it should have a different name. Something like "experimental", "testing", or "unstable extras" would be better in my opinion. Speaking of KDE repositories, in my opinion, opensuse could do a better job packaging software from KDE's own extragear repository. For instance the google akonadi resource was released as stable just a week after 4.3 was released, but was not actually packaged by openSUSE until after 4.4 was released over 6 months later. On the other hand things from kde-apps.org and kde-look.org get packaged almost immediately. Kchess, for example, was released on kde-apps.org 2 days ago and is already available from opensuse. There are similar issues with playground. For instance openSUSE still does not have the mplayer or vlc phonon backends, despite the fact that they are packaged by other distributions and are supposed to be a in a pretty usable state and hosted by KDE, while marave, hosted by google and much newer, is available. Other, probably less stable playground software and third-party software is packaged as well. There is also an issue with missing or broken dependencies. For instance the main cantor backend, sage, is not available from openSUSE, making cantor pretty useless. Neither is R, another backend. Further, the only backend available (besides the built-in kalgebra one) is maxima, and you have to add another repository to use it. I'm not sure the best solution for that, but it is an issue. Ideally packages required or suggested by KDE software and that opensuse is legally allowed to distribute would be available in the main opensuse oss repository and/or the kde desktop/backports repository, but that may or may not be feasible. Similarly, changes to how phonon works with pulseaudio for KDE SC 4.4 meant pulseaudio support was broken for opensuse in KDE SC 4.4. Fixes are available, but have not yet been packaged for opensuse even though it has been a couple of months since 4.4 was released (this was discussed recently on this mailing list). I think it was either xapian or recoll that could not be installed at all due to missing dependencies until recently. The last case may be a problem with buildservice allowing packages whose dependencies are not available to still be released, it should probably at least put out warnings if that happens. Also, eric does not seem to run at all, at least for me and many others, and hasn't since at least september, although a working version is available from the developer's own buildservice repository (although it conflicts with some of opensuse's own packages). With the release of the netbook reference version, I think that the release should be mirrored in the KDE repositories so openSUSE users can easily install it as their main system. Other future reference implementations would also be made available (or put in a single repository with meta packages that would pick out just the bits from a given reference implantation). This would also solve the request of having vanilla KDE packages available. The argument to this point was that it was infeasible, but if you are working with KDE to provide vanilla KDE packages that install on opensuse then I don't think it would be much extra work to just put those same packages in the repository (although I could be wrong). I think that the KDE release one-click-installs (currently named KDE4-BASIS, KDE4-DEFAULT, KDE4-DEVEL, and KDE4-GAMES) should be renamed to match the new KDE branding. Namely, there should be a kde-platform ymp for just the libraries (so people can use KDE in a non-KDE DE), a kde-workspaces ymp that includes the desktop environment but no other software, a kde-sc-base and kde-sc-default corresponding to to the current kde4-basis and kde4-default, respectively, and then kde-devel. I don't think there is any need to have kde4 in the names anymore. Currently the packages like kdeedu, kdeadmin, and kdegames do not do much beyond just installing the libkdeedu and libkdegames packages, which is fairly redundant. I think it would be better if these installed the software that is part of the respective KDE svn repositories. So, for example, installing kdeedu would install all of packages built from software in the kdeedu svn repository. This would also simplify the kde4-games ymp, it would just need to depend on the kdegames package and any other games not packaged with a KDE sc, instead of all the games individually. I understand that it is a lot of work to keep the KDE repositories going, and I don't know which if any of these are actually feasible in practice, but they are problems I have noticed that I think would be good to address if possible. As for non-packing issues: I think we need a fix for the kdm configuration issue. There is already a kdm configuration tool, I think we should be allowed to use it (I'm not implying we are purposefully blocked from using, just that it cannot be used currently). If you open the "network settings" module in KDE's system settings, it tells you that opensuse is not supported, then lists all the supported platforms (suse linux 9.1 is the most recent suse version supported). I think having support for opensuse in the KDE network settings module is important. I might be missing a package that provides support, but if there is such a package it should probably be a dependency. There may be a good reason for this, but a common complaint is that sub-pixel rendering for fonts is not turned on by default in opensuse in KDE, unlike in most distributions, resulting in ugly fonts. I agree with the updater applet needs to be fixed. Having to open yast just to install updated packages does not seem like a good approach to me considering how often updated packages are made available. What Martin said about the ATI repo also holds true for the nvidia repo. It has been a week and a half since the release of the newest stable nvidia driver, 195.36.15, yet it it still not available from opensuse's repository. There are also no unstable nvidia drivers at all, which would normally not an issue but for the nvidia drivers that are frankly not that good to begin with having unstable drivers available is often necessary for people to get reasonable performance and support for newer hardware on their systems. This shouldn't be too big a hassle, unstable drivers are released weeks if not months apart and stable drivers are released months apart. I may have more later, but this is what I can think of right now. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-kde+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-kde+help@opensuse.org

