Further Collaboration With Other Distros

[Artim]

Debian doesn't have desktop ambitions and that's perfectly fine.)

I always thought that. That's why it's so awesome that there are devs like ours to make Debian desktop-worthy!

[sunrat]

I think there is at least 1 member here who enabled the Neptune KDE repo to install their version of Plasma (which is newer than the one in Debian Stretch repos).

That would be me. If you want to use KDE Plasma 5.12 I suggest to use the complete Neptune OS, or I actually preferred a Stretch netinstall with kde-plasma-desktop from Neptune repos. Adding the Neptune repos to MX turned out to be a mish-mash which worked OK but had minor issues.
Or if Plasma 5.8, the default Stretch version, will suit you I suggest Adrian's unofficial MX-KDE remix.
Honestly I use siduction as my no.1 distro which has Plasma 5.14 but also has eternal masses of upgrades, being based on Sid. MX is my solid no.2 distro!
You see I do lots of collaboration with other distros but mostly they don't know it.

[WickedFlick]

Thanks for the replies, everyone! Wasn't expecting such a big response, best get to respondin'. :P

On the KDE subject and XFCE there is a Distro out there that is Called Solydxk.
Maybe you could reach out to them. I don't think they have a large user base.
I know their developer and founder could use a break and some help. Just my opinion.
http://www.solydxk.com

Thanks you for the suggestion!

I recall trying Solyd a couple times when it was relatively new, and remember it being a pretty good effort overall. I was more fascinated with flashier distros with newer packages at the time (having not yet come to appreciate the stability of slower distros), so I didn't really give it an honest shake, honestly.

Do you happen to know if the is founder open to the idea of collaboration? I suppose it couldn't hurt to make a post in their forums about it. :)

Having used Sparky repo a time or two with MX16 (primarily to access the Sparky Rescue Conky), and having used Sparky minimalGUI and Bunsenlabs Hydrogen, Deuterium (UGH), and Helium, and even though Sparky uses systemd, I'd still recommend Sparky minimalGUI (which is Openbox) over Bunsenlabs. Who knows, maybe Pavroo could be convinced to do some collaboration?

Cheers for the suggestion!

Though I've not used it myself, I've heard good things about Sparky. If they're receptive to the idea of collaborating, I certainly wouldn't mind creating a post about the subject in their forums (hopefully it can't be any worse than Stevo's experience with Bunsenlabs).

If I'm to help a team member to work on a KDE version wouldn't that be easier than to help another team do it?

I'm admittedly quite inexperienced when it comes to open-source projects, having never helped develop a distro or even programmed before. I suppose when I wrote my original post, I was under the assumption that the team members already have enough responsibilities maintaining and improving the existing Xfce version of MX (on top of whatever responsibilities they have in their personal lives), therefor making it possible that taking on the task of offering an official KDE version alongside it could stretch the team's resources too thin due to feature creep, which is something I've seen other distros suffer from.

With outside help from already experienced devs, I assumed the overall load on the team would be lightened significantly. However, if you have found this to not be the case, then I gladly defer to your experience in this area. :)

I've tried to float the idea that Bunsen Labs could do a lot worse than merge with MX or antiX and provide their unique desktop on our base, and have access to our backports, but it floated like a lead balloon over there. Apparently I was generating a heavier-than-air gas...

BL's response to your post is quite disheartening to hear... I experienced something similar a couple years ago when I suggested to the OpenMandriva and Mageia communities the idea of merging together, as they're both terribly understaffed, yet have the monumental task of maintaining completely independent distros. The Mageia community were quite receptive to the idea, but the OpenMandriva devs and community rejected the proposal seemingly with contempt (which puzzled me greatly, at the time).

Still though, you have my respect for having made the attempt! :D

We have had users add the NeptuneOS repos to get a newer KDE on MX with success, so adding each other's repos wouldn't be that difficult. They would have access to our backports and maybe some of the MX tools that aren't XFCE dependent, and we'd have a newer KDE.

