Hallo!

Ich verfolge die Entwicklung von Plasma Active seit Monaten und muss erst einmal festhalten, dass das, was hier geleistet wurde, ganz große Arbeit ist! Bin begeistert von den Demos.

Ich besitze ein WeTab 3G, worauf ich Plasma Active gerne installieren möchte. Dazu muss ich sagen, dass ich kein großer Freund von Distributionen mit vorkompilierten Paketen bin, ich habe mehrere gentoo-Systeme laufen und bin damit sehr zufrieden. Deshalb soll gentoo auch auf meinem Tablet zum Einsatz kommen. Nun scheitert es bisher daran, dass ich Linux ansonsten eher im Embedded- und Server-Bereich einsetze, mich also auf der Konsole gut zurecht finde, jedoch wenig Ahnung von grafischen Benutzeroberflächen habe. Meine letzten Erfahrungen mit KDE und der "Konkurrenz" sind geschätzte 10 Jahre her.

Kurz gesagt: Das Basissystem steht (aktuelles gentoo), jedoch weiß ich nicht, welche Pakete ich für ein Tablet-taugliches Plasma Active-System brauche. Das kde-Layman Overlay habe ich bereits gefunden, habe aber keine Zeit, mich in die Architektur von KDE einzulesen, um die einzelnen Pakete zuzuordnen.

Hat das jemand am Laufen und kann mir einen kurzen Abriss geben, welche Pakete mit welchen KDE/QT-spezifischen USE-Flags gebraucht werden?

Danke.
Schlot

Hello,

sorry for my previous post in German, I did not realize the forum language is English here. So, I'll just summarize things in English.

First of all, thanks to all Plasma Active developers as you did a very great job!

I own a WeTab 3G, that is what the ExoPC is sold as in my country. I have a gentoo linux base system (command line) installed on that device and would like to run Plasma Active on top of that. Although I think Ubuntu, for instance, is a very well designed distribution, I do not like the concept of precompiled packages in an OSS environment. In fact, I successfully use several machines on gentoo linux, but these are all headless embedded or server-systems without Xorg. Therefor, I would appreciate some hints about how to install KDE Plasma Active.

Has anybody tried to use this configuration? I especially need a list of packages to get started with some kind of a default Plasma Active environment, as I do not know anything about KDE's internal architecture. The repositories in layman/KDE overlay contain tons of modules, so which ones are required for a base installation to start with? Any recommendations about special USE-flags (e. g. related to KDE / QT) or packages to mask or unmask?

Thanks in advance!
Schlot

Hi,

I use Gentoo too and I am starting to work with Plasma Active (PA). I am using VirtualBox to run the MeeGo image:

http://community.kde.org/Plasma/Active/ ... al_Machine

In your case I think it is better install the MeeGo image directly on your WeTab:

http://community.kde.org/Plasma/Active/ ... ab.2FExoPC

Plasma Active does not support Gentoo's ebuilds. If you still want to install PA's through portage you would need to use live packages (*-9999.ebuild), which as you probably know can be quite unstable.

The main PA packages are plasma-mobile and contour, if you install plasma-mobile-9999.ebuild from kde overlay it must install most of the dependencies. I have never done that, so I do not know what would be missing after that. I do not see contour*.ebuild in kde overlay, so probably you would need to create an ebuild for it.

Hello lamarque,

thanks for your reply. At the moment I use the open-slx image which is based on opensuse. As you said, installing PA on a gentoo-system is not documented and yet seems to be quiet hard.

As I do not actively use the WeTab, I will probably wait until it is officially supported by gentoo. Actually, I bought the device as a playground to collect some impressions of tablet computing. Being able to customize it and try out some thoughts individually is, in my case, more important than unboxing a ready-to-use device. Therefor, I bought a WeTab instead of an iPad.

That is why I am not looking for a precompiled image which I can install just like a firmware. I would like to choose packages myself, just as gentoo allows me to do.

My long-term idea is using the tablet to have quick access to my e-mail, PIM etc., yet being able to open a console and use standard unix tools for software development, network diagnosis and so on. Ubuntu Linux and gentoo without Plasma Active had very much of what I need for that, but they lack appropriate user input methods for touchscreen-only systems. I have tried this for some weeks and it was only usable carrying a USB keyboard and mouse with me, so I could also bring my laptop. I suppose Plasma Active is going to fill this gap for me sooner or later.

Unfortunately, images like open-slx and MeeGo with PA are designed to be used like an iPad or one of those android tablets. They have applications installed for browsing the web, taking notes, playing music, and so on, but if I needed these tasks, I would have bought one.

Thank you for the hint which packages I will probably need, I will try to compile PA when I have some spare time.

Well, Plasma Active is about freedom, you are free to install other apps or even create new apps for it. PA comes with KDE's PIM mobile suite, konsole, the system image (MeeGo or OpenSuse) comes with several other common Linux tools and you can use zypper to install any MeeGo or OpenSuse pre-compiled package.

Portage is not included in the image, of course, but even if it was included it would take a lot of time to compile packages in the tablet itself. You could compile packages in another machine and just install the pre-compiled package though. I think that is what you want to do, right?

I think you must recompile kde-workspace with "Tablet" profile enabled to make konsole and the other applications touch-screen friendly. Just define the variable KDE_PLATFORM_PROFILE when running cmake:

cmake -DKDE_PLATFORM_PROFILE=Tablet

lamarque wrote:Hi,

I use Gentoo too and I am starting to work with Plasma Active (PA). I am using VirtualBox to run the MeeGo image:

http://community.kde.org/Plasma/Active/ ... al_Machine

In your case I think it is better install the MeeGo image directly on your WeTab:

http://community.kde.org/Plasma/Active/ ... ab.2FExoPC

Plasma Active does not support Gentoo's ebuilds. If you still want to install PA's through portage you would need to use live packages (*-9999.ebuild), which as you probably know can be quite unstable.

The main PA packages are plasma-mobile and contour, if you install plasma-mobile-9999.ebuild from kde overlay it must install most of the dependencies. I have never done that, so I do not know what would be missing after that. I do not see contour*.ebuild in kde overlay, so probably you would need to create an ebuild for it.

Indeed it is very unstable. I tried it before and I was not satisfied. Maybe we have a chance to get a nice solution soon? If you know more, I would appreciate some information about PM and Countour.

You can try building from source: http://community.kde.org/Plasma/Active/ ... er_only.29