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Awesome Multimedia Technology Heads for KDE
An anonymous reader writes "Linux Devices is reporting on a cool new multimedia technology that's slated to be incuded in KDE 4.0. The two key components are Phonon, a central hardware configuration database said to free multimedia applications from the need to configure hardware, and NMM (network-integrated multimedia middleware), a distributed multimedia architecture whereby multimedia content can be readily shared among networked devices and even 'handed over' from one device to another. Potential NMM applications include networked multimedia home entertainment systems, distributed and parallel media processing applications, distributed streaming servers and services, communication and control systems, and large-scale multimedia installations such as video walls, according to the article, which includes some interesting photos and diagrams. Phonon and NMM will be demonstrated at LinuxTag, May 3-6, in Wiesbaden, Germany."
You want to run KDE without kwin? Brilliant! Next up: Running Linux without that pesky kernel.
"Are you hungry? I haven't eaten since later this afternoon." -- Primer
Looks like you're installing a KDE meta-package that has been designed, by your distro, to pull in all of those unnecessary packages. KDE itself can run with just a few packages - kdebase, kdelibs, and a handful of others. If you want to blame someone for this, blame your distro's packagers :)
how does kbattleship bloat KDE?
KDE consists of kdelibs + kdebase. Everything else is optional.
In fact, if you want to run an individual KDE application without the desktop environment, then even kdebase is optional.
If you try to install all of the packages that the Debian KDE maintainer has decided are part of "KDE", then what a suprise, you get ALL of them.
The big heap of dependencies you listed are 90% individual KDE applications that you are completely free to install or not.
If that is difficult, then that is an issue with the packaging of KDE on your distribution, not an issue with KDE itself.
See if there is a "kde-base" meta package you can install - if you do that, you'll get the much smaller set of applications that comprise the core of KDE, and then you can cherry pick the other applications that suit your needs.
Advanced users are users too!
cant wait to get the little widgets on my desktop, and all the multimedia, and its gonna be so much better to look at than vistas Aeroglass crap, and all the games... oh...
:(
****
guess its still not THAT great afterall... come on someone, put up a hundred grand prize for the first "big name title" (some criteria to exclude stuff already on linux, and crap like madden from being eligable) to provide a native Linux version. or something... pretty KDE is nice and everything but... i miss my games
XML - A clever joke would be here if
It tends to block non-aRts apps from using the sound device. Largely games and multimedia apps.
Hence the common: "killall arts && quake"
If you don't like it don't install it, if your using Linux select the packages you want not the 'KDE' meta package with "all the official packages" takes a little longer but works just as well, hell if your really worried put together a metapackage of your own with just the bits you want, and none of those you don't. Yeah you will hit some issues with dependencies but not all that many, and you can get rid of a huge amount of bumf if you don't want it, I'm happily using a lightweight KDE with components of my own choosing, but if I install KDE on someone else's PC they tend to get the whole lot, and are generally happy.
Oh and for people who are not worried about bloat and people new to Linux its all "nice features" trying to make KDE attractive to people is not a bad thing, especially when you want to have all the latest wizz bang stuff.
After all Linux gives you choice, its not like you can get rid of all the boat in Windows or even the gnome metapackage...
Just my view
There is a wrapper for non-KDE applications called artsdsp to reroute the audio device to artsd.
only if you install libmad and libcrazy
Installing KBattleship in Gentoo, with no previous KDE packages installed, would give you three things: kdelibs, libkdegames and kbattleship. If the dependency system on your Linux distribution tries to pull in more, bug the package maintainers.
War is one of the most horrible things a human can be exposed to. And one of the worlds largest industries.
foo@bar:~$ sudo apt-get install kbattleship
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
kdelibs libkdegames everything
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
now excuse me if I call a package that absolutely needs
- A browser
- A control center
- A system panel
- A file manager
- A text editor
a bit bloated.
In my perfect world kde would be split up in separate packages so that I can have the window manager and the taskbar, configure them _without_ the control panel, have mozilla as a browser if I wish, and use no file manager at all (at the cost of not having icons on my desktop, of course).
I will also rejoice the day someone cleans the application dependencies (and, yes, I know this is not strictly a task for the kde team) so that any k* app stops depending on 40 different (k)libraries (no you will never make me believe a fraking xterm clone needs all of them).
Anyway this is why _I_ do not use kde, this does not mean it is crap or that _you_ can't use it.
I use E17 instead, the enlightenment package contains just the bare minimum (a window manager + a few widgets) and I can install the rest (the various epplets, epplications and so on) only if I want to.
Um, that's _exactly_ what is happening. NMM is a middleware layer, under KDE, for gnome, and non-kde-or-gnome apps.
Phonon is just the c++ wrapper to make it easy for kde apps to use the middleware layer.
Bad article (or summary). Phonon is an API a KDE app will use to do sound/video. Phonon is really just an abstraction layer. You can have an arts backend, alsa backend, gstreamer backend, even a windows backend. It's only purpose is to make audio/video easier for KDE developers and make it easy to port the whole thing to another system. It's kdelibs material, sure. But I can't see it being used by a Gnome app, they already have gstreamer (which can do arts, esd, alsa, oss, windows, etc too).
"But I'm still right here, giving blood and keeping faith. And I'm still right here."
I haven't been able to figure out yet what major advantages NMM has (if any) over UPnP.
Whether it does or not, UPnP is a standard that is beginning to be widely supported by new PC software and embedded hardware devices, while NMM is going to be stillborn unless it can achieve the market penetration that UPnP has.
Who cares about network-oriented decentralized multimedia when nothing on the network except your PC supports it?
The KDE developers would be much better off focusing on improving UPnP support so that KDE can "play nice" with other devices/software coming on the market, and THEN start researching replacements for UPnP.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
UPnP was invented poorly...
The Shoes of the Fisherman's Wife Are Some Jive Ass Slippers
It's about networking and device discovery. While you need UPnP to find everything, it doesn't mesh the media playback, etc. seamlessly. NMM is more analogous to DirectPlay and probably HAS a backend for UPnP or can easily enough. If you'd have read up on what NMM was, you'd know this, though...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas