Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[BarryK]

Just checking, so I don't step on anyone's toes, duplicating what someone else is doing or planning to do.

I'm attempting to create a KDE version of Puppy.
Just an experiment, see how it turns out, although I suspect it is going to end up far too big.

A lot of messing around. I had to recompile Qt -- which incidentally turned out to be a good thing for another reason, as Scribus wasn't able to display jpegs and I found out the Qt library was the culprit -- that is now fixed I think.

Anyway, compiled aRts, which is a sound server, essential for KDE --- argh! that alone is 5.5M.
Last night, after much stuffing around, compiled kdelibs, which is as far as I've got. Got stuck with a small problem compiling kdebase (window manager, terminal, file manager) -- hope to lick that one tomorrow.

Will let you know about the end result, and the final size!

[Nathan F]

I say "what the heck, why not?" I've lately been running FC4 on one of my computers and while I don't use KDE as the window manager, I've found that many of the KDE applications are quite useful. Almost all of them will run from Gnome or from Icewm, so I have the best of both worlds. I can let my kids explore the stars with Kstars, use Kooka for scanning, and a whole host of other options.

I don't believe that anyone interested in running KDE would be too concerned if the size got a little big. Anyone with a little experience here knows that it's huge and wouldn't even consider it on older and slower hardware.

[Bancobusto]

Good luck Barry

Personally I have no use for KDE, but I realize that a lot of people really like it.
I imagine that it's also a lot of f u n as well.... to compile it, that is!

Cheers

[klhrevolutionist]

That is awesome, I just hope that you don't put all that junk in there like all the distro's do, plus Qt was giving me to much hassle,

JUST DON"T BLOAT IT, IF SOMEONE WANTS THIS OR THAT LET THEM
THEY DO MAKE A KDE LITE

GOD LUCK!!!!!!!![/b]

[Walt H]

I know (judging from the numbers) that a good many people like and use KDE. Personally, I find it bloated, slow, and unresponsive, even on my new computer (1.65 GHz processor with 256 meg RAM, nothing special but seemingly fast enough for KDE). Running Xandros with KDE 3.3.2, applications would often take ten seconds or more to begin opening. I'm talking all kinds of applications: Mozilla, Kate (text editor), Kolf (a miniature game for KDE), etc. Whereas, any application I open in Puppy opens almost instantly, even Scribus (less that three seconds).

What I'd like to see is Puppy look for the best in applications (of all kinds) that do not require Gnome or KDE libraries. (GTK and QT are one thing, but kdelibs and libgnome, etc., are quite another.) Seems to me that finding those or encouraging their development would be a big enough challenge for anyone. Just my $.02 cents worth (and maybe worth less than that).

[Alienx]

how about a Xfce4 with Goodies version of Puppy to go with the KDE version ?

xfce4 can be reduced to as small as 5 mb and is light and feature rich

it can also be configured to look like Windows

http://blog.linux.org.ba/index.php?op=ViewArticle&articleId=16&blogId=2

[Bancobusto]

Well, Ive thought about it some more, and this is what I'm considering:

Seeing as how Barry and other people have managed to get Puppy to BLAZE using such heavy, notoriously slow applications like Open Office and Gimp, hell, why not see what they can do with KDE?

Imagine if the response time was in keeping with everything else about Puppy? I imagine that it could be done... Though of course KDE would always be slower than, say, Fluxbox, but I've noticed that how much is thrown in along with KDE really seems to make a differrence as to how fast it is.

So, let me reiterate by saying that I follow your forray into the land of KDE with enthusiasm and hope -

again, Good Luck!

[raffy]

My second goes to Walt, but Bancobusto has a point.

OpenOffice is really good news for Puppy, except that there is still a corporate logo there - makes me tremble

So experimenting with KDE is really a good idea.

[Lobster]

Don't you tremble or wobble over Sun now Raffy . . .

Redhat is pretty much a commercial group - they have done loads for Open Source - loads

and IBM is going over to Linux (Go Big Blue)
Mozilla Foundation recently created 32 full time jobs . . .

This Puppy is not some whim. It is Christmas. No presents for Bill Gates.
The suits are arriving.

Novell is taking the remnants of SCO to court. They have been caught pretending to own something called Linux..

Oh what the Tux . . .
keep frisky

[BarryK]

Well, I'm now running KDE in Puppy, and browsing this forum with Konqueror.

I compiled audiofile, aRts, kdelibs, kdebase, kdenetwork, kdegraphics, kdepim, kaffeine, k3b and Koffice. Took ages, like about 2 days.
...just about everything you could wish for in there, and it condenses into a 111M byte squashfs file.

And, I was surprised, I thought to myself "I'll be a monkeys uncle", when, I tried Kaffeine, the multimedia player and it actually played a audio CD then a DVD video. ..I was pessimistic, thought surely something will be wrong, but it wasn't.

k3b is not working yet, as it needs cdrdao package installed -- so I'll do that next.

kword cannot import/export msword files, as it wanted libwv2 -- so, reckon I'll put that in and recompile kword.

konqueror cannot browse Windows shares as it wanted a library file from Samba3, so i will have to upgrade samba in Puppy (currently have samba 2.x).

The apps all start in about 2 seconds, on my 2.00GHz Celeron CPU system.
And all of KDE is in /usr/local/kde, which means that it is in pup001 file which is on the hard drive.
Interesting, the KDE apps don't seem to start much faster when I'm running the Fvwm95 window manager.

I've setup Puppy so you just type "xwin startkde" and KDE starts. Then to go back to Fvwm95 "xwin fvwm95".

What I should do is find out what can be left out if I don't run the KDE desktop/window manager, just the usual Fvwm95 or JWM. Maybe that 111M file could come down a lot!

I'll keep you guys posted.
Gee, I wonder if I can get a KDE Puppy under 100M?

[BarryK]

Oh yes, I should mention that all of the above was compiled from within Puppy, using the amazing usr_devx.sfs file. (currently on alpha5, will release soon).

[Lobster]

Too cool for words . . .

Any screenshots for here:
http://www.goosee.com/puppy/wikka/LatestNews

[Guest]

Actually I didn't think much of it......but then (being selfish lol) I thought hey that's a cool idea especially in we can get a wide range of kids education programs in there....rather the munchins use puppy rather than K12LTSP...

[mouldy]

[danleff]

I too like several of the packages that KDE allows you to run. But I also agree, the less bloat, the better. Tough job, given the development packages needed to run many of these packages.

I just hope Barry gives us an alpha release to play with!