Kde(mod)- is the bloat worth the functionality?

Question

I am running Xfce right now but I'm on a moderately powerful laptop: 2gigs RAM, 2GHZ dual core processor, 335MB videoRAM, and ~30GB partitioned off to Linux. Xfce, LXDE, *box, etc. seem to be advertising their greatness on slow or old machines, but I don't think I fit in that category. My laptop, Sony VAIO VGN-SZ430N, has all the hardware bells and whistles and I feel like I'm losing a lot of functionality without GNOME or KDE. The latter two are noticeably slower than the light DEs/WMs, but is it worth it for the functionality that is gained (if any)? I am considering switching to KDEmod once 4.2 comes out; I hate 4, 4.1, and don't really like 3.5. I'm sick of GNOME from Ubuntu, so is this a good choice? Am I really gaining anything with the loss of speed and disk space?
I'd really like some guidance or extra information about this if anyone can help. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Redrazor39

Answer 1

kaola_linux wrote:So I want to know if I'm going to enable the repos of kdemod, can I install apps for kdemod on my xfce without the extra dependencies of KDE itself? For example if I want to run amarok will it download also some kde dependencies?
Kdemod tries to use as much packages from arch repos as possible.
(which seems to be pretty hard since sometimes, since kde sees way too less love)
But in amarok's case its a kde app so yes it needs kde deps, that kdemod does provide if its installed.
I use kdemod but build amarok2 from arch abs since mysql seems to need to be rebuilt in 64 bit arch.
Heres the pkgbuilds:
Mysgl:
# $Id: PKGBUILD 14174 2008-10-04 15:06:14Z andyrtr $
# Maintainer: Alexander Baldeck <[email protected]>
# Contributor: judd <[email protected]>
pkgname=mysql
pkgver=5.0.75
pkgrel=2
pkgdesc="A fast SQL database server"
arch=(i686 x86_64)
backup=(etc/my.cnf etc/conf.d/mysqld)
depends=("mysql-clients>=${pkgver}" 'tcp_wrappers')
makedepends=('libtool')
url=('http://www.mysql.com/')
options=('!libtool')
license=('GPL')
source=(ftp://ftp.pucpr.br/mysql/Downloads/MySQL-5.0/mysql-${pkgver}.tar.gz
mysql-no-clients.patch
mysqld
my.cnf
mysqld.conf.d)
build() {
# PIC
export CFLAGS="$CFLAGS -fPIC"
export CXXFLAGS="$CXXFLAGS -fPIC"
cd ${startdir}/src/${pkgname}-${pkgver}
patch -Np1 -i ${startdir}/src/mysql-no-clients.patch || return 1
./configure --prefix=/usr --libexecdir=/usr/sbin \
--without-debug --without-docs --without-bench --without-readline \
--with-innodb --enable-local-infile --with-openssl \
--with-charset=latin1 --with-collation=latin1_general_ci \
--with-extra-charsets=complex --enable-thread-safe-client \
--with-libwrap --with-berkeley-db --with-embedded-server
# fixes
sed -i -e 's/^.*HAVE_GETHOSTBYNAME_R_GLIBC2_STYLE.*$/#define\ HAVE_GETHOSTBYNAME_R_GLIBC2_STYLE/g' include/config.h || return 1
sed -i -e 's/size_socket/socklen_t/g' sql/mysqld.cc || return 1
pushd include || return
make || return 1
popd
pushd libmysql
make link_sources get_password.lo || return
popd
make || return 1
make DESTDIR=${startdir}/pkg install
rm -rf ${startdir}/pkg/usr/{mysql-test,sql-bench}
install -D -m644 ../my.cnf ${startdir}/pkg/etc/my.cnf
install -D -m755 ../mysqld ${startdir}/pkg/etc/rc.d/mysqld
install -D -m644 ../mysqld.conf.d ${startdir}/pkg/etc/conf.d/mysqld
rm -f ${startdir}/pkg/usr/bin/mysql_config
md5sums=('')
Amarok:
# $Id: PKGBUILD 17565 2008-10-31 03:06:04Z pierre $
pkgname=amarok
pkgver=2.0.1.1
pkgrel=1
pkgdesc="A powerful music player with an intuitive interface"
arch=('i686' 'x86_64')
url='http://amarok.kde.org'
license=('GPL' 'LGPL' 'FDL')
depends=('kdelibs' 'kdebase-runtime' 'libgpod' 'libmtp' 'loudmouth' 'libmp4v2' 'taglib')
makedepends=('pkgconfig' 'cmake' 'automoc4' 'mysql')
provides=('amarok-base')
install='amarok.install'
source=("http://download.kde.org/stable/${pkgname}/${pkgver}/src/${pkgname}-${pkgver}.tar.bz2")
build() {
cd $srcdir
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ../${pkgname}-${pkgver} \
-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr
make
make DESTDIR=$pkgdir install
Edit: to recap:
1. Theres kde apps that need kdelibs, provided either by arch kde or kdemod
2. Theres QT apps that only need qt but no kdelibs
3. Theres gnome apps that need gnomelibs
4. Theres GTK apps that only need GTK but no gnomelibs
Last edited by Mikko777 (2009-01-16 16:01:46)