Re: improving the UX with the default KDE installation
To be clear, I'm talking about Stretch, Jessie is out of discussion of course.
On 17/03/17 10:48:41 CET, Martin Steigerwald wrote:
> Konqueror is still quite a central part in Plasma. It is used by default for
> web shortcuts and for URLS like "man:/ls" oder "info:/".
If I read correctly the dependencies tree, Konqueror is strictly required only
by the kde-baseapps metapackage. Meaning that *possibly* the entire Plasma DE
can work without it. But please correct me if I'm wrong. Also, web shortcuts
and URLs invoked with krunner work with Firefox (and I suppose with other
browsers) too.
> Of course from a security point of view it would be better to not install
> it. [...]
> All that said: I asked in upstream about Konqueror several times.
> Unfortunately its still not very good maintained. [...]
Another reason to not install it by default in the next Stable if it is
possible. Available in the repositories yes, but not pre-installed. What
message do we give to users? That we suggest an unmaintained and possibly
insecure application? If I can say, it doesn't suite well with the traits of a
stable release.
> For me, and I am a heavy user of KDEPIM, it works reliably meanwhile.
> [...]
> Of course one can argue whether to depend on a KDEPIM client with the
> standard set of packages for a DE, but… for me at least I am not fond of
> living in all those Web 2.0 applications. I want local clients. The
> Internet has more than one protocol.
I completely agree with you but, as I said, despite the Plasma desktop
provides a good user experience, I might say a good user experience for
everyone, applications such as the KDEPIM suite can be too much for a wider
audience.
And that brings us back on topic. Reformulating my thoughts, what I suggest is
that the default KDE installation in Stretch should provide the Plasma DE with
fewer KDE applications. Meaning that we should shift from installing by
default everything that upstream provides to installing just what is necessary
to have a good working system instead.
"Simple by default, powerful when needed" says the Plasma motto!
> So, you see all of this is arguable. One size does not fit all. Of course
> there are distros whose developers make other choices, but I personally
> like it that in Debian Plasma is quite close to what upstream provides. I
> don´t want the distro to mess around with it more than necessary.
>
> Just given the freeze Debian is in now… it is most important to provide
> *very* *specific* reports. Broader changes like the ones you suggest are, I
> think, out of the scope what could still be sensibly done *and* tested in
> time for Stretch. So it may be a good idea to bring this up again after the
> release of Stretch where Debian Qt/KDE developers have more freedom to make
> bigger changes.
Given that I'm talking about what it is installed by default and not about
what is available in the repositories, Debian would still provide everything
is possible from upstream but only on users request. Furthermore, I'm mainly
talking about removing dependencies and recommendations on *KDE applications*
without touching the Plasma DE itself.
In any case, I agree that tests are required and I'll try to make some and
share the results.
Thank you all for the useful comments.
Francesco
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