as I understood id (please correct me):

Kde-desktop depends on avahi, a zero-conf Network with automatic service discovery like and compatible with apple bonjour. Avahi/mDNS hooks into the dns system and binds to network interfaces. It's backed by the Linux Standards Base and sort of standard.

How is KDE related to it ?
* There are some applications wich make use of zeroconf
* Kde-desktop package depends on avahi

I have (few) situations where I do NOT want avahi but want KDE. Is it only a packaging problem or is there some deeper real dependency ?

I would appreciate some background info or links.

reinhard wrote:I have (few) situations where I do NOT want avahi but want KDE. Is it only a packaging problem or is there some deeper real dependency ?

I think it's a distribution choice, because on Gentoo (which compiles everything from source) Avahi is an optional USE flag for 'kdelibs' which the user can either enable or disable.

With that said, most distributions usually enable pretty much all the optional goodies, which often leaves the more picky user annoyed by the bloat (s)he doesn't want.

For more info:
on my Gentoo install the following packages have the option USE='avahi' and therefore have optional support for Avahi:

• cups
• kdelibs
• ktorrent

and the following packages depend on Avahi if USE='avahi' or USE='zeroconf' is enabled:

• ntp
• ktorrent
• cups

...and the following packages depend on Avahi regardless of the USE flags:

• kdnssd-avahi

You might want to look at the KDE Wiki as well.

P.S. I'm still using KDE3, but from what I can see in Gentoo KDE4 still has Avahi as USE flags — therefore optional dependancies and features.

so it's basically distribution/packaging related.
Gentoo seems to be a good solution for my special wishes.

thank you for the clarification hook

reinhard wrote:so it's basically distribution/packaging related.

Pretty much, yea.

Gentoo seems to be a good solution for my special wishes.

Well, if you have time and such things annoy you, then Gentoo (or any other source-based distro) might just suit you perfectly

My system is built with avahi, but I don't actually have the avahi daemon running most of the time, and I never got any side-effects of it not running.