On Thu, 5 Mar 2015 21:23, Luca Beltrame wrote:
Hello openSUSE KDE users and contributors,
as you may know, the venerable and stable Plasma Workspace 4.x is nearing the end of its long-term support (LTS) period, with upstream committed to basically only fixing grave bugs and / or security issues. The openSUSE community KDE team has been following the development of the new desktop by KDE, Plasma 5 (backed by the KDE Frameworks 5 libraries), since its first 5.0 release, up to the point of running it ourselves. Our objective was to evaluate whether keeping the 4.x workspace as default desktop, or move towards adoption of 5.x.
This mail outlines the result of our evaluation.
==== Comparisons at a glance ====
Note: we are talking about the workspace ("the desktop") here. Applications are handled separately.
1. Keeping the current Plasma Workspaces 4.x
Pros: ... Cons: ...
2. Going for Plasma 5
Pros: ... Cons:
My personal impression: After a rough test of what is available atm (5.2.1), I'd say the next release (5.3) will be better than KDE4 at its forced intro in openSUSE. So, the "outcry" in moving from 4.x to 5.3 or later should be less than the howl of rage we got during the change from KDE3 to KDE4. What I'd like to see is a minimalized bundle of libs for both, 4.x and 5.x as base, that are side-by-side install-able. Think of running XFCE as DE but using Okular for the PDF needs. How may by the application unneeded "crud" will be installed, with "unselected" recommends, just the required minimum? The smaller this "minimum" base set of libs will be, the grester the acceptance of using KDE apps even outside of Plasma as DE. At the same time, it will become easier to bootstrap building KDE/Plasma. For the next openSUE release my vision would be Plasma 5 as DE, with the option of a "KDE4"-Design/Style, and the possibility to use KDE4 apps parallel to having Plasma 5 as full DE. The most visible niggles will come from the PIM stuff, esp. PIM / Calendar, PIM / Addressbook, and lets NOT repeat the Kmail desaster (Kmail1 to Kmail2), ne? There is still stuff that was easy to accomplish in KDE3 that was/is difficult if possible at all in KDE4, and I'm NOT sold on the "openGL for all" stuff (I'm unsure on who dropped the ball here, Intel via kernel, Intel via Mesa, or KDE) And, looking at the memory and cpu/gpu consumption, I'm near the point that I would delcare Plasma 5 as Heavy-weight with clear tendency to obese. Maybe we should communicate the the Hardware needs clearly. Dual-Core or better at 2.4 GHz or more, with 4 GB Ram or more. Made in 2012 or newer, for having fun. (Win 8 cert. HW) - Yamaban. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-kde+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-kde+owner@opensuse.org