DEs need to build their own distros [LWN.net]

DEs need to build their own distros

Posted Feb 7, 2012 6:13 UTC (Tue) by kragilkragil2 (guest, #76172)
Parent article: Canonical pulls funding from Kubuntu

Sad to hear but I actually think KDE like Gnome should build their own distro. Everything else is always going to be a little half arsed or out of date. They seem to do it for Plasma Active, which could work out.
A similar approach should work for KDE. Just pick one base distro (which has to be community controlled) and build KDE SC ontop. (Debian, Mageia or Gentoo could be good bases to build on)

About Kubuntu, it would be sad to see it go, but I am actually way more sad to hear that Jonathan had an accident.

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DEs need to build their own distros

Posted Feb 7, 2012 8:28 UTC (Tue) by jonobacon (guest, #54449) [Link] (11 responses)

I think this is cool in theory, but GNOME and KDE are already so busy working on their own codebases that also shipping a distro is too much work.

This is why I think distros such as Kubuntu are so important: it meshes together great upstream work with a solid distro core.

Jono

DEs need to build their own distros

Posted Feb 7, 2012 8:45 UTC (Tue) by Company (guest, #57006) [Link] (9 responses)

2 words: GNOME OS

DEs need to build their own distros

Posted Feb 7, 2012 8:47 UTC (Tue) by jonobacon (guest, #54449) [Link] (8 responses)

Well, possibly, but has it shipped?

DEs need to build their own distros

Posted Feb 7, 2012 9:00 UTC (Tue) by kragilkragil2 (guest, #76172) [Link] (5 responses)

Well, Ubuntu = Unity OS
most Gnome developers work for Red Hat, so Fedora = Gnome3OS.
KDE had no real distro favorite. Kubuntu was seen as one for a time a few years ago, but a lot of major developers left for OpenSuse or Arch.
Maybe if Kubuntu dies the Debian KDE team will get some such needed people and will eventually become the place to go for polished upto date KDE SC releases. Who knows .. pulling the plug on Kubuntu might be good for KDE.

DEs need to build their own distros

Posted Feb 7, 2012 11:42 UTC (Tue) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]

Slackware used to be a KDE shop. But I think there's a little conflict in intended audiences.

DEs need to build their own distros

Posted Feb 7, 2012 11:46 UTC (Tue) by yungchin (guest, #72949) [Link] (2 responses)

It's probably just that I've been terribly out of the loop, but between Jonathan stating "There is no other major distro out there that matches that description..." and your "KDE had no real distro favorite", I have to ask: what happened to OpenSuse? I always thought that was the go-to distro if you wanted the latest and greatest of KDE?

DEs need to build their own distros

Posted Feb 7, 2012 14:34 UTC (Tue) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link]

Yeha, I always thought OpenSuse was considered the place to go for the best KDE.

And I would go there if I didn't prefer apt/deb so much over rpm. (Yes it's a personal irrational preference.)

DEs need to build their own distros

Posted Feb 8, 2012 0:39 UTC (Wed) by OrangutanClyde (guest, #82794) [Link]

Chakra Linux (Arch Linux - Fork) is a KDE *ONLY* distro, It'd be nice to see where that goes in the future.

DEs need to build their own distros

Posted Feb 11, 2012 12:31 UTC (Sat) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link]

openSUSE definitely counts as KDE distro, with the most solid KDE implementation out there & a large number of KDE developers using it, having up to date KDE packages always available and of course defaulting to KDE... ;-)

The fact that it also offers what is probably the most solid GNOME implementation doesn't mean KDE is any worse...

DEs need to build their own distros

Posted Feb 7, 2012 22:44 UTC (Tue) by Company (guest, #57006) [Link] (1 responses)

Of course it hasn't. There wouldn't be a Fedora anymore after that ;)
You just seemed to discard the idea a bit too quickly for my taste.

And I wanted to point out that desktops - or at least GNOME - have been looking at building their own distro. If you look at https://live.gnome.org/PortabilityMatrix and its history over time you can clearly see that the requirements for the underlying platform have been increasing.

And from my personal experience in talking with other GNOME developers, I would say that it's certainly been a desire of us GNOME community for a while now to define a platform and not to be "just" a desktop on top of some platform.

DEs need to build their own distros

Posted Feb 9, 2012 18:37 UTC (Thu) by ndye (guest, #9947) [Link]

... it's certainly been a desire of us GNOME community for a while now to define a platform and not to be "just" a desktop on top of some platform.

And that desire is precisely the problem for many in the . . . audience of any $DesktopEnvironment: I want the choice to exploit my favorite $DE features on Linux, *BSD, Haiku, HURD, etc.

If I have to reinvent those features between platforms, we've chucked the code reuse value of OpenSource or FLOSS in the bonfire.

DEs need to build their own distros

Posted Feb 7, 2012 19:35 UTC (Tue) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

Hmm.

With that comment in mind. I think it would behoove us all if we took a closer look at how the KDE based OS is constructed and applications delivered for the newly announced Spark device.

I'm not sure the Spark device's OS is going to be delivered like a tradition "distribution" in the Kubuntu sense. I admit I don't fully understand who is responsible for maintaining the OS image and updates for the device yet. Based on bits produced by the mer project, but I'm not sure yet who is responsible for the image QA. Clearly the app delivery system is going to be established outside of mer.

I would imagine Gnome project devs are going to look very closely at the Spark device and try to figure out a way to deliver a similar direct to consumer product for the GNOME OS concept.

-jef