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

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

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

Notes: If you are interested in this project, please contact either Jaroslav or Ryan.

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

Communication with Upstream

As the KDE Netbook shell is still in its early stages, issues may come up which will require support from upstream in the Plasma. Good communication skills and an IRC presence are a big plus.

Feature process

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