Karsten König

21:08

Am Donnerstag, 25. März 2010 17:45:56 schrieb todd rme:

...

On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 5:40 PM, Andrew Wafaa wrote:

...
So basically I'm looking to see what you the KDE Community feel is missing, an issue, could be improved etc. Also crucially how do you think any of the issues can be resolved.

Overall I am very happy with KDE on opensuse. There are some issues, though, but none that I would consider critical.

First, the layout of the repositories. The most basic thing is I think we need separate KDE3 and KDE4 backports repositories. Currently the backports repository is a mix of KDE 3 and KDE 4 software, and without hunting through the dependencies it is impossible to tell what is KDE 3 software and what is KDE 4 software. For people wanting to keep a clean KDE 4 system this a hassle, especially when there are KDE 4 alternatives available.

I also think that the naming of the "playground" repository is misleading. KDE's playground has a specific meaning, which is not the same a the opensuse KDE playground repository. I think if we are using the same names as KDE, it should do the same thing, and if it does something different it should have a different name. Something like "experimental", "testing", or "unstable extras" would be better in my opinion.

Gah not the repositories again, there has been a lot of discussion about this already and this deemed the most proper way based on opensuse(!) development. Most people now live with it, so changing it would be breaking alot of setups again, let's just live with it, the repository structure is explained pretty good on the wiki page even with the mixup of opensuse / kde terms.

...

Speaking of KDE repositories, in my opinion, opensuse could do a better job packaging software from KDE's own extragear repository. For instance the google akonadi resource was released as stable just a week after 4.3 was released, but was not actually packaged by openSUSE until after 4.4 was released over 6 months later. On the other hand things from kde-apps.org and kde-look.org get packaged almost immediately. Kchess, for example, was released on kde-apps.org 2 days ago and is already available from opensuse.

There are similar issues with playground. For instance openSUSE still does not have the mplayer or vlc phonon backends, despite the fact that they are packaged by other distributions and are supposed to be a in a pretty usable state and hosted by KDE, while marave, hosted by google and much newer, is available. Other, probably less stable playground software and third-party software is packaged as well.

mplayer and vlc is a no go on novell hosted repositories

...

There is also an issue with missing or broken dependencies. For instance the main cantor backend, sage, is not available from openSUSE, making cantor pretty useless. Neither is R, another backend. Further, the only backend available (besides the built-in kalgebra one) is maxima, and you have to add another repository to use it. I'm not sure the best solution for that, but it is an issue. Ideally packages required or suggested by KDE software and that opensuse is legally allowed to distribute would be available in the main opensuse oss repository and/or the kde desktop/backports repository, but that may or may not be feasible.

