KDE - Wayland support

Patrick · October 29, 2023, 11:20am

Due to KDE having Wayland support… And plans porting to Wayland. (port to Wayland)

Reconsidered KDE again by looking at the KDE packages.debian.org packages.

(history: Whonix used to be based on KDE: User Poll - XFCE vs KDE - KDE Deprecation Considered!)

I re-checked the dependencies of the most minimal KDE packages and it’s still horrible. KDE might have 1 nice feature (Wayland) but comes with a lot extra baggage.

Debian -- Details of package kde-plasma-desktop in bookworm depends on Debian -- Details of package plasma-desktop in bookworm but that depends on Debian -- Details of package accountsservice in bookworm

Debian -- Details of package plasma-workspace in bookworm but that depends for example on Debian -- Details of package qml-module-org-kde-kholidays in bookworm and a lot of other stuff.

By the first impression, researching all of that would be just too much.

Could have similar issues as GNOME which then results in “click = compromised” because it runs a file indexer by default which has a rarely needed feature parsing CD metadata which has been vulnerable (libcue).

It lacks the required minimalism “just give me a basic desktop”.

Could have more similar issues that GNOME has:

Unless I am missing something…

Therefore it seems highly unlikely going back to KDE for the sake of Wayland support.

ldwkcj · October 30, 2023, 6:45pm

This is good news. Xfce will of course eventually have Wayland support: releng:wayland_roadmap [Xfce Wiki]

Patrick · October 30, 2023, 6:46pm

Quote:

It is not clear yet which Xfce release will target a complete Xfce Wayland transition (or if such a transition will happen at all).

Patrick · November 19, 2023, 4:30am

github.com/Kicksecure/security-misc

My Argument for KDE | Developers in the forum disregarded the idea too quickly

opened 11:14AM - 18 Nov 23 UTC

monsieuremre

As the title says. I think whonix maintainers in the forum have discarded the id…ea of moving back to kde too quickly. Moreover, I find most all of the arguments to be for the most part unfounded. KDE being bloated or heavy for Whonix is just not true. KDE used to be 'heavier' when both Qubes and Whonix were using it. It is now much more optimized. Xorg is unironically massively more bloated than wayland. All the 'bloat' is not part of the DE. We do not have to install everything. Just install the shell and we are done. And I want to make this clear, I propose we only install the shell. Not even the terminal, not the file manager, nothing from the debian repositories but the shell, and let me explain why. But before that, I want to recap once again why xfce severly slows whonix down. * Xfce is now officially the only 'major' DE that does not have a plan to switch to wayland for good. They say they would try stuff, but that's it. It is not even certain that they will switch at all. Even Cinnamon has given a date now. Budgie, Mate, they are all switching, they have plans, they have dates. Stuff like Lxqt are already almost completely switched. Xfce is an outlier here. And this is expected. They for some reason agreed not to use wlroots or libmutter. That means they kinda have to develop their own compositor, which we all know is not possible with the little funding Xfce has. If they do not decide to suddenly base on wlroots, Xfce will never have wayland. * Xfce is lags behind, massively. On everything. The desktop looks really, really, but I mean really outdated. Normally this is not as important but you have to keep in mind, compelling to the average user is something you probably want. * It is really a shame whonix still unironically ships with xorg as default. * The only reason this is still just passable is whonix designed to be run on a VM. But Kicksecure is planned to be a regular distro. That means, xorg gotta go, really. True and real. * Xfce is small. You tell on the Whonix website that you base on Debian, and one of the reasons for that is that there is a good chance in 10 years Debian is still going to be around. Do you know what not might be around in 10 years? Xfce. And by 'might', I mean they won't definetely be around, if they don't catch the pace in switching to wayland. So at the very least, before I make the argument for KDE, we should all more or less agree on this: Xfce bad. At least for security. Now my argument for KDE. * KDE e.V. is a well-established and well-funded non-profit organization based in Germany. They are not some random project. * KDE is customizable. It is fast. It is optimized. It can be as simple and minimalistic, if not more minimalistic, than xfce on demand. * KDE has a well functioning wayland compositor. Which is to be the default. * KDE provides almost all of their software as flatpaks. I know this might not mean much to you. But this is the reason why I suggested we install the shell from the debian repository and literally stop there. For everything else KDE, let's use the flatpak. Cut out the middle man. Get our software directly from KDE developers as they intend. Much faster bug and security fixes. It is also possible to vastly increase the flatpak sandboxing provided by bubblewrap with some overrides. The file manager, the terminal, the literally everything, as a flatpak. This is the only case I would support flatpaks. Because we get the software directly from the developers, and we get bubblewrap default. Can be further hardened too. Want a secure system? It won't get more secure than getting your software directly from the developer with all the security fixes, in a sandboxed environment. (This clause is optional of course) Switching to flatpak defaults would normally be a seperate suggestion of mine, but yeah consider that extra. Getting the latest KeePassXC officially from the developers or getting the latest Thunderbird officially and directly from Mozilla is a huge leap in security. Of course I trust the debian team to do the packaging well and port security issues. But they can't be as good at porting security fixing than directly having them fixed from the developers. Can't be as fast. Anyway this is a seperate topic, for now disregard. Only consider what relates KDE.