KISS-kde

This is currently a work in progress. Feel free to help out!

Every package required to build plasma-desktop builds and install just fine! But does it work, that's the question...

It builds! It installs! It launches! That's a success, kids.

Current Milestones

Here are all of the things that can be worked on.

• Enable linux-pam in a meaningful way

  • This would allow things like logging back in from the lockscreen
  • This might fix the udisks2 problem I have (very poorly) worked around.

• Enable a login-manager

• Ensure everything works!

• Make patches to remove coreutils dependency

  • elogind - /usr/bin/realpath --relative-to
  • libblockdev - /usr/bin/mktemp --tmpdir
  • udisks2 - /usr/bin/ln -r

• Properly configure docbook generation

  • Currently, docbook-xsl doesn't actually do anything, I don't think.
  • You can see this in udisks2: all docs are disabled!

• Package some KDE apps

  • krita
  • okular
  • ???

• Generate build files!

• Satisfy dependencies

• Make sure the core builds

• Does KDE launch?

• Fix menus not working

• Find a sane default collection

• Expand the default for a 'comprehensive' alternative

  • udisks2
  • vaultcrypt
  • networkmanager
  • bluez
  • pulseaudio - will probably remain optional
  • ???

• Create an installation tarball similar to how KISS is distributed

  • Live USB (?)

• Cleanup repository structure

  • This one is on me. There seems to be a 'natural' grouping for these.
  • It'll resemble the 'default' KISS repositories. You know, for consistency.

This list will be expanded, contracted, and refined as necessary. Feel free to assist.

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KISS-kde with respect to KISS

gettext: I have opted not to include internationalization. This was done in two parts:

1. Hobble ki18n by removing the gettext dependency

2. Delete all translation files located in po from packages which 'require' them.

If you would like to have languages besides english available, it should be quite easy. First, package gettext. Second, remove the patch in the ki18n package. Finally, simply remove rm -rf po from each build script in which it appears. This is probably trivial (cough sed cough).

Additionally, there are packages which I had to go further to remove gettext and intltool from. It shouldn't be too hard to find them on your own (the patches are sanely named, remove-gettext.patch and remove-intltool.patch). Fix up the build files as required!

dbus: The dreaded(?) question.

Based on my current knowledge of KDE, dbus is required by a litany of programs. Many which don't explicitly require dbus will nontheless build against it if it is available. The hard part, however, is not the framework. Instead, it is for launching KDE itself.

If you attempt to startx startplasma-x11, you will probably be met with an error message about dbus. You see, KDE requires something like polkit, elogind, etc. to start. Indeed even with wayland this is the case. Additionally, dbus is used by integral parts of the system to do... Most things. Which is why KDE tries so hard to ensure it is running before it is launched.

Which would seem to make dbus a hard dependency for KDE.

Unless we can find a way around this (and I am certainly not the one to do it!), dbus is required. I have no real problems with this. If you take umbridge with this hard fact, perhaps reflect on why you want KDE in the first place?

qt: The engine that make it go!

The qt dependency includes packages which overlap with community, like qt5. Additionally, qt5 requires packages from community at build time. If a package in community has been changed, it will be forked into this repository. As a result, you should place this repository in your $KISS_PATH before community.

qt5*, specifically qt5-webengine, take a very long time to build (thanks, chromium). As a result, I have included along with this repository a KISS tarball of the fully built packages for the three parts of the qt5 suite that take more than twenty minutes to build. These are compiled assuming you've satisfied the dependencies of this repository. Built with everyone's favorite GNU C compiler, with CFLAGS=-march=x86-64 -mtune=generic -Os -pipe. If you want a 'seamless' build, merely plop these archives in ${XDG_CACHE_DIR:-$HOME/.cache}/kiss/bin, and make sure you change the . before the 5 to a # so kiss doesn't complain.

Prerequisites

1. This all assumes a working xorg-server. Many xorg-related dependencies are left out as explicit deps. The minimum xorg requires should be enough - all others should be handled by kiss. Yes, I know wayland is a dependency. It is also an option to use wayland as a result, if you so choose. xorg is merely the 'default'. Note that wayland support is still not fully implemented in KDE. You might have better mileage using kwinft instead of kwin, for instance. This option is also included in this repository. FWIW, I am using kwinft with xorg and these windows wobble just fine.

2. cgroups may be required for elogind. I leave it up to you to test your own kernel configs.

3. You will require exactly one program from coreutils to build a single package.

4. You will need gnugrep to build at least one package.

5. You will need dbus. Because of this, you'll have to rebuild qt5.

6. You will need eudev. Because of this, you'll need to rebuild xorg-server, any input packages (libinput, xf86-input-libinput, etc.), dhcpcd, perhaps others.

These rebuilds are obviously not required if you already had the relevant programs built against dbus, eudev, etc. To determine which packages are built against dbus or eudev merely run kiss-revdepends eudev. If you see xorg-server, you're probably fine.

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Getting Started

Now that we have all of that nonsense out of the way, let's get to it!

We start with the assumption that you just installed KISS, following the installation guide exactly, which means you have eudev, a working xorg that knows about eudev, some input drivers, and fonts. Although this repo does include some nice fonts, so either way you're covered.