Similarly, changes to how phonon works with pulseaudio for KDE SC 4.4 meant pulseaudio support was broken for opensuse in KDE SC 4.4. Fixes are available, but have not yet been packaged for opensuse even though it has been a couple of months since 4.4 was released (this was discussed recently on this mailing list). I think it was either xapian or recoll that could not be installed at all due to missing dependencies until recently. The last case may be a problem with buildservice allowing packages whose dependencies are not available to still be released, it should probably at least put out warnings if that happens. Also, eric does not seem to run at all, at least for me and many others, and hasn't since at least september, although a working version is available from the developer's own buildservice repository (although it conflicts with some of opensuse's own packages).

Throwing all this in a single big mail with also other points doesn't help tracking down faulty or missing packaging, either do single mails or bugreports towards the proper repositories. I know we have a lot of eager people packaging basicly everything they can get their hands on (I remember especially tittiacoke), but they can't track every kde related place on the web for useful stuff.

...

With the release of the netbook reference version, I think that the release should be mirrored in the KDE repositories so openSUSE users can easily install it as their main system. Other future reference implementations would also be made available (or put in a single repository with meta packages that would pick out just the bits from a given reference implantation). This would also solve the request of having vanilla KDE packages available. The argument to this point was that it was infeasible, but if you are working with KDE to provide vanilla KDE packages that install on opensuse then I don't think it would be much extra work to just put those same packages in the repository (although I could be wrong).

I think using it for an opensuse-kde-netbook spin is already beeing considered, depends on what is useful and what not. But I don't think having like 10 opensuse related official spins is a good thing, better promote "community spins" The netbook reference uses the UNSTABLE repository, or whatever version they currently target so their is no new kde clone on the obs.

...

I think that the KDE release one-click-installs (currently named KDE4-BASIS, KDE4-DEFAULT, KDE4-DEVEL, and KDE4-GAMES) should be renamed to match the new KDE branding. Namely, there should be a kde-platform ymp for just the libraries (so people can use KDE in a non-KDE DE), a kde-workspaces ymp that includes the desktop environment but no other software, a kde-sc-base and kde-sc-default corresponding to to the current kde4-basis and kde4-default, respectively, and then kde-devel. I don't think there is any need to have kde4 in the names anymore.

add it to the kde ideas page for 11.3 http://en.opensuse.org/KDE/Ideas/11.3

...

Currently the packages like kdeedu, kdeadmin, and kdegames do not do much beyond just installing the libkdeedu and libkdegames packages, which is fairly redundant. I think it would be better if these installed the software that is part of the respective KDE svn repositories. So, for example, installing kdeedu would install all of packages built from software in the kdeedu svn repository. This would also simplify the kde4-games ymp, it would just need to depend on the kdegames package and any other games not packaged with a KDE sc, instead of all the games individually.

there are patterns for that, they are the proper way to go for package bundles

...

I understand that it is a lot of work to keep the KDE repositories going, and I don't know which if any of these are actually feasible in practice, but they are problems I have noticed that I think would be good to address if possible.

As for non-packing issues:

I think we need a fix for the kdm configuration issue. There is already a kdm configuration tool, I think we should be allowed to use it (I'm not implying we are purposefully blocked from using, just that it cannot be used currently).

+1 on that, the yast / kdm competition about proper autologin etc are still somewhat confusing

...

If you open the "network settings" module in KDE's system settings, it tells you that opensuse is not supported, then lists all the supported platforms (suse linux 9.1 is the most recent suse version supported). I think having support for opensuse in the KDE network settings module is important. I might be missing a package that provides support, but if there is such a package it should probably be a dependency.

huh? For me it's the config stuff for networkmanager

...

There may be a good reason for this, but a common complaint is that sub-pixel rendering for fonts is not turned on by default in opensuse in KDE, unlike in most distributions, resulting in ugly fonts.

I think that's a legal thing again as these use patented concepts.

...

I agree with the updater applet needs to be fixed. Having to open yast just to install updated packages does not seem like a good approach to me considering how often updated packages are made available.

