new KDE on RHEL/Centos/SL 6?

[Marko Vojinovic]

On Sat, Sep 17, 2011 at 1:14 PM, Timothy Murphy <gayleard at eircom.net> wrote:
> Marko Vojinovic wrote:
>
>>>> I'm also wondering if there would be newer KDE on RHEL. For some
>>>> reason a solid base with a newer desktop seems to make sense to me.
>>>
>>> In what way is KDE under CentOS-6 less "solid" than KDE under Fedora-15?
>>> I use both, and I don't find one better (or worse) than the other.
>>
>> KDE 4.3 is a tad bit too old for my taste, and lacks certain features.
>> For example, I just found out that there is no automount option when
>> plugging in a USB disk. That feature appeared in KDE 4.4, and here I
>> have to use an ugly custom cron job to check every minute whether
>> there is a USB hard drive to be mounted or not.
>
> Personally, I only run CentOS on servers,
> and I don't care whether an application is old or new, as long as it runs.
> I've updated to CentOS-6, but to be honest
> I haven't found anything that is improved from my limited viewpoint.
>
> In my experience with Fedora, any change to KDE is likely to cause problems
> somewhere, so I'd like any update to be put off as long as possible,
> as I don't like playing with servers.
>
> It isn't important, but I didn't understand your example.
> Surely you must know if you have attached a USB disk,
> and so can mount it at that point?

I completely agree with your POV as far as servers are concerned, but
I also use CentOS for some desktop machines where long-term support is
important. KDE doesn't even need to be installed for most server
purposes, while for desktop purposes it would be nice to have a more
recent version.

As to my usecase, of course, I can always manually mount a connected
USB disk. But the machines in question are not used by me, but by some
rather computer-illiterate people, who like things to "just happen",
and know second to nothing about mounting a filesystem. As I am not
around to help them every time someone plugs something into the
machine, an automount feature would be more than welcome. :-)

Incidentally, having CentOS as a desktop OS for such
computer-illiterate people is a very nice solution --- I can perform
most of the administrative and configuration tasks remotely, provide
excellent desktop support for the clients without ever leaving my own
office, and the clients get a stable and robust desktop system that
Just Works and doesn't change the appearence and their workflow for
several years on. It's a win-win thing, with just a slight drawback
that some small pieces of functionality like automounting are
unfortunately missing in KDE4.3.

Best, :-)
Marko