PC-BSD Releases Updated Lumina Desktop Environment

[TheBlackCat]

Frameworks are not a desktop and they want their own desktop because they don't like the GPL and want a BSD-licensed desktop.

Frameworks are all LGPL licensed, like Qt (althought Qt is also GPL, frameworks are all only LGPL). This is not a coincidence, it is a strict matter of policy, and it was recently decided that a piece of software would not be included in frameworks because although it was LGPL it had a hard depency on GPL software. So it isn't like this project should have any more concern about using frameworks than using Qt from a licensing standpoint.

[Thaodan]

No, it is dual-licensed GPL and LGPL.

yeah this i was what I meant I thoungt they don't like gpl if gpl or lgpl.

KDE Frameworks is lgpl too.

[Luke_Wolf]

yeah this i was what I meant I thoungt they don't like gpl if gpl or lgpl.

KDE Frameworks is lgpl too.

They tolerate Copyleft-Lite licenses like LGPL and CDDL, even if they prefer permissive licenses because the effects of those licenses are self-contained. Also while the license stuff is likely a factor my understanding was that the primary motivation behind the creation of Lumina was that other desktop environments treat the BSDs as second class citizens (which is primarily a manpower problem, and not really a fault of those projects) and primarily focus on Linux. As a result some BSD folks decided "lets make our own BSD specific desktop environment", it's on the PC-BSD blog somewhere.

[Thaodan]

They tolerate Copyleft-Lite licenses like LGPL and CDDL, even if they prefer permissive licenses because the effects of those licenses are self-contained. Also while the license stuff is likely a factor my understanding was that the primary motivation behind the creation of Lumina was that other desktop environments treat the BSDs as second class citizens (which is primarily a manpower problem, and not really a fault of those projects) and primarily focus on Linux. As a result some BSD folks decided "lets make our own BSD specific desktop environment", it's on the PC-BSD blog somewhere.

you the coud do it but it would save them much work, KDE isn't GNOME they don't depent on Linux.

[Luke_Wolf]

you the coud do it but it would save them much work, KDE isn't GNOME they don't depent on Linux.

I agree, but that's their choice to make.

here's the blogpost if you're interested http://blog.pcbsd.org/2014/04/quick-lumina-desktop-faq/

[Awesomeness]

No idea why you talk about Qt and KF5 licenses. Plasma Desktop, Gnome, LXDE and so on are under GPL, Lumina is BSD-licensed.

the primary motivation behind the creation of Lumina was that other desktop environments treat the BSDs as second class citizens (which is primarily a manpower problem, and not really a fault of those projects) and primarily focus on Linux. As a result some BSD folks decided "lets make our own BSD specific desktop environment"

Yeah, blah. Under no circumstances is it easier to write a complete DE than to just maintain a BSD adapter in KDE Solid.

[TheBlackCat]

Also while the license stuff is likely a factor my understanding was that the primary motivation behind the creation of Lumina was that other desktop environments treat the BSDs as second class citizens (which is primarily a manpower problem, and not really a fault of those projects) and primarily focus on Linux.

If there aren't enough people supporting BSDs, it would seem to me that the most efficient solution from a manpower perspective would be to provide additional manpower towards the support of BSDs on an existing DE. After all, the amount of work needed to improve support for another POSIX-compliant OS in an existing DE is much smaller than the amount of effort needed to created and maintain an entire DE from scratch. At best, this is resulting in two DEs without enough manpower behind them. What is more, they may very well poach supporters from existing DEs, further hurting existing DEs support for BSDs. So this move is outright counterproductive to the goal you gave.

I am not saying they are not allowed to do it. It is their time and they are entitlted to spend it however they want. And I am sure there are lots of good reasons for making a new DE. But the lack of upstream manpower in existing DEs is not a good reason, in fact it is an outright bad reason.

[Luke_Wolf]

If there aren't enough people supporting BSDs, it would seem to me that the most efficient solution from a manpower perspective would be to provide additional manpower towards the support of BSDs on an existing DE. After all, the amount of work needed to improve support for another POSIX-compliant OS in an existing DE is much smaller than the amount of effort needed to created and maintain an entire DE from scratch. At best, this is resulting in two DEs without enough manpower behind them. What is more, they may very well poach supporters from existing DEs, further hurting existing DEs support for BSDs. So this move is outright counterproductive to the goal you gave.

I am not saying they are not allowed to do it. It is their time and they are entitlted to spend it however they want. And I am sure there are lots of good reasons for making a new DE. But the lack of upstream manpower in existing DEs is not a good reason, in fact it is an outright bad reason.

like I said, I agree, but again look at number 4: http://blog.pcbsd.org/2014/04/quick-lumina-desktop-faq/

Sometimes, indeed often, people do things that are counterproductive to their actual goals despite an action being motivated as an attempt to reach that goal. That said I doubt anyone working on this is being pulled from a desktop that matters, and the fact that they now have enough people that creating a BSD specific desktop is even actually a doable thing tells me they're significantly better off on that front than they think they are. They do seem to keep up with KDE close enough as far as I've observed (I don't really care enough about any other desktop to pay attention).

[TiberiusDuval]

like I said, I agree, but again look at number 4: http://blog.pcbsd.org/2014/04/quick-lumina-desktop-faq/

Sometimes, indeed often, people do things that are counterproductive to their actual goals despite an action being motivated as an attempt to reach that goal. That said I doubt anyone working on this is being pulled from a desktop that matters, and the fact that they now have enough people that creating a BSD specific desktop is even actually a doable thing tells me they're significantly better off on that front than they think they are. They do seem to keep up with KDE close enough as far as I've observed (I don't really care enough about any other desktop to pay attention).

Quite many tasks for example normally made directly on KDE like mounting disks, network settings and so on, are done by separate settings applications on PC-BSD. Previously they were doable directly from KDE, but as support from older standards like hal and so on were deprecated, and newer linux tech are linux-only that just doesn't work anymore. So KDE does not anymore work as intended, and when time goes forward I think more and more functionality will be lost.

[Luke_Wolf]

Quite many tasks for example normally made directly on KDE like mounting disks, network settings and so on, are done by separate settings applications on PC-BSD. Previously they were doable directly from KDE, but as support from older standards like hal and so on were deprecated, and newer linux tech are linux-only that just doesn't work anymore. So KDE does not anymore work as intended, and when time goes forward I think more and more functionality will be lost.

They're currently actively working on porting off of hal and onto devd, so a lot of those issues will go away once that is done in terms of mounting stuff and such. Network settings were never AFAIK a KDE specific thing as such, just as package management isn't. It's just that unlike Linux's NetworkManager, PC-BSDs utilities don't currently integrate particularly well into KDE. This will likely change in the long run.