[kde-linux] KDE 5 KWalletmanager

[Duncan]

David Baron posted on Mon, 03 Aug 2015 15:21:01 +0300 as excerpted:

> Packages are "split" on Debian Sid. All the components are from KDE 5
> while the app itself is KDE 4 so it simply does nothing, hangs up.
> Noticed a bunch of CLIs but what do these do?

Some packages don't have a kde5/frameworks based release, yet.  But
kde5/frameworks is much more component driven than particularly early kde4 
was, and it has been designed to work with non-kde5 components, both with 
some non-core kde4 components, and with qt5[1], qt4/kde4, gtk (2 and 3) 
and others, with varying degrees of integration.

So the kde desktop and family of apps from upstream now ships as a mix of 
kde4 and kde5, with the core plasma desktop, kwin, kde system settings, 
and certain core apps, being qt5/kde5 based, while others still kde4 
based but slowly converting, a few at a time, each release.

For kde-apps (as opposed to plasma, the core desktop, and frameworks, the 
component libs), this mix seems to have dropped the 4.x/5.x, and what was 
shipping as kde 4.14 (for the 4.x components at least), shipped as kdeapps 
14.x and now 15.x, with the progressing versions gradually getting more 
kde5/frameworks based apps and less kde4 based apps.

Now some of the core kde5/plasma desktop, including kwin, isn't 
compatible with the 4.x versions -- distros ship one or the other, or 
have to install them to different locations if they try to ship both, so 
if you're running a kde5 desktop, you must run the kde5 versions of 
those.  But kdelibs4 is still around, and for the non-core desktop, some 
apps are still kde4-based.

And of course all software has bugs, particularly during a major version 
switch such as this.  So what you might be seeing is apps unable to find 
their libraries, etc, due to bugs either as shipped upstream, or in the 
configuration and/or patches shipped by your distro.

FWIW, last I tried kde5 some months ago now (I need to try a newer 
version), kwin5 was still crashing on my graphics hardware, radeon turks 
(IIRC hd6670), with the native linux-drm/xorg/mesa drivers.  Because kwin5 
is incompatible with kwin4, I had to uninstall the latter in ordered to 
try kde5, and I've long had only kwin as a window manager on my system, 
so a broken kwin5 meant no functional window manager, so about all I saw 
was the splash screen and a couple error dialogs, mostly without borders 
as kwin kept crashing and respawning.  Hopefully that's finally fixed and 
when I try again, I can actually at least get enough of kde5 running to 
see if it's otherwise going to work, for me, or if I need to consider 
switching to something else (as is likely if the core requires the 
semantic desktop stuff, for instance, as I'm unlikely to tolerate it 
installed permanently).  While my core desktop remains kde4, I ended up 
switching most of my apps to non-kde as various bits of kde4 broke or 
(like kmail) jumped the shark (akonadi, for kmail).  So if I have to, 
it'll be a lot easier for me to switch to something other than kde for 
the desktop too, now, and I'm unlikely to tolerate the broken "oh but 
it's working for us and despite promises to the contrary we won't support 
the old version that actually works for you any longer" state of early 
kde4.  But for now, kde4 is still working reasonably well, I've developed 
workarounds for stuff that isn't, and it's still at least somewhat 
supported and continues to get updates, so...

---
[1] In fact, given that both kde5 and qt5 are highly component driven, 
with individual apps able to pick and choose the libraries they need and 
not have to load others, the line between qt5 and kde5 is _much_ blurrier 
than between kde4 and qt4.  For example, an app might need only a few qt5 
libs, which may ship in separate packages instead of a monolithic qt5, 
now, with the author also picking only one or two kde-frameworks libs, 
also shipping as individual components, no more monolithic kdelibs, as 
well, since they avoid him having to re-code something they do, himself.  
Is this a kde5 app since it uses one frameworks library, or a qt5 app, or 
neither, since it only uses a handful of libs from either and they're 
shipped as individual components?

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman