KDE packages

[Alberto Salvia Novella]

Oscar:
> What is the reason to keep KDE specific packages, and other desktop
> environments as well for that matter, in the standard Ubuntu repos along
> with all the other packages?

The reasons are:
- Having all the applications available no matter which desktop 
environment you use.
- Having various desktop environments selectable in the login screen.
- Being able to change to any other flavour at any time.


Oscar:
 > Lot's of KDE packages breaks standard Unity visual elements and
 > functions.

What is more important?: all to look and feel equal, or to have more 
applications available?


Oscar:
 > Can also pull in lots of unwanted dependencies.

 From the moment the application needs these dependencies, they are 
wanted. And once the application is removed, you can automatically 
detect and remove all the pulled dependencies simply by entering into a 
terminal:
     sudo apt-get autoremove

Or even if you want to make sure an specific desktop environment goes away:
     sudo apt-get purge kdelibs* libkde* &&
     sudo apt-get autoremove

It could even happen that the Update Manager does these things for you 
during the upgrade, but I am not completely sure.


Oscar:
 > It can be hard to clean up and restore the system to a
 > working state again.

If something break as result of installing various desktop environments, 
that is a bug.


Oscar:
 > It is also hard for inexperienced users to identify what packages
 > belongs to what environment.

Because, from the user perspective, it does not matter. They only want 
the application to work.


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