If I may add a note, Xfce with KDE4 applications
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| Bob_Robertson Mar 07, 2014 12:31 PM EDT |
In such a system as Debian (I have not used RPM based systems in a long time, so I can only assume it works that way as well) KDE4 applications run just fine on the Xfce desktop. So people who really like Dolphin, or K3b (me! me!), the KDE games and other such, can install these packages and launch them from the launcher and menu in Xfce. When those applications are running they will load the KDE libraries and etc., but I myself haven't found that to be a problem. There might also be a need to go into the KDE setup and turn off search/nepomuk or other KDE4 background processes, but I don't know if those are launched automatically with mere installation of KDE4 packages, or if they only run when KDE4 is selected as the running "desktop". Thanks, Mr. Young. This is an excellent overview. |
| jdixon Mar 07, 2014 1:10 PM EDT |
> ...or if they only run when KDE4 is selected as the running "desktop". In my experience under Slackware, they only launch when KDE is selected as the desktop. Let do some checking on the details when I get home though. |
| Bob_Robertson Mar 07, 2014 2:16 PM EDT |
When I tried it in order to run KDE4 applications under Trinity (KDE3), I did not see the background processes running when using Trinity, but I wasn't specifically looking for them. I'll have to check when I get home. |
| Ridcully Mar 07, 2014 5:24 PM EDT |
Thanks Bob...with respect to Xfce, I am a complete novice as well, so what you got in the article was what a real newcomer would see. My only real aim was to show that for a disguntled KDE4 user, there are some really good alternatives out there, and it is possible to get them really humming along. I'll put this note on all three threads if it's applicable. |
| gus3 Mar 07, 2014 5:30 PM EDT |
jdixon, launching KDE and Gnome services on Xfce startup is a configurable option. My mother runs KDE's solitaire program in Xfce, so I have it set to start KDE services automatically. |
| Ridcully Mar 07, 2014 5:51 PM EDT |
There are two reasons I chose openSUSE as the underlying OS, gus3......my first was familiarity/personal choice, but the second was that I knew I could get anything I wanted (but NOT elements of the KDEPIM or semantic desktop packages including Akonadi) from the openSUSE repository held in YaST. And the latest openSUSE 13.1 does have the excellent KDE3 card games package......plus a lot of things like K3b.......packages that I know and prefer. Another really excellent aspect is that if the package you want to install requires other packages to be installed as well, then YaST shows you that list first and if Akonadi etc. appear, it gives you a chance to change your mind...I mean you are moving to Xfce to escape the darn things, so why put them back ? And finally, any DM that openSUSE has put onto its OS has been fully tested with all the possibilities (or at least as much as humanly can be done - that's my impression) so added software from the openSUSE repository should work straight away. The only problem I hit was with VLC which of course was partially crippled without the use of the libdvdcss2 file. I have always found it better to work with the Packman version, and even then you may have to add the libdvdcss2 file.....you just have to watch what is being installed. I shall now have to look at Trinity.....and that promises to be real fun for me because it is leaping from the known into the known (mostly). |
| Francy Mar 07, 2014 7:53 PM EDT |
>>>>>I shall now have to look at Trinity... I will be looking forward to this. I have been using Trinity but never got around to properly setting up // configuring. |
| Ridcully Mar 07, 2014 8:05 PM EDT |
I have never used it Francy.......could be the blind leading the blind.....but since it is based on what used to be my very well loved KDE3.5, I don't think I'll have too many problems. It remains a basic "thesis" of mine that the KDE team could and should have done what the Trinity project has done, but they have been pushed in a very different direction for what I think are economic/funding reasons and by a very large organisation. The saddest bit is that as far as I know, no distribution is offering Trinity as an alternative desktop and I think that it should be right up there in the front line......It's under constant development and if you look at the distribution list that