What Martin said about the ATI repo also holds true for the nvidia repo. It has been a week and a half since the release of the newest stable nvidia driver, 195.36.15, yet it it still not available from opensuse's repository. There are also no unstable nvidia drivers at all, which would normally not an issue but for the nvidia drivers that are frankly not that good to begin with having unstable drivers available is often necessary for people to get reasonable performance and support for newer hardware on their systems. This shouldn't be too big a hassle, unstable drivers are released weeks if not months apart and stable drivers are released months apart.

Not opensuses call, nudge nvidia / ati to get their act together on the repos, they could easily set up an obs linking to opensuse to get their updates out timely.

...

I may have more later, but this is what I can think of right now.

Please don't write such big emails next time, they are hard to parse especially if one wants to tackle a specific point, you can't proper thread afterwards on single issues etc =) Karsten -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-kde+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-kde+help@opensuse.org

todd rme

22:11

2010/3/25 Karsten König :

...

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Speaking of KDE repositories, in my opinion, opensuse could do a better job packaging software from KDE's own extragear repository. For instance the google akonadi resource was released as stable just a week after 4.3 was released, but was not actually packaged by openSUSE until after 4.4 was released over 6 months later. On the other hand things from kde-apps.org and kde-look.org get packaged almost immediately. Kchess, for example, was released on kde-apps.org 2 days ago and is already available from opensuse.

There are similar issues with playground. For instance openSUSE still does not have the mplayer or vlc phonon backends, despite the fact that they are packaged by other distributions and are supposed to be a in a pretty usable state and hosted by KDE, while marave, hosted by google and much newer, is available. Other, probably less stable playground software and third-party software is packaged as well.

mplayer and vlc is a no go on novell hosted repositories

This wouldn't require hosting player or vlc themselves, just provide the phonon backends that can make use of the programs if they are available. The official kde repositories already hosts kmplayer and mplayerthumbs, this would be no different.

...

...
There is also an issue with missing or broken dependencies. For instance the main cantor backend, sage, is not available from openSUSE, making cantor pretty useless. Neither is R, another backend. Further, the only backend available (besides the built-in kalgebra one) is maxima, and you have to add another repository to use it. I'm not sure the best solution for that, but it is an issue. Ideally packages required or suggested by KDE software and that opensuse is legally allowed to distribute would be available in the main opensuse oss repository and/or the kde desktop/backports repository, but that may or may not be feasible.

Similarly, changes to how phonon works with pulseaudio for KDE SC 4.4 meant pulseaudio support was broken for opensuse in KDE SC 4.4. Fixes are available, but have not yet been packaged for opensuse even though it has been a couple of months since 4.4 was released (this was discussed recently on this mailing list). I think it was either xapian or recoll that could not be installed at all due to missing dependencies until recently. The last case may be a problem with buildservice allowing packages whose dependencies are not available to still be released, it should probably at least put out warnings if that happens. Also, eric does not seem to run at all, at least for me and many others, and hasn't since at least september, although a working version is available from the developer's own buildservice repository (although it conflicts with some of opensuse's own packages).

Throwing all this in a single big mail with also other points doesn't help tracking down faulty or missing packaging, either do single mails or bugreports towards the proper repositories.

They are examples of the sort of problems I am seeing.

...

I know we have a lot of eager people packaging basicly everything they can get their hands on (I remember especially tittiacoke), but they can't track every kde related place on the web for useful stuff.

"every kde related place on the web"? I am talking about the official KDE svn repository. I am simply saying there should be at least as much attention given to the offical KDE svn repository as given to kde-look.org and google code. Of course they can't keep track of every random website, but I do think software provided by the official KDE svn repository should be made available.

...

...
With the release of the netbook reference version, I think that the release should be mirrored in the KDE repositories so openSUSE users can easily install it as their main system. Other future reference implementations would also be made available (or put in a single repository with meta packages that would pick out just the bits from a given reference implantation). This would also solve the request of having vanilla KDE packages available. The argument to this point was that it was infeasible, but if you are working with KDE to provide vanilla KDE packages that install on opensuse then I don't think it would be much extra work to just put those same packages in the repository (although I could be wrong).

