SoC proposal: KDE/Plasma for small form-factor devices

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Sunday 23 March 2008, Christopher Blauvelt wrote:
> > * KConfig may be a limiter here as well. the many-text-files approach is
> > just
> > fine for a desktop, but i wonder if there would be a win for smaller
> > devices
> > if a KConfigBackend that used an efficient single binary store would work
> > better for things like the Neophone. that's probably a couple weeks work
> > right there, however.
>
> I'm not so sure.  Hildon makes copious use of .desktop files which I'm
> guessing they wouldn't if it was a problem. 

would be interesting to do a compare/contrast on this. we actually already 
have a binary store for our .desktop files, it's more the configuration 
files... which we do minimize in plasma at least by keeping it down to two 
files, but even that implies 6 file checks: plasma, plasma-appletsrc, 
kdeglobals; once for $KDEHOME and once for $PREFIX.

i also wonder about fragmentation on these small disks with the pattern of 
writing to small text files. .desktop files are reads, and that's something 
that flash/ssd's are good at. config files are writes...

> Also if a binary backend was 
> used, it would necessitate an editing program similar to regedit, making
> the transition more time intensive.

most binary stores come with such tools. i wouldn't suggest actually writing a 
binary store from the ground up: there are many very robust and well tested 
libraries out there already.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

KDE core developer sponsored by Trolltech
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