it now supports and will run on, the numbers are incredible. If you want "pure KDE" then the options really are either KDE4 or Trinity. I'm looking forward to getting it set up as well....... The only faint drawback that I can see at the moment is that its installation is largely done from the command line. While I can do this, I generally prefer not to have to do so.....if there is a GUI version, then I'll take it every time, even though I install Apache OpenOffice from the CLI, I don't find it as convenient. However, CLI installation of Trinity is looking interesting and if I can make it as simple as possible for anyone else, then I certainly will. I'll be taking a rest for a while though...and play with the software on an old Lenovo laptop with a single core CPU......if that can run the stuff nicely, then anything can. |
| Francy Mar 07, 2014 10:00 PM EDT |
>>>The only faint drawback that I can see at the moment is that its installation is largely done from the command line. There are liveCDs on their website. I recommend , just as an introduction without hassles, try the PCLinuxOS remaster. There is also exeGNUlinux which is a liveCD and troublefree, as in : my Granny can do it. From there , you can expand your experience. Just yesterday, I installed the pclos TDE remaster, the very same way as I install any other distro. Not one click more. (( that was in an attempt to gain knowledge for an existing KDE4 problem )) Try the easy way first. It avoids high blood pressure and some cursing :-) |
| Ridcully Mar 07, 2014 10:23 PM EDT |
Francy, are you "psychic" or something ? I had a really good look at their site last night and made the decision that the PCLinuxOS was the way to go in order to start the ball rolling.......and actually began a download, then realised it was way, way, way past my bedtime and I was starting to fall asleep in front of the computer (I wonder if we all do that occasionally do you think ?) and then aborted the download......But you have confirmed that decision I had already made. Even a very short preliminary article on that particular live CD would be worth its weight in hen's teeth, for several reasons but most importantly : to get Trinity in front of a lot of readers and get them to actually trial it. And if enough users begin to clamour for it, Trinity may be offered as a DE option by a major distribution. Right now there is NO way I will ditch my current desktop of KDE4.6......it's brilliant, but I definitely do want to explore some other options.....just in case. Thanks for the heads-up on PCLinuxOS. |
| Francy Mar 07, 2014 10:54 PM EDT |
Just remember when you take that remaster. It's dated June or July 2013. Trying to update <<that>> particular one, without <<some>> knowledge, <<may>> land you in trouble. But let me say it this way : It's good for a look and getting an idea. Don't update, it will break package, like google-earth per example And anyway, the update is as of today, 736 packages The exeGNUlinux is up-to-date, meaning r4 ( still unfinished ) and looks good. There are of course other live CDs , like Ubuntu, which I didn't fancy. |
| Ridcully Mar 07, 2014 11:08 PM EDT |
Hmmmmm........Francy........my very good LXer friend.......have YOU ever thought of doing an article on Trinity ? I would be more than willing to yield the field......?????????? Thanks for the tips, though I had no intention of updating anything.....just having a look and play. Now I'll definitely NOT do any fiddling with the update section. By the bye.....does it install as well ? PS.......I looked at my last question.......and blushed..........Well of COURSE it installs if you are warning me not to update it unless I really know what I am doing...........sigh......consider it a sign of galloping senility. |
| jdixon Mar 07, 2014 11:33 PM EDT |