I think using it for an opensuse-kde-netbook spin is already beeing considered, depends on what is useful and what not. But I don't think having like 10 opensuse related official spins is a good thing, better promote "community spins" The netbook reference uses the UNSTABLE repository, or whatever version they currently target so their is no new kde clone on the obs.

It looks like this is actually already done, but it only has i686 versions available, no x86_64 installation is available.

...

...
I think that the KDE release one-click-installs (currently named KDE4-BASIS, KDE4-DEFAULT, KDE4-DEVEL, and KDE4-GAMES) should be renamed to match the new KDE branding. Namely, there should be a kde-platform ymp for just the libraries (so people can use KDE in a non-KDE DE), a kde-workspaces ymp that includes the desktop environment but no other software, a kde-sc-base and kde-sc-default corresponding to to the current kde4-basis and kde4-default, respectively, and then kde-devel. I don't think there is any need to have kde4 in the names anymore.

add it to the kde ideas page for 11.3 http://en.opensuse.org/KDE/Ideas/11.3

Okay.

...

...
Currently the packages like kdeedu, kdeadmin, and kdegames do not do much beyond just installing the libkdeedu and libkdegames packages, which is fairly redundant. I think it would be better if these installed the software that is part of the respective KDE svn repositories. So, for example, installing kdeedu would install all of packages built from software in the kdeedu svn repository. This would also simplify the kde4-games ymp, it would just need to depend on the kdegames package and any other games not packaged with a KDE sc, instead of all the games individually.

there are patterns for that, they are the proper way to go for package bundles

Then we should probably get rid of those packages, since they don't do anything useful.

...

...
If you open the "network settings" module in KDE's system settings, it tells you that opensuse is not supported, then lists all the supported platforms (suse linux 9.1 is the most recent suse version supported). I think having support for opensuse in the KDE network settings module is important. I might be missing a package that provides support, but if there is such a package it should probably be a dependency.

huh? For me it's the config stuff for networkmanager

I always get this error when I open it, unless I tell it not to show the error anymore (but then parts don't work properly).

...

...
There may be a good reason for this, but a common complaint is that sub-pixel rendering for fonts is not turned on by default in opensuse in KDE, unlike in most distributions, resulting in ugly fonts.

I think that's a legal thing again as these use patented concepts.

So it is legal to include it in the software, but not to enable it?

...

...
What Martin said about the ATI repo also holds true for the nvidia repo. It has been a week and a half since the release of the newest stable nvidia driver, 195.36.15, yet it it still not available from opensuse's repository. There are also no unstable nvidia drivers at all, which would normally not an issue but for the nvidia drivers that are frankly not that good to begin with having unstable drivers available is often necessary for people to get reasonable performance and support for newer hardware on their systems. This shouldn't be too big a hassle, unstable drivers are released weeks if not months apart and stable drivers are released months apart.

Not opensuses call, nudge nvidia / ati to get their act together on the repos, they could easily set up an obs linking to opensuse to get their updates out timely.

Yes, it is opensuse's call. I am not sure about the ATI repository but the nvidia repository it is only hosted by nvidia, all of the packing is done by opensuse, nvidia has no part in making or maintaing the packages.

...

...
I may have more later, but this is what I can think of right now.

Please don't write such big emails next time, they are hard to parse especially if one wants to tackle a specific point, you can't proper thread afterwards on single issues etc =)

So I am supposed to post a lot of individual emails? I am not be snarky, I am trying to understand what the best approach to take is. -Todd -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-kde+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-kde+help@opensuse.org

Karsten König

22:37

Am Donnerstag, 25. März 2010 23:11:04 schrieb todd rme:

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2010/3/25 Karsten König :

...
...
Speaking of KDE repositories, in my opinion, opensuse could do a better job packaging software from KDE's own extragear repository. For instance the google akonadi resource was released as stable just a week after 4.3 was released, but was not actually packaged by openSUSE until after 4.4 was released over 6 months later. On the other hand things from kde-apps.org and kde-look.org get packaged almost immediately. Kchess, for example, was released on kde-apps.org 2 days ago and is already available from opensuse.

