I'm glad to hear from both Pat and Eric on this. I read the blog earlier and debated commenting. I've been using KDE forever and really like it. I appreciate all the time and effort that goes into making it work and work well in Slackware. I want to thank you both for it. The reality is for me that if Slackware would drop KDE, I might have to go distro shopping, which is the absolutely last thing that I want to do. I've been very happy in Slackware land and don't want to think about moving. Plus I just got the swank new Slackware 13.37 t-shirt!

I'm also glad to see that the blog post generated some healthy discussion. Sometimes things just "happen" without people taking the time to figure out if it really should happen.

And Eric, I agree with you about digiKam. I love it and use it, but it is a pain to get all the dependencies. Thankfully most everything that it needs has been included in Slackware 13.x so at least you can easily compile the version of it that is new when the new version of Slackware is released. After a few months, all bets are off

The way I see it:

Slackware gives you a great deal of choice to do whatever one wants to with slackware -- no one is forcing you to use KDE, right?

I currently use KDE 100% but I would not be devastated if it were dropped. The decision should come down to the maintainers level effort needed/desired to keep KDE supported.

Looking at how "proprietary" and "open-source" software has come along recently; they both seem to have some advantages. Why not support both? (KDE is not proprietary but functionally similar as described above i.e. applications just for KDE, total platform, complexity, etc.)

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Hey ya'll,

First off hope you feel better soon, Eric. Just installed your KDE 4.6 packages and they are awesome. That said, KDE is really a bonus for me because I chose Slackware for it's (well deserved) rep as a stable, reliable system, not the eye-candy. However, in the week that I've had it installed, I am getting attached to KDE. Hope that it stays, but I will stay with Slack regardless.

Also many thanks to Pat,Robbie,One-Buck and everyone for the most fun I have ever had pulling my hair out learning linux! My only complaint is Slackware is so well documented I haven't had chance to post any questions yet.
I don't even bother googleing anymore, it just sends me to LQ.


Thanks again ya'll.

Personally I wouldn't care at all if the KDE desktop were phased out, but even as an XFce user myself, a lot of my apps come from the KDE platform. Could I live without Plasma? Absolutely. Could I live without Okular? No.

Yeah those apps are what keep me having KDE installed even though I use fluxbox. Also when I set up a couple of laptops for the office people I used KDE because it is close to the Windows that they are used to using.

I dont have much to add to this thread besides writing down what i wrote earlier on IRC, that although i dont use KDE, and doubt i'll be using it again in the future, i think removing it from Slackware will be a very bad thing for the distribution.
But if Pat can live with it, so can i.

As a user i prefer a non monolithic KDE distribution.

I'd also like to note that the KDE removal topic has been discussed between Pat & Slackware team members before, but i dont remember exactly the point that has happened.
It must've been during the transition to KDE 4.x.y.

I've been a Slackware user for a long time now. I remember when GNOME and KDE were introduced. Hated them both, eventually I migrated to GNOME. When GNOME was dropped. I came close to dropping Slackware altogether. I just could not find a suitable replacement. I start using XFCE. Recently at 13.0, I migrated over to KDE. Out of all of this KDE is now my current favorite. I like KDE, I am comfortable with configuring and using KDE. Lets say I have gotten used to it.

If KDE is dropped, I'll reluctantly with a sigh, go back to XFCE. I really have gotten used to KDE.

If KDE is dropped, perhaps an offering of additional options such as Enlightenment and/or LXDE.

Either way I will adapt. After all the desktop is only the icing on the cake.

I'm all for removing KDE if it will free up enough space on the DVD to replace Blackbox with Openbox

I personally will miss kde if it goes. I hop around desktop environments a lot, and while i do not currently use kde (on fluxbox atm) i use a lot of kde applications that i would not be happy about parting with were the environment dropped.

Haha... I don't have KDE installed, I have one single package from XAP (Firefox), and I don't see that changing any time soon.

Do I have to spend some time configuring TWM? Yeah, but it takes five minutes and I know that no graphical applications are usurping configurations.

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just for fun, I installed oxygen-gtk on LXDE and, for the applications I use, I can't feel much differences

http://ompldr.org/vOHd4ag/lxde-oxygen.png
http://ompldr.org/vOHd5Zg/lxde-oxygen.png

the latest (testing) pcmanfm supporting directory trees looks like dolphin lil' bro'

@ponce does pcmanfm work for smb browsing for you? (go menu -> networks)

I've been trying to get it working but get a load of errors usually.

(sorry for the OT)

the latest code from git works pretty fine, I use it building libfm over gvfs (only that, vala, libgee, udisks and upower as deps, no more GConf, gnome-vfs and friends ).

I vote for fvwm being nicely configured. Those who think I am crazy:
google around. You will find how clean looks may fvwm to have.
Of course recent fvwm shipped with Slackware is poorly configured.
I don't know much about KDE4.xxx
but some applications may run out of KDE4 desktop -
one needs only libraries, I am thinking about dolphin, okular, k3b
or amarok (konqueror is only frontend to the dolphin engine - don't waste your time).

But it's clear that at this moment there is no replacement if Gnome and KDE will be both
dropped.

hm, honestly, I use digiKam selfcompiled 2.0-git by adapting SlackBuilds.org's script, and I don't see much dependencies hell. With 2.0 all digiKam's dependencies are self-contained with the only exception of libface. I've seen worse situations