[kde-community] Give People Access to Great Technology - a possible vision

[Stuart Jarvis]

Hi David,

My comments below are slightly tangential to the 'vision' discussion 
(which is bigger and something I haven't properly thought through for 
myself, yet). However, here are some thoughts on one of your points, 
which is also important in the discussion of a vision (you wouldn't have 
mentioned it, if it was not) and is all about what KDE, the Frameworks, 
Plasma and the apps are and how they interact.

On 2014-09-23 12:26, David Wright wrote:
> The KDE terminology issue I’m still not really understanding I’m
> afraid. I understand the reasons for the splitting out of KDE (the
> community), KF5, Plasma 5 and applications. The problem I have is that
> distros are still going to be shipping a KDE variant, apps included.

One problem here is that you still think of a 'KDE variant' as something 
that is all bundled together, something we've been trying to get away 
from, as you acknowledge. More below...

> In the absence of KDE supplying a name for the compilation of its
> software being used together

We tried this with the 'software compilation' which reflected that we 
did still
have a bundle of stuff in reality. It didn't work that well, as there 
was a pre-existing name for that, KDE, which was somewhat catchier.

, then I feel the distros are going to
> simply use KDE or KDE 5, like they would with Gnome, or XFCE, which is
> wrong, or KF5/Plasma5/Apps which is crap.

I don't think your prediction is necessarily wrong, but I think the idea 
is not catching up with reality of most modern systems. I don't use only 
KDE apps. Most KDE people I've observed in person are not using only KDE 
apps. Distros should reflect this (and many do) and also/instead install 
the likes of Firefox, Libre Office instead of/in addition to the KDE 
equivalents. We're not (yet) leaders in all software fields for all use 
cases (personally, I actually prefer Konqueror for many tasks and use it 
as much as I can, but I think I might be in a minority there).

So, distros that do flavours or spins should have a Plasma spin. That 
will likely include a majority of basic apps that are produced by KDE, 
e.g. Dolphin, KWrite... Also the basic functionality that is really part 
of the desktop experience (knetworkmanager, the KDE volume control..., 
which maybe should get Plasma branding too as they're unlikely to be 
used outside a Plasma session). For other apps, such as browser, office 
suite, probably media players, photo organisers I would prefer to see 
distros selecting the best of breed solution (which may be 
Firefox/Chromium, Libre Office, Amarok or VLC, Digikam)

KF5 - parts of (and basic GNOME lib, among many others) will also have 
to be installed, as dependencies and only as required for the installed 
applications - modularity is one of the beauties in KF5. The 
non-developer user should not need to care about that, any more than 
they need to care which SSL library their distro packages. If you want 
to make some software, you look around for the best tools. If you want 
to use some software, you don't care what tools made it, only how the 
end software performs.

The idea of the KDE distribution, where you get only KDE-produced apps, 
seems very outdated to me - we used to do that, even Krita has its roots 
in an attempt to make a KDEish competitor to the GIMP. But why do that? 
The GIMP is great. The modern Krita has instead filled gap that was 
lacking and become the best free software answer to that need - and you 
can see how that has led to success.

In short, I want to choose my desktop - that's important. Beyond that, I 
want the distro to make some sensible choices on the default apps for 
common tasks (and sensible choices != always choosing the KDE app). I'll 
tweak the application selection to my tastes after installation.

> What’s making this more
> confusing is that the VDG are now discussing branding some apps along
> the lines of ‘Made for…’

I'd be very concerned about this, for any but the most basic components 
deeply entwined in the desktop shell (e..g things like knetworkmanager 
etc). The 'by KDE' tagline used for Plasma surely works much better for 
anything else.

[snip]

> I don’t agree that everything should be completely separate however,
> there should still be links to one another, otherwise KDE becomes
> nothing more than a glorified Github.

For me, the unifying factors are (in no order):
1 the Frameworks
2 the consistent look, feel and behaviour (if you know one KDE app, you 
should easily feel at home and be comfortable with another)
3 the community (and the associated commitments to free software ideals, 
technical excellence)

Maybe I'm edging towards a 'vision' here - perhaps I'll come back with 
some wider comments on that in a bit.

Cheers,
Stu