Summer Coding 2010 ideas - KDE Netbook Spin

The main page for this proposal is Summer Coding 2010 ideas - KDE Netbook Spin.

Status: Accepting Applications

Summary of idea: The creation of an official KDE Netbook Edition Spin for Fedora 14

Contacts: Ryan Rix < rrix fedoraproject.org >, rrix on irc.freenode.net/#fedora-kde

Mentor(s): Ryan Rix rrix on irc.freenode.net/#fedora-kde, Jaroslav Reznik jreznik on irc.freenode.net/#fedora-kde

More information

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The main page for Summer Coding 2010 ideas is Category:Summer Coding 2010 ideas.

Status:

Summary of idea: The creation of an official KDE Netbook Edition Spin for Fedora 14

Contacts: Ryan rix < rrix fedoraproject.org >, rrix on irc.freenode.net/#fedora-kde

Mentor(s): TBD

Notes:

The KDE Netbook Spin would target netbooks with smaller hardware specs 
(think early eeepc series) rather than the mini-laptops that ship full 
harddrives and the like. The project would most likely consist of two 
parts: 

* Package splitting: To target the smaller memory requirements of 
netbooks, 
the main kde modules would have to be split into individual applications. 
This 
would allow us to strip certain unnecessary applications out of the spin 
and 
create a more targeted distro.
I'd imagine something along the lines of splitting:
kdebase
- kdebase-dolphin
- kdebase-konqueror
- kdebase-common
...etc...
kdebase-workspace
- kdebase-workspace-common
- kdebase-workspace-netbook
 - plasma-netbook (kdebase/workspace/plasma/netbook/)
- kdebase-workspace-desktop
 - plasma-desktop (kdebase/workspace/plasma/desktop/)
- kdebase-klipper
- kdebase-systemsettings
...etc...
kdebase-runtime
- unchanged?
kdelibs
- unchanged?
kdenetwork 
- kdenetwork-kopete
- kdenetwork-common
...etc...

You get the picture; naming, and exact layout, woud of course be decided 
with 
discussion and involvement of the entire KDE SIG. Proper dependency 
handling 
would be done to ensure that current users would not be adversly affected 
by 
this change, etc...
The package splitting will also help users of other desktops to install 
only 
the KDE application which they want. For example, it's currently 
impossible to 
install only konsole, without pulling in all of kdebase-apps... Also, if a 
user is interested in configuring KDE extragear applications such as 
amarok, 
they have to install kdebase-workspace, including all of plasma, only to 
configure their applications.

* Spin design and creation: The spin would be a heavily parred down 
version of 
the KDE Desktop Edition spin, possibly shipping a modified (but still 
properly 
in the Fedora repos) kde-settings-netbook package, with common settings 
tweaked for netbook usage. Many applications which would not fit the 
standard 
Netbook usage scenario would be stripped out of the final image in the 
best 
interests of keeping the image size smaller. 

The Supreme Goal would be to ship it with as little GTK depenancies as 
possible; post-install it should be possible to uninstall the few 
installation-required GTK applications (metacity, firstboot, etc) 
automatically, and thus also save some room by removing gtk altogether. 
Any 
other applications or libraries that pull in unnecessary GTK dependencies 
(one 
or two pulseaudio libraries, for example, do this) would be split 
accordingly

* Feature process: This would be submitted through the standard process to 
be 
included in Fedora 14 as a Feature and standard spin.