There are similar issues with playground. For instance openSUSE still does not have the mplayer or vlc phonon backends, despite the fact that they are packaged by other distributions and are supposed to be a in a pretty usable state and hosted by KDE, while marave, hosted by google and much newer, is available. Other, probably less stable playground software and third-party software is packaged as well.

mplayer and vlc is a no go on novell hosted repositories

This wouldn't require hosting player or vlc themselves, just provide the phonon backends that can make use of the programs if they are available. The official kde repositories already hosts kmplayer and mplayerthumbs, this would be no different.

ok, I didn't knew they don't require mplayer/vlc to build, then please just fire off a request

...

...
...
There is also an issue with missing or broken dependencies. For instance the main cantor backend, sage, is not available from openSUSE, making cantor pretty useless. Neither is R, another backend. Further, the only backend available (besides the built-in kalgebra one) is maxima, and you have to add another repository to use it. I'm not sure the best solution for that, but it is an issue. Ideally packages required or suggested by KDE software and that opensuse is legally allowed to distribute would be available in the main opensuse oss repository and/or the kde desktop/backports repository, but that may or may not be feasible.

Similarly, changes to how phonon works with pulseaudio for KDE SC 4.4 meant pulseaudio support was broken for opensuse in KDE SC 4.4. Fixes are available, but have not yet been packaged for opensuse even though it has been a couple of months since 4.4 was released (this was discussed recently on this mailing list). I think it was either xapian or recoll that could not be installed at all due to missing dependencies until recently. The last case may be a problem with buildservice allowing packages whose dependencies are not available to still be released, it should probably at least put out warnings if that happens. Also, eric does not seem to run at all, at least for me and many others, and hasn't since at least september, although a working version is available from the developer's own buildservice repository (although it conflicts with some of opensuse's own packages).

Throwing all this in a single big mail with also other points doesn't help tracking down faulty or missing packaging, either do single mails or bugreports towards the proper repositories.

They are examples of the sort of problems I am seeing.

I don't want to downwash the effort you put into this mail, it's just hard to work with.

...

...
I know we have a lot of eager people packaging basicly everything they can get their hands on (I remember especially tittiacoke), but they can't track every kde related place on the web for useful stuff.

"every kde related place on the web"? I am talking about the official KDE svn repository. I am simply saying there should be at least as much attention given to the offical KDE svn repository as given to kde-look.org and google code. Of course they can't keep track of every random website, but I do think software provided by the official KDE svn repository should be made available.

Have you checked the kde repository? The place is a junkyard you can barely follow for single new applications, kde-apps.org has a feed with updates that matter to a packager, you can't do that on kde svn. I don't know what's the proper way new additions to the svn get announced, but the most time I know something new is in kde svn is when someones post runs by on the planet.

...

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With the release of the netbook reference version, I think that the release should be mirrored in the KDE repositories so openSUSE users can easily install it as their main system. Other future reference implementations would also be made available (or put in a single repository with meta packages that would pick out just the bits from a given reference implantation). This would also solve the request of having vanilla KDE packages available. The argument to this point was that it was infeasible, but if you are working with KDE to provide vanilla KDE packages that install on opensuse then I don't think it would be much extra work to just put those same packages in the repository (although I could be wrong).

I think using it for an opensuse-kde-netbook spin is already beeing considered, depends on what is useful and what not. But I don't think having like 10 opensuse related official spins is a good thing, better promote "community spins" The netbook reference uses the UNSTABLE repository, or whatever version they currently target so their is no new kde clone on the obs.

It looks like this is actually already done, but it only has i686 versions available, no x86_64 installation is available.

