so far, i've had a fairly good experience with kde sc 4.4. everything seems to work and the environment feels polished.

but i'm finding that i don't use a number of programs/features: activities, virtual desktops, nepomuk, strigi, akonadi, pim, klipper, find/search, kinfocenter, to name a few. also, there are some minor performance issues (e.g., programs take a while to load, etc.). in general, though, i'm becoming increasingly attracted to minimalism (e.g., openbox, tiling window managers, and so on).

consequently, i've been thinking about cutting down while keeping the apps i've grown to appreciate (e.g., dolphin, rekonq, kile, etc.).

it looks like removing kdebase-workspace (and dependencies) will yield the most significant change. what can i expect performance-wise? do you have any suggestions for working without kdebase-workspace?

do you have any other suggestions?

thanks!

Removing kdebase-workspace will remove your desktop entirely, no icons, no panel, no wallpaper, nothing. That holds plasma and many other key KDE components. I would not advise removing it.

Note that System Settings is also a component of kdebase-workspace, so that will remove your ability to configure KDE, including preferred applications, file associations, Multimedia devices ( Phonon ), etc.

thanks for the replies. i don't really use the wallpaper, panel, plasma, and so on, and i could probably find substitutes (tint2, feh, etc.). i suppose i'm wondering if i can use the kde apps without having too much installed; but on the other hand, depending on the number of kde apps i'm using, it might make more sense just to have kde installed.

do you know, e.g., how well dolphin works without kdebase-workspace?

i guess i could start off with a minimal window manager like openbox or wmii and then continue from there.

Basically kdebase-workspace allows you to log into the KDE session. You can have the kdebase installed without this and launch the KDE apps from another window manager. All of the apps in kdebase should run fine without the kdebase-workspace package (hence why they are in the separate packages).

Dolphin should function fine without kdebase-workspace.

i installed wmii, booted to the console, and loaded it via startx, bypassing kde completely. bootup was faster, but overall, performance was about the same.