[oops. ninja-ed by Stevo!]

I think there is at least 1 member here who enabled the Nepture KDE repo to install their version of Plasma (which is newer than the one in Debian Stretch repos).

That the Neptune repos work with MX without any major issue is awesome to hear, I'll certainly have to investigate this. Cheers to both of ya for letting me know. :)

Edit: While writing this response, user sunrat posted that mixing and matching Neptune's repos with MX did result in some issues, unfortunately.

Still appreciate your responses, regardless!

If you check with Stevo, he will probably tell you that there are some users of other Debian-based distros who enable MX's repos to enjoy the newer backported packages and programs not even found on standard Debian. He is an active member of the Debian User Forum and already offers the packages he backports/compiles using the opensuse build service.

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=130057

Check out his forum signature at the bottom of that post.

I also remember specific mention of this (using MX's repos) by Crunchbang/Bunsenlabs users on their forum. And I myself use a hotcorner script from Bunsenlab's git, which I have linked to in my MX wiki entry on enabling hotcorners in MX17/18.

At one stage, Dolphin_Oracle tried to experiment with making an Appimage of the MX Live USB Maker, so that it could be downloaded and run by users of other distros. Didn't really work very well, though.

I'll certainly be checking that link out. Enabling the MX repo's on my lappy currently running NeptuneOS would be pretty darn cool. If that ends up being easier than getting KDE running reliably on a regular MX install, that'd be a solid combo for me.

A shame that the USB maker didn't translate well to an Appimage, it's one of my favorite features of MX.

Other than that it might be impractical to have true collaboration between 2 groups of team members that might be very different in their collaborative and development style, have different goals, etc. There might also be some small issues from the fact that most of Debian is on systemd while MX is still using sysvinit.

The fact that MX doesn't use systemd completely slipped my mind! Hopefully that's something that could be worked around, but I can see how that could cause problems. :\

I think there is at least 1 member here who enabled the Neptune KDE repo to install their version of Plasma (which is newer than the one in Debian Stretch repos).

That would be me. If you want to use KDE Plasma 5.12 I suggest to use the complete Neptune OS, or I actually preferred a Stretch netinstall with kde-plasma-desktop from Neptune repos. Adding the Neptune repos to MX turned out to be a mish-mash which worked OK but had minor issues.

Or if Plasma 5.8, the default Stretch version, will suit you I suggest Adrian's unofficial MX-KDE remix.
Honestly I use siduction as my no.1 distro which has Plasma 5.14 but also has eternal masses of upgrades, being based on Sid. MX is my solid no.2 distro!

You see I do lots of collaboration with other distros but mostly they don't know it.

Thanks for chiming in here, sir! You very likely saved me more than a bit of trouble with that info. I'm definitely going to be checking out Adrian's remix, as that sounds right up my alley. :D

--------------------------

Lastly, a question for the MX devs; Would you guys mind if I linked to this thread when I get around to making posts on the subject of collaboration in the other distro's forums mentioned here, or would you rather I keep it more general, and omit mentioning MX at all?

Thanks again everyone for the responses, you've all imparted some awesome info that has helped tremendously, and shown me that this is a rather humble and friendly community. :)

[asqwerth]

I am not speaking on behalf of all the devs, esp since I'm just helping in the artwork department, but my personal opinion is that you should rein in your enthusiasm (being frank here), and keep it general on other forums.

The dev members who responded have given tentative and non-committal responses.

Remember that antiX and MXepis share a common Mepis heritage and were members of the same forum for many years. They could be seen as having been one community from the start. That is very different from the collboration you are thinking of in this thread because you are talking about totally different communities coming together.

Certainly it is possible to share or borrow stuff from each other's repos, but that's not the same as full collaboration.

[aledie]

[...]but my personal opinion is that you should rein in your enthusiasm (being frank here), and keep it general on other forums.

The dev members who responded have given tentative and non-committal responses.
[...]
Certainly it is possible to share or borrow stuff from each other's repos, but that's not the same as full collaboration.

