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Month: December 2011

Re: Re: [trinity-devel] Suggestion to drop [t|k]win from Trinity and replace it by KWin4

From: Martin Gräßlin <mgraesslin@...>
Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2011 16:16:28 +0100
On Thursday 22 December 2011 10:00:45 Calvin Morrison wrote:
> Hello martin!
> 
> I think we will need a private debugging session because after all my
> attempts, I still cant use kwin with trinity, or within it's own X11
> session. I have installed kwin from the Ubuntu mirrors.
> 
> Yet when I launch kwin everything sort of freezes up! It's quite strange.
> I'm running the Intel Sandy Bridge. Both raster and openGL don't work.
I don't know about issues with Sandy Bridge, but I recommend to update the 
drivers and in doubt disable KWin's compositing support.

KWIN_COMPOSE=N kwin --replace &

> 
> I think i'll try and spend more time over the holidays working on this.
> I've also noticed that a large amount of dependencies are pulled in, but
> probably ones that we can remove with a small amount of work. Any Akonadi
> or Nepomonk or virtuoso should be avoided.
Two comments towards that:
1. this is just a packaging issue. KWin doesn't require Akonadi or Nepomuk. 
Though KWin uses Nepomuk if it is available.
2. personal note: the "fear" of Akonadi and Nepomuk/Virtuosu is irrational. 
Those who oppose it mostly don't understand what it is about. Especially 
Akonadi is nothing bad but something good. I have worked with Akonadi during 
my Master Thesis and it's a great technology [1]. It's just that it got some 
bad press. Nepomuk is one of the primary technologies used by Plasma Active 
targeted at embedded devices. Somehow that contradicts all the "Nepomuk is 
slow/wastes memory", doesn't it ;-)

I'm always rather disappointed and feel with the developers when reading 
comments like that. KWin had to go through something similar and nowadays 
nobody would call KWin slow or inferior compared to other technologies. I 
think backing the developers by showing faith in their technology would 
motivate them to fix the remaining issues to make it technology everybody 
wants to use :-)

By that I do not request that Trinity should switch to Akonadi or Nepomuk. 
It's just a hint to be open to new technology and not talking bad about it :-)
> 
> I'd like to push for this - but only as beta.
great :-)
> I think twin has never failed
> me as a good, standard, well thought out manager - but it doesn't hurt to
> explore new options.
Well I know of serious regressions introduced in TWin in comparison to KWin 3. 
With serious I mean runtime breakage being as severe as TWin no longer 
starting. I am very concerned about such developments as it harms also the 
name of KWin. We are known to be a rock solid window manager and I am afraid 
of a fork introducing patching causing such severe regressions without 
consulting the KWin development team.

Cheers
Martin

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Implementation-Proactive-Spam-Fighting-
Techniques/dp/3639289935/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1324566570&sr=8-1
> 
> Calvin

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