Ubuntu – What’s the difference between KDE packages

12.04kdepackage-management

So I'm going to install KDE in Precise. I found that there wasn't an entry for Plasma Desktop (only KDE apps) in the software center, so I fired up Synaptic to look for the packages.

However, now I'm finding way too many of these. There's kde-standard, kde-workspace, plasma-desktop, plasma-netbook, kde-plasma-desktop…

I went and looked online, but with differing instructions, too. I think the most common were between "install kubuntu-desktop" and "add the kubuntu-ppa/backports repo" (which is probably not the one I want).

My question is… what's with all these different packages? Is there any difference between them? Which one should I install?

Best Answer

I've checked the packages that apt-get install would install for each of these. These aren't complete lists, but only list the differences from my Unity (ie., without any KDE programs) setup.

plasma-netbook and plasma-desktop differ only by whether they install the netbook or the desktop interface. kde-workspace is identical to plasma-desktop.

kde-plasma-desktop will install a few KDE programs: Dolphin, Konqueror, kde-baseapps, konsole, kwrite, and kde-passwd.

kde-standard installs a bunch of stuff on top of kde-desktop: Akregator, Ark, Dragonplayer, gnupg, Kaddressbook, Kate, KDE wallpapers, Kmail, etc.

kubuntu-desktop installs even more than kde-standard. kubuntu-desktop is the package you would download from the Ubuntu website if you wanted Kubuntu, but if you only want the Plasma interface, not any of the default programs, plasma-desktop might be sufficient.

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Ubuntu – What does the libkwinnvidiahack4 package do

After a serious bit of Googling I came across this post:

The only purpose of this file is to be later in the link order than (nvidia's) libGL, thus being initialized by the dynamic linker before it, allowing it to set __GL_YIELD=NOTHING soon enough for libGL to notice it.

Given that the quote is from a certain M-Graesslin, Martin is the chief maintainer in this area, so is a sure-fire source.

Indeed, looking at the source-code

apt-get source libkwinnvidiahack4

This is actually the kde workspace module.

kwin/nvidiahack.cpp is the source module in question - its a small module in itself

Since this hack is still in 13.04 - and is part of the core build, yes its still needed and its purpose is to ensure library linking for the OpenGL component of KDE is done in the correct functional order.

In terms of what the module does - it looks like it defines a runtime environment variable __GL_YIELD

From the freedesktop spec

OpenGL yield behavior

There are several cases where the NVIDIA OpenGL driver needs to wait for external state to change before continuing. To avoid consuming too much CPU time in these cases, the driver will sometimes yield so the kernel can schedule other processes to run while the driver waits. For example, when waiting for free space in a command buffer, if the free space has not become available after a certain number of iterations, the driver will yield before it continues to loop.

By default, the driver calls sched_yield() to do this. However, this can cause the calling process to be scheduled out for a relatively long period of time if there are other, same-priority processes competing for time on the CPU. One example of this is when an OpenGL-based composite manager is moving and repainting a window and the X server is trying to update the window as it moves, which are both CPU-intensive operations.

You can use the __GL_YIELD environment variable to work around these scheduling problems. This variable allows the user to specify what the driver should do when it wants to yield.

Thus the hack is to never wait and always paint on the OpenGL composite surface - most probably to stop graphical artifacts from appearing.

Ubuntu – the debug symbols for plasmashell (Kubuntu 19.04)

Well, apparently the missing debug symbols has been a confirmed bug for almost 2 years now (see bug #1701788). Would be nice if it could be fixed....

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Ubuntu – What does the libkwinnvidiahack4 package do

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