...
...
I think that the KDE release one-click-installs (currently named KDE4-BASIS, KDE4-DEFAULT, KDE4-DEVEL, and KDE4-GAMES) should be renamed to match the new KDE branding. Namely, there should be a kde-platform ymp for just the libraries (so people can use KDE in a non-KDE DE), a kde-workspaces ymp that includes the desktop environment but no other software, a kde-sc-base and kde-sc-default corresponding to to the current kde4-basis and kde4-default, respectively, and then kde-devel. I don't think there is any need to have kde4 in the names anymore.

add it to the kde ideas page for 11.3 http://en.opensuse.org/KDE/Ideas/11.3

Okay.

...
...
Currently the packages like kdeedu, kdeadmin, and kdegames do not do much beyond just installing the libkdeedu and libkdegames packages, which is fairly redundant. I think it would be better if these installed the software that is part of the respective KDE svn repositories. So, for example, installing kdeedu would install all of packages built from software in the kdeedu svn repository. This would also simplify the kde4-games ymp, it would just need to depend on the kdegames package and any other games not packaged with a KDE sc, instead of all the games individually.

there are patterns for that, they are the proper way to go for package bundles

Then we should probably get rid of those packages, since they don't do anything useful.

They are basicly the same as the kdelibs package, kdelibs itself doesn't do anything useful either (I think, maybe there are some applications but let's not go down to hair splitting) They contain the library every game / admin / edu package requires so if I only want khangman I get khangman and kdegames You could name it libkdegames or so, but it's like the repo names, changing requires annoying work =)

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If you open the "network settings" module in KDE's system settings, it tells you that opensuse is not supported, then lists all the supported platforms (suse linux 9.1 is the most recent suse version supported). I think having support for opensuse in the KDE network settings module is important. I might be missing a package that provides support, but if there is such a package it should probably be a dependency.

huh? For me it's the config stuff for networkmanager

I always get this error when I open it, unless I tell it not to show the error anymore (but then parts don't work properly).

I am on 4.4.1 already, that might be a reason, do you use NM at all?

...

...
...
There may be a good reason for this, but a common complaint is that sub-pixel rendering for fonts is not turned on by default in opensuse in KDE, unlike in most distributions, resulting in ugly fonts.

I think that's a legal thing again as these use patented concepts.

So it is legal to include it in the software, but not to enable it?

I think opensuses font libraries don't even support it, so enabling shouldn't change anything. But I don't track all the legal issues, novell barely documents what's blocked by legal department =/ Even if they'd release a fontlib with enabled subpixel hinting the kde devel group wouldn't notice right away, inter group communication still looks somewhat flaky from the outside =)

...

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...
What Martin said about the ATI repo also holds true for the nvidia repo. It has been a week and a half since the release of the newest stable nvidia driver, 195.36.15, yet it it still not available from opensuse's repository. There are also no unstable nvidia drivers at all, which would normally not an issue but for the nvidia drivers that are frankly not that good to begin with having unstable drivers available is often necessary for people to get reasonable performance and support for newer hardware on their systems. This shouldn't be too big a hassle, unstable drivers are released weeks if not months apart and stable drivers are released months apart.

Not opensuses call, nudge nvidia / ati to get their act together on the repos, they could easily set up an obs linking to opensuse to get their updates out timely.

Yes, it is opensuse's call. I am not sure about the ATI repository but the nvidia repository it is only hosted by nvidia, all of the packing is done by opensuse, nvidia has no part in making or maintaing the packages.

Oh? I didn't knew that, I only know there are build specs available which should help nvidia/ati build their drivers for the respective kernel version.

...

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I may have more later, but this is what I can think of right now.

Please don't write such big emails next time, they are hard to parse especially if one wants to tackle a specific point, you can't proper thread afterwards on single issues etc =)

So I am supposed to post a lot of individual emails? I am not be snarky, I am trying to understand what the best approach to take is.

Yes, it eases the workflow, your mail touched alot of maintainers workplaces right now so everyone would need to open up his own awnser thread for proper handling now anyway =)

...

-Todd

Karsten -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-kde+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-kde+help@opensuse.org

Will Stephenson

26 Mar 26 Mar