A lesson [LWN.net]

A lesson

Posted Sep 24, 2012 23:24 UTC (Mon) by Jonno (guest, #49613)
In reply to: A lesson by khim
Parent article: GStreamer 1.0 released

Of course you can combine kde3 and kde4 applications in the same desktop, but I know some distributions decided not to make use that feature.

To get "propper behaviour" the distribution just have to pick three data directories (ie. /usr/share/kde3, /usr/share/kde4, and /usr/share) and determine where each program should reside (eg is it KDE3 only, KDE4 only, or a regular application) and set the default XDG_DATA_DIRS values appropriately (eg "/usr/share/kde3:/usr/share" in KDE3 and "/usr/share/kde4:/usr/share" in KDE4).

If using only one data directory, you will get duplicates of every entry in the K-menu that is available in both versions, and if using only two directories you will get the "two separate worlds" you describe, but both those scenarios are due to bad distribution packaging, not due to anything KDE did wrong.

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A lesson

Posted Sep 25, 2012 12:10 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

When I tried to do a parallel installation of KDE3 and KDE4, huge chunks of KDE4 started when I booted up my KDE3 desktop, wrote to the same .kde directory, upgraded chunks of it to KDE4, and terminally confused the KDE3 apps. This appears to have been because of KDE4's use of XDG autostart directories, which get used even if you're starting KDE3, unless you point the system somewhere else, in which case all your *non*-KDE programs that make use of XDG autostart are suddenly not started anymore.