It would be nice to have a KDE Linux 3.2 Distribution

[tyche]

On Tuesday 09 December 2003 16:09, James Richard Tyrer wrote:
> Lukas Molzberger wrote:
> > Hi,
> > I've been using KDE for several years now and I am a big fan of it. So
> > far my favorite distribution has been SuSE, because it's a very nice
> > distro and it supported KDE very well. That's also the reason why I
> > bought almost every Version of SuSE Linux instead of just downloading it
> > from the net. But now, since SuSE has been bought by Novell, I'm not sure
> > if SuSE Linux is still the right choice for me. I don't see much use in
> > buying SuSE Linux, when most of the money will be invested in things like
> > Ximian or Server Software that I will never use. Beside that KDE for me
> > is the only place where I would like to see more improvements. I mean KDE
> > is already very nice and the best Linux Desktop out there, but projects
> > like the Linux kernel or many libraries are finished from the desktop
> > users perpective and don't need much further improvement.
> > What I'm suggesting is to make a KDE Linux 3.2 distribution where I as a
> > KDE user can be sure that the money will be invested the right way. This
> > distribution could be sold through for example book shops the way SuSE
> > Linux is sold today. It could be based on either SuSE Linux the way the
> > Java Desktop is based on SuSE or it could be based on Debian like
> > Knoppix. The distribution should also have the same release cycle as KDE.
>
> You have a valid point.  The 3 major RPM based distros are -- and always
> will be -- somewhat at odds with KDE because they have tried to
> differentiate themselves from "vanilla" linux by providing the same
> features that are (or should be) provided by KDE. The ultimate example of
> this was/is that RedHat won't ship KPackage because it competes with their
> package manager.  So, you (more and more) have to choose whether to install
> the distro's stuff or install KDE and (more and more) if you install KDE,
> you don't need the distro's stuff.  So, it is not hard to see why disto's
> don't strongly support KDE.
>
> The question you first have to ask is whether there is something that a KDE
> disto could provide that Debian wouldn't/doesn't provide.  And the answer
> to start with is that the LSB is supposed to be based on RPM packages.  So,
> that is what it could provide full RPM support which is not possible with
> Debian because Debian does not use the Sys-V startup scripts.  There are
> two questions here: (1) will Debian have full RPM support as some are
> working on? (2) Can symbolic links in the "/etc/" directory tree provide
> Sys-V compatibility to RPM packages.
>
> You suggest a commercial distro.  Unless The Kompany wants to do this, I
> don't see that happening because it might cause conflicts with the
> commercial distros.  So, I think that it is more likely that a KDE distro
> would be non-commercial.  To do that, we would probably need a sponsor
> and/or help from the FSF.
>
> In case nobody noticed, there already is a "KDE" distro available, it is
> Linux From Scratch.  The only problem is that you have to build it
> yourself.  However, if it were offered as an RPM installed distro, it would
> provide what we (those that want a KDE) distro) want.  Therefore, much of
> the work of producing a non-commercial distro has already been done.
>
> Another alternative is using Fedora as a base.  Only minor changes would
> need to be made to the base packages to eliminate the RedHat-isms (weird
> directory choices , etc.).
>
> And, lastly, you can (I presume) install Fedora and use the KDE RPMs from
> here:
>
> 	http://kde-redhat.sourceforge.net/
>
> in place of the Fedora ones.
gentoo downloads and installs most everything from source. once my dsl is up 
and running, that is what i am going to do on my personal machine.

tyche

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