How to handle KDE not respecting YOUR distros requirements?

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Sonntag, 27. März 2016 15:34:07 CEST Richard Brown wrote:

> Why all the doom and gloom? Because I think it's important we be
> realistic about where we are before we can improve things
> 
> Doing the same as 'the other guys' is not a viable option when they
> have the dominant position.

Hi Richard,
for me (and I suppose I'm not the only one), the important question is: How 
did GNOME and other DEs it shares technology with get to that dominant 
position?
Or more specific questions:
- What makes GNOME appear to be the more viable alternative for enterprise-
oriented distributions?
- What makes GTK and GNOME appear like the more viable base to build on for 
the majority of new desktop environments (not to all of them, though, see 
Unity 8 or LXQt as quite visible counter-examples)?
- Are desktops and applications based on GTK and GNOME libraries easier to 
deploy than those based on Qt and KDE Frameworks? If so: Why?

> They already have the buy-in from a wider ecosystem of distributions
> who put them first. They can afford to make questionable choices. It
> seems no matter how questionable their choices may have already been
> it is not negatively impacting their adoption rates compared to KDE.

Those choices have initially impacted their adoption rates quite negatively, 
resulting in a slew of forks (Unity and Cinnamon arguably being the most 
successful ones), but they have recovered from that impact by constantly 
providing great releases. One of the things that make these great releases 
easier to achieve for them is, ironically, the very fact that they don't care 
about anything or anyone outside of GNOME all that much. This doesn't make 
other DE communities very happy, but it does help them streamline their own 
work.

> KDE has to be better, smarter, leaner to compete. It needs to be
> easier for packagers to work with than the alternatives. Easier to put
> together. Easier to maintain. Easier to track changes.

While being easy to deploy is of course a very important factor for the 
success of any software, I do not think that this is what we want to be our 
USP. I don't think "Plasma, the desktop environment which is the easiest to 
deploy" would be the tagline for a breakthrough, especially given that 
desktops which primarily aim to be "lightweight" and are happy to sacrifice 
functionality for that would always beat us in that arena.
 
> I personally think the whole Plasma/Applications/Frameworks/QT split
> has dramatically increased the workload of distribution packagers here
> for little or no benefit to users (I recognise it's easier to develop)

What are the specific factors that increase the workload of packagers? What can 
we do to reduce that workload? It would be great if you could put your answers 
to that in a reply on the "What would distributions like KDE to do?" thread so 
that we have all of that information in one place.

> Look at the applications..are they all necessary? Does KDE needs to
> offer a office suite when almost everyone uses LibreOffice these days?
> Is Skrooge a worthy competitor to GNUcash? Does KDE really need two
> text editors?

KDE is a community, we don't tell our contributors what to do and even less 
what _not_ to do. If someone wants to create a new text editor within our 
community, we don't tell them "No, you can't, we already have two!".

What we could and should do, though, is provide our contributors more guidance 
on what they should _focus_ on. This would still be only guidance, not rules, 
since not a single contributor is employed by KDE and we cannot tell them what 
to spend their free time on.
See my reply to your mention of the vision/mission further down, though.

> There is duplication even among KDE's own applications offerings,
> never mind when put against the backdrop of what distributions are
> wanting to offer. I think there is room for streamlining there

This is something we've been thinking about on several occasions: Should we 
make more recommendations to distributions regarding which applications to 
ship by default?
KDE seems to be split about this: Some of us (me included) think that we 
should di that, to make distributions' lives easier and to allow users to know 
in advance which applications to expect from a distribution shipping Plasma.
Others, though, think that by doing so, we'd be trespassing the distributions' 
territory: They believe that distributions know their users better than we do, 
and are therefore better equipped to choose which applications best serve 
their needs.

Now with this list, we have the ideal forum to ask you distribution 
representatives what works better for you: Would you like us to recommend 
which applications to install by default alongside Plasma, or do you want to 
make your own choices freely?
Again, ideally please answer that question on the other thread to avoid 
fragmentation.

> And I know it's painful to suggest that, but right now KDE is the
> biggest, heaviest desktop orientated software stack for Linux
> distributions.
 
> All of the competition, even GNOME, is smaller, leaner, and therefore
> more readily integrable onto other distributions.

If low footprint is a user's primary goal, then neither Plasma nor GNOME the 
right desktop environment for them. Probably something along the lines of i3 
or Openbox is, or LXDE/LXQt if they're feeling less adventurous.
Those who do make Plasma their desktop of choice (and most of those also 
primarily choose KDE applications to go with it), however, have found that the 
features they get with it are worth the extra megabytes on their disks and in 
their memory.

We might compare it with BMWs or Porsches: Of course they consume considerably 
more fuel than a 40hp compact car, but if you compare the amount of power they 
get onto the street for each liter of fuel, you'll notice they are actually 
more efficient.
Of course if all a driver wants is to go to the grocery store a few kilometers 
down the road, that extra horsepower isn't of much use to them and chances are 
they're better off with the compact.

In analogy, Plasma is probably only worth the extra space if they actually find 
its feature-set useful, and I don't see a problem with that - as long as we 
make useful features, of course.
 
> But maybe going on a diet isn't an option - If KDE wants to remain as
> technically large as it is and continue to provide such a broad
> offering, then at least it has to do a much better job of selling
> itself to distributions

...or selling itself to users, who would then look for distributions shipping 
it by default. It's both mostly two sides of one coin, though.

> In addition to the clearer technical information regarding
> dependencies and such, Distributions need clearer information about
> why users should adopt KDE in order to parrot it to their users. What
> are KDE's selling points? Where are the 'hooks' which make KDE better
> than the rest?
 
> I fear KDE is currently making the same mistake I saw openSUSE make in
> the past by only trying to sell itself on it's technical merit and
> mostly letting the software speak for itself

Yes, our promo and presentation in general is still lagging behind our actual 
products, and we are aware of that. We're getting better at it, though, and we 
have plans for much more in that area.

> And I understand why - I've been saying for years that Qt is a
> superior platform for desktop and desktop application development from
> gtk. But that being true hasn't changed how many distributions put
> their faith into which desktop stack first.

Canonical seems to be convinced, but that is probably mostly because mobile is 
a strong additional focus for them.
It should be for other distributions, too, however, if they want to stay 
relevant in the future.
 
> Advertising through software capability only speaks to a very narrow
> market, and problems with software quality erode that market
> dreadfully quickly. I think it's safe to say KDE has had severe
> problems with software quality lately, and I do not think that putting
> all of the responsibility of testing onto distributions is a sensible
> strategy to turn that around.

We do not intend to put all of the testing responsibility on distributions, 
but we need distributions to get our software into users' hands for testing 
(one of the reasons why our software doesn't get enough testing before release 
is that currently our users have to build it themselves before they can test 
it), Neon is one effort towards improving that, and we are very happy that 
openSUSE Argon and Krypton will expand the base of users (including 
contributors) that can test our software before its release further.
 
> Is there more KDE can do to make sure it's offerings are well tested
> before distributions have to find a way of making all the parts work
> together?

Honestly, we don't really know. We'd be very happy for further ideas on how we 
can get more people to test our software. If we test it only ourselves, we 
test only the things _we_ do with it, and most of our bugs happen either in 
areas that we ourselves just don't use enough to notice them, or under 
circumstances that are different from those under which our developers 
operate.

The three noble gas -named distributions we have now are a great help to 
facilitate testing software before it's released, but we of course also need 
people to actually use those for structured testing.

I don't know if other DEs have the resources for paid QA, but we certainly 
don't, so we have to rely on volunteers (which are not the developers 
themselves, see above) for that.
 
> KDE needs to make it very easy for distributions to sell the premise,
> promise, and benefits of using KDE to their users.

Again: How can we help with that besides better promo in general?

> Where possible that should be more meaningful than just a bunch of
> screenshots and feature descriptions..people should have an idea of
> what the KDE Project is trying to achieve and therefore be able to buy
> into that concept by using your software.

Indeed, and we're working on that.
 
> Right now, I don't see much information available to help weave such a
> story (I know however you're discussing Vision/Mission stuff in other
> lists..maybe that's part of this solution)

Exactly, and many of our contributors as well as users feel the same way, 
which is why we are working on a vision (which we'll publish very soon) and a 
mission (still in the works) for KDE as a whole, and why we are currently 
writing up a product vision for Plasma. We always encourage individual 
projects to create product visions, too, and more and more of them are doing 
that.

> That's my 2c anyway..

Thank you for your input! Now I'm looking forward for input on the "What would 
distributions like KDE to do?" thread, so we can work on improving the 
situation!

Best,
Thomas