fedora-kde target audience, draft rfc

[Kevin Kofler]

Thomas Janssen wrote:
> Since i was the one who suggested it.. :) I do understand you but, if
> the KDE alternative is just giving a very basic functionality and is
> having problems (VPN IIRC) then we should consider using what works
> well, gives more output, does not suggest (again at the beginning of
> an update to reboot) stupid things.

Uh, VPN problems are a NM/KNM issue, not a KPK one.

The "suggests a reboot too early" bug is bizarre indeed, I should look if I 
can silence those reboot prompts. (I'm for silencing them entirely, KDE 
users are smart enough to know when they need to restart their computer. ;-) 
It'd also probably be the fastest way to zap that bug once and for all.)

Another thing I noticed is that KPK doesn't recognize different update types 
anymore after the latest PK update. :-(

I think what needs to happen here is that more people need to test PK 
updates in testing and that those updates need to be BLOCKED from getting 
pushed to stable if they break KPK. Throwing out KPK is entirely the wrong 
solution for such regressions introduced by PK updates. (Neither of the 
above bugs happened before the latest PK update. It's not KPK's fault that 
PK breaks backwards compatibility under it.)

One problem is that PK/KPK (and GPK, too) moves so fast that, even when I'm 
running the latest Fedora release, I'm still always running an already 
deprecated branch, so spending time fixing things might not pay off. (But on 
the other hand, F12 still has 9 months or so to live, so I guess fixing F12 
issues is beneficial in any case.)

> KPK is in my eyes, ugly, unreliable and too basic. I suggested to you
> as well to try the latest GNOME-packagekit to see what i mean.
> I think KPK is on it's way, but not yet ready.

Yet KPK just works. (Neither of the above 2 bugs is a showstopper, they're 
just minor annoyances that can be easily worked around.)

> If we dont want to lose users to GNOME because of not fully working,
> suggesting stupid things KDE apps, we might better use the
> alternative, even if it's written GTK/GTK+.
> By the way, should everybody use the GNOME SPIN as well because there
> are no QT alternatives for the installed system-config-* utility's in
> the KDE SPIN? ;)

We actually do have alternatives for some of them, but the GTK+ app gets 
dragged in by Anaconda's dependencies. :-( For example, there is KUser in 
kdeadmin which can be used instead of system-config-users. This Anaconda 
dependency bloat is one of the unsolved problems. Others are stuff I use 
once and never again (e.g. system-config-selinux, to turn the crap off and 
never look at it again). It's not the same as a package updater which users 
will be running daily.

        Kevin Kofler