As you may know, the future version of Netrunner is going to use Plasma 5, which is great, unfortunately there is one thing missing. I do not want to repeat what others said, so I will, just link to the thread on the VDG forum.
[quote]Kgethotnewstuff is OK. It’s functional, but not exceptional. The UI is in need of a refresh I think, and we could do with adding the ability to filter by colour / style / tags? etc. Leaving the UI issues to one side at the moment, I think the major usability problem with Kgethotnewstuff is that some of the themes and icon sets on there are uninstallable through Kgethotnewstuff, which should not be the case at all. As an average user you should not have to go hunting for a .tar.gz and work out how to install it, or, in the case of those that don’t seem to want to install, start playing around with the ‘.hidden’ folders. It’s disappointing more than anything, especially if you really like the theme.
Which leads me onto the next problem…
Kde-look.org - The fuel to Kgethotnewstuff’s fire. Well what to say about this beast of a website? It seems to become the defacto place for people to place their themes on, but I reckon only because of it’s prominence in google. I can’t imagine people actually like putting their themes on the site, but where else can they put them where a large amount of people are going to see them? The site is riddled with spam…[/quote]
And the problem is only going to be more visible in the future as Plasma 5 is introducing the concept of “Look and Feel packages”. So basically we have two problems to solve:
A desktop client for downloading themes/icons and other stuff
Here we can use Muon Discover which is now part of the plasma 5, and has a bodega and Get Hot New Stuff backend.
I write this here, due to the Blue Systems involvement in the development of KDE. I think that I can push this problem forward on the vdg side, but I just want to know your opinions first
Those features are built in to Plasma 5 just like they we’re in KDE SC 4, if you click on icons, themes, etc. there is a download more themes at the bottom of the windows. No if you wan’t prepackaged global installations of these themes then you would need to search for them in the package manager just like you would in any other distribution. The problem is that there isn’t a lot of themes available for Plasma 5 yet. more are being added all the time.
Well there is some misunderstanding here. I am fully aware about availability of the KDE’s Get Hot New Stuff http://kde-look.org/help/api.php in Plasma 5. I just want to point out the shortcomings of this solution. (Please read the thread on the KDE forum for more info).
In short, KDE-Look is not controlled by KDE in any way, is full of spam, and can be potentially dangerous for the users. It is not hard to imagine that someone can put malware there, etc.
I understand your concerns, however as far as I know the KDE community only supports the oxygen and air themes for KDE SC 4.x and the Oxygen and Breeze themes for plamsa 5, anything else is third party and not officially supported, they are at the users discretion to use or not use. The KDE community has never done any compiling or packaging for any one distributions or Operating Systems, these have always been done at the distributions level and will continue to be done this way.
If you search the official repositories and/or PPA’s / AUR (depending on what version of Netrunner you are using), I’m sure you will find the themes that you wan’t or need, just keep in mind that Plasma 5 is NOT compatible with KDE SC 4.x themes.
Well we still do not understand each other, this is probably my fault, because I can’t explain my idea clearly enough it seems.
That link https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=285&t=119620 includes everything I would like to say.
I will try to show the inefficiency of the current situation by example. Let say that we want to download a wallpaper. We open the “Desktop Settings”, click Get New Wallpapers and then we choose “order by rating”. When choosing the first four wallpapers in 2 cases we are sent to an external hosting service http://wstaw.org/m/2014/12/30/example.png
in one case there is an error http://wstaw.org/m/2014/12/30/example1.png
The default provider of Get Hot New Stuff is KDE- look. As I wrote earlier, KDE does not control this site, and we have what we have i.e. missing links and errors.
Let’s continue and install some icons, “order by newest” and with the two first sets we have, surprise an error “file not found”
FaenzaFlattr http://wstaw.org/m/2014/12/30/example2.png
Oxymentary Armonico http://wstaw.org/m/2014/12/30/example3.png
Well we can always go to KDE-look and manually install that files, but my point still stands. So we need:
1.The website where the designers/creators can put their work and where the users can browse content, an equivalent of KDE look
A desktop client for downloading themes/icons and other stuff.
Here we can use Muon Discover which is now part of the plasma 5, and has a bodega and Get Hot New Stuff backend. Thanks to this we will have everything in one place (icons, wallpapers, plasma themes etc) and not, as now all scattered in different places
First of all, I didn’t ask you for pictures and a description of how it works now, we all know how it work now. I asked if you could draw up some mock-ups of what you had in mind, whether digitally or on a sheet of paper and pencil, it doesn’t really mater as long as they convey your basic idea.
Secondly, I do know that the latest Muon Discover development branch is now compatible with QT5/KF5, but where in the world did you get the Idea that it was part of Plasma 5?
And lastly, I apologize for sounding rude and/or short with you, I just don’t want to keep going around and round with you on this, I just want to see in picture form what you have in mind, that’s all…
This is not a problem, I am with touch with KDE Visual Design Group. The problem is to find a developer who will do the job.
It will be part of the Plasma 5.2, the move was done by Aleix Pol (Blue Systems developer btw)
[quote]
And lastly, I apologize for sounding rude and/or short with you, I just don’t want to keep going around and round with you on this, I just want to see in picture form what you have in mind, that’s all…[/quote]
I did know about Web Accounts and Samba Mounter but I was not aware of Muon being accepted, thanks for the information.
Personally I’m not interested in such a thing, the reason I don’t use Gnome, Cinnamon or even the KDE “Get New Stuff” API is because I don’t want the security risk of adding extensions, wallpapers, etc. to my desktop via a web browser interface or any other non-trusted source. With that said, If someone could get this built is to Muon or something similar that uses the official “trusted” package repositories then that would be useful.
All I can say at this point and time is good luck to you.
