Should Ubuntu Have Gone With KDE Instead Of GNOME?

[RussianNeuroMancer]

Interesting, what makes GNOME more suitable for that use case? I'm getting such a device myself, and I made a thread specifically for this question: https://www.phoronix.com/forums/foru...st-for-tablets

I answered in your thread, but post is not approved yet.

[TheBlackCat]

For example, you can call a command line program;

You are right here, it doesn't look like the KIO command-line tool supports mounting or unmounting, although I suppose you could do this through DBUS.

or you can use the GIO API via gobject, which is perfectly usable by Qt programs too. Is the reverse true? Can a non-KDE application use the API you linked too?

Of course, it is exactly the same as non-Gnome applications calling the GIO api. With KF5, KIO has been split out into its own library so you don't need to depend on the rest of KDE to use it. Or, in both cases, you can dbus.

As of today there is no interface for a Qt program written in Python to use that API, for example.

Yes, the KDE python bindings are not finished yet. But that is not a fundamental limitation of KIO, and there are lots of languages without gobject bindings. You just cherry-picked language that happens to have gobject bindings but not KF5 ones. Although you can still access the KIO dbus interface through python.

This has real implications for the average desktop user. It's particularly frustrating with respect to MTP, because KIO will not give up control of an MTP device as long as the KIO process that accessed the MTP device is still running. For KDE apps it's not a problem, because they all use KIO. For every other app outside that system, they're blocked from accessing the device.

That is an inherent limitation of MTP, only one process can access it at a time. GIO has the same issue. The KIO-mtp developer wanted to create a cross-desktop library to avoid this problem, but I never heard of the GIO devs decided to cooperate or not.

[Thaodan]

Let's assume you're correct and kioslave is superior to gvfs/gio. Why, then, does no one outside of KDE use kioslave? Loads of desktops use gvfs/gio, and it works very well for them. It works well for non-Gnome applications and environments because there are easy to use hooks for developers to do things like "unmount" an MTP mount, for example. No such facility is provided by kioslave, and apparently there is zero interest in providing such a facility by the KDE devs. I think that's a mistake, but hey, I'm not a KDE dev so it's up to them what they do with their code.

Simply: Gio is glib based and used by "loads of desktops" that are based on GTK and some move a away from GTK.
Kio C++/Qt based thats the issue, only the fuse thing is missing.

[damonlynch]

Yes, the KDE python bindings are not finished yet. But that is not a fundamental limitation of KIO, and there are lots of languages without gobject bindings. You just cherry-picked language that happens to have gobject bindings but not KF5 ones. Although you can still access the KIO dbus interface through python.



That is an inherent limitation of MTP, only one process can access it at a time. GIO has the same issue. The KIO-mtp developer wanted to create a cross-desktop library to avoid this problem, but I never heard of the GIO devs decided to cooperate or not.

In lieu of a command line tool to unmount (which would be very useful indeed), do you have a link to the documentation for this D-BUS interface, assuming it's documented? I'm interested to use it for my own application, which as you can guess, is written in Qt & Python.

I don't know how anyone could get around the MTP single access limitation because as you know that's a limitation in the MTP library itself. Is the KDE dev proposing rewriting that library, or wrapping the library in another library that cooperatively shares that access? Not that I'm proposing helping, mind you; I'm just curious.

Dolphin is more reticent than Gnome Files in giving up access to an MTP / gphoto2 mount. Last I tested it, you have to end the Dolphin process that once accessed the MTP / gphoto2 device, even if it is no longer displaying the contents of an MTP / gphoto2 device.

[Azrael5]

KDe PLASMA is the best experience on desktop. I used operating system based on Gnome and I have always replaced it because of wasting time on get the application available. PLASMA is better in productivity. Gnome desktop seems a desktop environment for smartphone. I'll give a chance to the next releases of Fedora.