> jdixon, launching KDE and Gnome services on Xfce startup is a configurable option. Yes, I'm aware of that, but not having access to my home machine, I couldn't look up the specifics. I'm home now, so here goes. In the XFCE menu, under Settings, you should find Session and Startup. Under the Advanced tab of Session and Startup, in the Compatibility section, there are check boxes you can select to start the Gnome and KDE services on XFCE startup. If those are not checked, no Gnome or KDE services are started when XFCE starts. Once XFCE starts, running a KDE app should start up any KDE tools needed to run that app. For example, if I start K3b, the following shows up in a ps ax command: 24006 ? S 0:17 [kworker/1:2] 24268 ? S 0:00 [kworker/1:1] 24278 ? S 0:00 [kworker/1:0] 24289 tty2 Sl 0:00 k3b 24292 ? Sl 0:00 /usr/libexec/udisks-daemon 24293 ? S 0:00 udisks-daemon: not polling any devices 24299 ? S 0:00 [kworker/2:0] 24303 ? Ss 0:00 kdeinit4: kdeinit4 Running... 24305 ? S 0:00 kdeinit4: klauncher [kdeinit] --fd=8 24307 ? S 0:00 kdeinit4: kded4 [kdeinit] 24309 ? S 0:00 /usr/libexec/gam_server 24330 ? S 0:00 [kworker/3:0] 24350 ? S 0:00 [kworker/0:1] 24351 ? Sl 0:00 kdeinit4: kio_trash [kdeinit] trash local:/tmp/ksocke 24352 ? S 0:00 kdeinit4: kio_file [kdeinit] file local:/tmp/ksocket- 24353 ? S 0:00 kdeinit4: kio_file [kdeinit] file local:/tmp/ksocket- None of which were running before I started K3b. I suspect Kmail would error out, since it expects the various services to already be running. > My mother runs KDE's solitaire program in Xfce, so I have it set to start KDE services automatically. KPatience seems to run fine without the services running. It's one of the KDE programs I use.. |
| Francy Mar 08, 2014 1:18 AM EDT |
>>>>>>if you are warning me not to update it unless I really know what I am doing... Just a clarification ! . You probably know very well what you are doing. It's just that PClinuxOS devs and forum community do not support the Trinity Remaster. They do recognize it , but do not support it. This is probably because they do have more than enough on there plate as it is. Supporting Trinity will just be an extra burden and a distraction. As much as I would like to have support, I only can agree with them regarding this matter. Maybe one day, it will change, but not soon ! Having said that and taking into consideration that present ( installed ) ISO had no gradual updates for nearly a year, trowing 736 packages at it in one go is/can be/could be/will be/etc dangerous. However, I did it anyway !!! Only one broken package so far , and it wasn't a trinity one ! And Office got highly confused :-) See you around |
| Ridcully Mar 08, 2014 7:58 AM EDT |
Whoa Francy.......I think you may have misinterpreted my comment >>>Well of COURSE it installs if you are warning me not to update it unless I really know what I am doing<<< To explain.........I asked if it would install from the live CD, and then realised a minute or two later that my question was rather "stooopid" because it would have to be able to be installed if you can update it......let's face it, you can't up date a "live cd/dvd"......you can only update a writeable/eraseable medium such as a hard disk drive. Now, that's all that was intended. Honestly, there are stacks of times where I am definitely NOT sure what the heck I am doing, but this wasn't intended to be included amongst them. Hope that clarifies the situation.....it's not a problem, but you deserved to know the true situation as I saw it. Cheers. |
| Francy Mar 08, 2014 8:16 AM EDT |
No problem here, ridcully ! It was just some extra information, not always known by outsiders.
Some people might just download the iso, install it, and then go to the forum to ask for assistance on the pclos forum. Info about trinity is the easiest to get on their mailing list regardless which distro you run Trinity on. Immediate response and friendly people, that's all I can say. correction: <somewhere> above I wrote : r4 : This should read : r14 . |
| Bob_Robertson Mar 10, 2014 9:45 AM EDT |
I found the same that JD did, no KDE4 processes until/unless a KDE4 program was run. My Mom's laptop has Xfce and KDE4, for all the reasons given. She likes the KDE4 applications, but has no use for the whole "semantic desktop" mess. |
| Ridcully Mar 10, 2014 5:21 PM EDT |
Your comment, Bob_Robertson, is exactly why I like openSUSE as the underlying OS. If I go to install anything, it tells me immediately what (if any) other software is required for the new installation to operate correctly and waits to see if I still want to go ahead. I've already mentioned that in a post above......I still suspect that the best way of all will be Trinity...... but I have yet to start trials.......I'm having a "lay-week" or even a couple of them before bashing into another test sequence. |
| Francy Mar 10, 2014 10:10 PM EDT |
>>>>I'm having a "lay-week" or even a couple of them before bashing into another test sequence. ...which I suppose is Trinity, according your writing above and elsewhere ! You may want to read here first , before you jump into the deep end. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Trinity#The_difference_... It's all useful information and not limited to Arch. Happy reading Remember . it's read only .......... |