Logically, asqwerth's opinion shows a lot of sense. My own:
-everyone raves about his fav distro and might think everyone in the world should use it, at the same time misses his own tools and ways he had elsewhere. Hence "collaboration". Another user may just miss tools from Slitaz or Mint, cannot satisfy all.
-starting posting such invites on the others forums may just start a fire will go on for months, it will be quoted all over their forum with opinions MX guys are overconfident bunch wanna force their distro to anyone, they will analyze, splice, critisize MX, post on DW etc.
-the only way a collaboration would work, if some distro would realize they like MX/antiX ways say liveusb/snapshot tools, and would like to completely rebase their own distro from proper Debian base to antiX/MX, maybe even dropping their identity and joining antiX/MX team as say KDE/openbox Devs. Not quite likely as everyone has own traditions/ history/ reasons why they started their distro. Like bunsen just want to have their lovely CB desktop, Neptune to have their polished KDE, and SolydXK wanna have what was dropped when LMDE dropped KDE/XFCE...

Most important question: do they / what do they need from antiX/MX? Do we/ what do we need from them?

[skidoo]

Most important question: do they / what do they need from antiX/MX? Do we/ what do we need from them?

https://www.linuxliteos.com/manual/
When I commended their (better than official Xcfe?) docs and suggested incorporating some of their page content into MX wiki, the response was "sorry nocando, their LICENSE is incompatible with our LICENSE"

some further impediments that I've noticed:

Pavroo makes some really cool task-specific GUI utilities for SparklyLinux, but his toolkit includes zenity (which depends on libwebkit2gtk4) so, BOOM, adding one tiny little script would drag in 72MB+ dependent packages ~~ rendering 'em unsuitable (impractical) for use in antiX.

MX User Manager is the best desktop-agnostic GUI I've seen. Awww, Qt5-something toolkit ~~ possibly rendering it unattractive to any distro which is already (still) invested in tools based on Qt4 toolkit...

Tiny l'il python-based programs which are, ultimately, distro-agnostic... require a damfangled packaging/setup in order to cope with the differing lib install locations across distros (Ubuntu vs XYZ)

[dphn]

A fantastic KDE distro in my opinion is Q4OS. Since Version 2.5 it ships with KDE Plasma and (of course) TDE, their default desktop. The system has a great advantage to other distros. Users installs only a core system and start with it. For beginners there is a desktop-profiler tool for installing recommend desktop-components, software, servers, etc. for easy use. Another task is to leave the desktop-profiler without installing packages and you create your own system. This is really great. I personally install samba-server, backends or similar things only when I want to use it and that's the right way. Configure your system for your purposes.

MX repos are always nice to have. I'm using the repos on all strech systems and have many backported packages of newer software and additional packages.

Really good distributions with innovative ideas and a good team behind the projects are really rare. MX Linux is one of them, Q4OS is one of them and I know Neptune OS too. A great Plasma distro and also a good concept. They provide some extra stuff and unique tools similar to MX.

[MAYBL8]

Do you happen to know if the is founder open to the idea of collaboration? I suppose it couldn't hurt to make a post in their forums about it. :)

The only thing I know is that Arjen (Founder of Solydxk) is the main developer and doesn't have much time to improve the distro. They have a pretty solyd base (catch the pun) and he likes what he has. I could see his base coming here. I am one of them. If put to him to tell his base to move to here and he would join this team and help develop for MX and that would give him more free time for him to be with his family might interest him.

[Jerry3904]

No user should start asking another distro about collaboration with MX: it's just plain inappropriate for a whole bunch of reasons.

[baldyeti]

@OP, sunrat : I am pretty happy with the MX17/Neptune combo, still using it.

@dphn: is Q4OS stretch-compatible and are they using Plasma 4.8 ? Their distrowatch description mentions their debian origin but their own site, not so much... Have you successfully installed and used newer SW from the MX repo with Q4OS ?