You might have a few extra programs, like pcre2 and some xcb already installed. Great! It might save you time. Not really. You shouldn't have too many conflicts to deal with, if any. Just make sure you've uninstalled qt5 and friends.

NOTE: I have taken the liberty of uploading a KISS package for qt5, qt5-webengine, and qt5-declarative. Assuming your system is roughly similar to mine, and you've installed all of their dependencies, you can simply install these xz archives instead of wasting ten hours building them. Trust me.

You have two primary choices on what to install to get a working desktop. Either you can install plasma-desktop, or you can install plasma.

plasma-desktop includes basically every single item in the framework you would need in order to have a recognizable KDE experience. It has icons, fonts, some default things like an application launcher, a system monitor, a settings manager.

If you want a more 'full-featured' KDE environment, you can install plasma. This 'package' will come with 20 additional packages, and it fleshes out our fledgling project with features one might expect to exist. It isn't that much more, so there's no real reason not to use it. This expanded list includes things like bluez. It might be worth it for you.

To get a 'minimal' KDE (it's over a hundred packages), simply install plasma-desktop. How convenient! Here's how you do it:

NOTE: It doesn't matter where you keep these repos (or any KISS repos, for that matter). I keep mine in $HOME/git. For now, assume I've done git clone in $HOME.

$ git clone https://github.com/kisslinux/community   # Clone
$ git clone https://github.com/sdsddsd1/mywayland    # Repos
$ git clone https://github.com/dilyn-corner/KISS-kde # pls

# Start with a clean path, get a new one.

$ . /etc/profile.d/kiss_path.sh
$ exprot KISS_PATH="$KISS_PATH:$HOME/community/community"
$ export KISS_PATH="$HOME/mywaland/wayland:$KISS_PATH"
$ export KISS_PATH="$HOME/KISS-kde/extra:$KISS_PATH"
$ export KISS_PATH="$HOME/KISS-kde/plasma:$KISS_PATH"
$ export KISS_PATH="$HOME/KISS-kde/frameworks:$KISS_PATH"

# If you don't already have it,

$ kiss b dbus eudev && kiss i dbus eudev

# If you just did the previous,

$ kiss b xorg-server libinput xf86-input-libinput 
# Add others as necessary

# Thanks to the alternatives system, we can just pluck out
# the one binary we need from `coreutils`, along with the grep utility.

$ kiss b coreutils gnugrep && kiss i coreutils gnugrep
$ kiss a coreutils /usr/bin/realpath
$ kiss a | grep ^gnugrep | kiss a -

# We're finally ready!

$ kiss b plasma-desktop

~~~ WAIT TWELVE HOURS ~~~

$ kiss i plasma-desktop

# There are some circular dependencies we should work around

$ kiss b elogind && kiss i elogind

# Perhaps we start the dbus, elogind, polkit, and eudev services?
# At least the dbus service seems necessary, so we might as well...
$ ln -sv /etc/sv/dbus  /var/service
$ ln -sv /etc/sv/udevd /var/service

# Enjoy!

$ pkill x
$ echo "exec dbus-launch --exit-with-session startplasma-x11" >> ~/.xinitrc" 
# Ensure you don't have anything else execing before this

$ startx

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Things to be aware of

1. I have not opted to start sddm by default. Turning this repository into a full-fledged desktop is first on my list of things to do. I will be looking into this after I get a few more packages built to flesh out KDE. I also plan on packaging launcher-alternatives, like lightdm. User choice, and all.

2. This is very much in alpha. I will keep this repository up-to-date as best I can, testing and building things as frequently as possible - it's a big project that requires a fair amount of maintenance. Luckily, I have the hard drive space and the free time. But I'm only one person; if you have a contribution, feel free to share it. If you package some KDE apps, feel free to submit a pull request for inclusion. Requests like this should follow the KISS style guide as closely as possible, but I'm not too much of a stickler.

3. You have two window manager options: kwin or kwinft. kwin was recently forked! It's all very exciting. kwinft is a promising, development-heavy branch. As a a result, there are bound to be bugs that crop up. Presumably, kwinft is strictly better than kwin, because something something bleeding edge. It's your choice which you choose! If you opt to use kwinft, simply comment kwin from plasma-desktop/depends and plasma-workspace/depends and uncomment kwinft, and then simply install plasma-desktop or plasma. If you have already installed kwin fear not! Do the comment switcheroo as before, reinstall those packages (which should pull-in everything required for kwinft), and then simply kill your KDE session if you're in one, uninstall kwin, and restart the session! If you run into bugs, please make sure they're not kwinft related - burn down the developer's door for those.

4. kscreenlocker works, but it seems you cannot log in! This probably has something to do with linux-pam not being setup properly. To be frank, the entire elogind stack will take a bit of learning on my part to understand and get working. If you happen to know how to ensure things like pam are running so that users don't get locked out of their systems, I would love assistance on this.

How you can help

I need testers! People who just use the desktop to navigate through digital space and time. Does an application segfault? Does something simply fail to launch? I need to know! Do you run into build-time errors? Run-time? What are they! I have already run into a few, I've identified fixes for many and am working on solutions to others. But in the end, I am a simple person with simple needs. I cannot guarantee that everything works because I don't plan on using everything available. So jump in! Make a package! Fix bugs! Be my fren! But most importantly...

Enjoy!