Desktop: AlmaLinux

General Discussion & Chat
1

Very nice to see AlmaLinux offering a KDE Desktop!!!

I’m hoping to find a way to install a KDE Desktop for office cubical use; one that has way less frequent updates than Fedora.

I did not find any way to install it other than as a Live USB “Spin” style. That’s unfortunate, because there’s a lot of extra stuff bundled-in that way. Some of the utilities are GTK, rather than KDE, including the software installer (dnfdragora seems to be unavailable).

When I install Fedora, I use the net-install process, with only three checkmarks in the software selection: KDE Workspace, Firefox, and LibreOffice. That’s all most office workers need, and the KDE PIM is unnecessary, as most office workers use some sort of webmail system. The Fedora downside is the more-than-daily updates.

I want to encourage this concept, here at Alma!

Lance

2

The KDE currently included in EPEL, which u likely use with Alma/Rocky etc., is an old, non-LTS, unsupported version - KDE is not currently regularly maintained in EPEL.

I’ve no idea which version is in the live Alma KDE distro/whether that is maintained or if it is the EPEL version. ( posted question a while ago here and no response ).

Only reliable option for a maintained version of KDE (incl security patches) on Alma/Rocky/RHEL etc at the moment seems to be to build it yourself.

3

That’s too bad. I knew that Red Hat has no interest in KDE, nor office desktop use at all, for that matter. I did not realize that the EPEL version was abandon-ware.

4

I wouldn’t say that KDE in EPEL is not maintained. Updates are coming down for the 8.7 update. It is true that the latest versions of KDE will not be available on EL8 due to older system libraries, and this will be the last big update for EL8.

5

If you can do it, then why would you not “step up” to become EPEL maintainer for it?

6

Cheers @ opoplawski, that’s gtk.

I had a look but couldn’t find a link to discussions specific to Epel KDE. Do you have a link ? - somewhere we could see what’s going on ? I did raise an issue back in October but there has been no feedback there to suggest things are stalled because of dependency issues and that updates will happen.

I’m curious to know why updates will stop / if this includes patches.

7

https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/epel-devel@lists.fedoraproject.org/thread/WRIAIWHUJ3247RPC5FBAA6MCNZF5TMDM/

This is the last major update of KDE Plasma Desktop for epel8.
There are many older libraries in RHEL 8 that are preventing us from
updating it to the next version of plasma. This is not Red Hat’s fault,
but simply the nature of an Enterprise release.
We will continue to provide security and critical bug fixes, but no major
updates.

I’ve added Troy to your issue as he seems to be the main KDE maintainer in EPEL8.

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