| Ridcully Mar 11, 2014 12:03 AM EDT |
Thankyou muchly Francy......and yes, the next one will be Trinity, but I am currently feeling downright lazy. It was very thoughtful of you to give the link though, and I have looked.......and shuddered gently. There is however, another aspect to this "saga". When I start, it will be with a "vanilla" installation exactly as the Trinity site offers it. It will also be without respect to anything else other than what Trinity says to do......if I cannot install happily based on what they give me, and get something running nicely, then that is a very different kettle of fish from completely messing up an ArchLinux set of directions specific for their own distro..... I work on the KISS principle......"keep it simple stupid", where I am the "stooopid" person involved. As a taxonomist, I claim to have a very methodical mind - it sorta kinda works in logical steps.....Or anyhow, that's how I like to think I work (a very close person to me sometimes despairs of my logic, but then she has a privileged position... :-) ) But whatever, I always try very hard to keep my logical steps as simple as possible so that just one problem at a time is dealt with.......And that by the way and with knowledge after the event, was what made the semantic desktop so difficult to deal with, because isolating a single problem at a time is often nearly impossible - the darn thing is so interwoven and interdependent. I think I will stick with my first decision and download a copy of the live disk on PCLInuxOS.....and see what I get. It may be relatively "old", but it will certainly give me a good indication of menus, behaviour, etc. |
| Francy Mar 11, 2014 12:30 AM EDT |
>>>>>>>I think I will stick with my first decision and download a copy of the live disk on PCLInuxOS.....and see what I get. It may be relatively "old", but it will certainly give me a good indication of menus, behaviour, etc. I (re) installed thil old one, for reasons NOT related to Trinity. I also updated it ( over 700 packages) , after disabling the trinity repos, and all went fine. So, I think for a first date, take PCLinuxOS-n-o remaster. I also tried the Ubuntu-trinity liveCD ( nightly build ). All went well, but I prefer the pclos one The exeGNU wheezy ( r14 ) also looks good As soon as R14 comes out, and that shouldn't be to far away, I will try all of them on my < old > hardware. Both above mentioned ones are straight < click-your-finger-while-the-brain-is-sleeping > installs. See you around |
| patrokov Oct 14, 2014 1:09 PM EDT |
** Oops. Didn't realize how old this thread was. But I don't see a way to delete. ** I'm a disgruntled KDE PCLinuxOS user. By default, in PCLinuxOS, the semantic desktop is disabled, which is great. But Amarok hasn't worked right for me in PCLinuxOS ever since KDE4 came out. The main issue for me now is that the distribution's mysql, php, and nginx are so old. I tried switching to Mint XFCE but really dislike Thunar. The lack of tabs and panes is bad enough, but it also can't created symlinks to a given destination. It's "solution" is to create a symlink within the current folder that can then be copied, but that just doesn't work sometimes (for example on a read only folder). And perhaps I'm shallow, but I cannot stand the GTK open and save dialogs. It's bad enough that I have to see them in Firefox, but everywhere else too? Just too much for me. I'm now using Mint KDE without too many issues. I prefer the PCLinuxOS menu, and I had to re-enable the root password, but overall, it's fairly equivalent. |
| Koriel Oct 14, 2014 2:30 PM EDT |
Ermm Thunar has tabs, its the first menu item under File. As a heavy XFCE & Thunar user though I do wish Thunar had a split view file pane. With Thunar it is best to configure custom actions to handle stuff like symlinks and you can also do a multitude of other cool stuff. The custom actions feature is what keeps me using Thunar its darn good. Visit this site https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ThunarCustomActions and you will find a custom action for symlinks. Feel free to google "Thunar Custom Actions" for other cool suggestions. |
| Steven_Rosenber Oct 14, 2014 5:38 PM EDT |
What keeps me using Thunar: The sheer speed |
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