Message-ID: <0a012799b4793f0e8f5f54a843bf8e6094807238.camel@riseup.net>
Subject: Re: Why'd you go with Alpine Linux?
From: Ralf Mardorf <ralf-mardorf@riseup.net>
To: ~alpine/users@lists.alpinelinux.org
Date: Sat, 04 Apr 2026 11:32:38 +0200
In-Reply-To: <9a06befe-edba-45af-8226-487b26b8564f@web.de>
References: <OpA1zgz--F-9@tuta.io>
	 <ccda5a36-7994-4593-8d22-f5151e082f74@web.de>
	 <CAD1Ag0w-aRz9=g3Uoo2fdR9RxoLAvhRtyqxSRDpsQkP+dd3c8Q@mail.gmail.com>
	 <2838510e48dd7564e67dcb67562b968ccc4a9724.camel@riseup.net>
	 <9a06befe-edba-45af-8226-487b26b8564f@web.de>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
MIME-Version: 1.0

On Fri, 2026-04-03 at 08:47 +0200, Wolfgang Klein wrote:
> I think you should try a setup like the one I described and see for
> yourself that KDE is not as "bloated" as you might remember it.

Hi,

I wasn't aware that KDE had become more lightweight. Still, I'm not
interested in KDE, since I generally only use window managers without
desktop environments. I also have a few issues with KDE, such as the
problem with those old-fashioned green external hard drives. In GTK
environments, gvfs constantly causes these old green hard drives to spin
up and down. The solution is to not install gvfs or, if necessary, use a
dummy package to pretend it=E2=80=99s installed so the dependencies are met=
.
There=E2=80=99s also a mechanism in KDE that causes this nonsense, but I=E2=
=80=99ve
never been able to find it. The problem with the green drives isn=E2=80=99t
really that bad for me anymore, since I only have one of them and,
fortunately, many others that don=E2=80=99t force standby mode. If you want=
 to
buy external drives today, you have to write a script anyway to prevent
them from going into standby mode so that no I/O errors occur. So the
problem with gvfs and whatever is going on with KDE is actually a thing
of the past. I recently wanted to reorder new enclosures for external
hard drives, but my favorites are no longer available, and every
manufacturer I contacted confirmed that they no longer make drives that
spin continuously, nowadays they all force standby mode. But there=E2=80=99=
s
something else that=E2=80=99s pretty annoying. Here=E2=80=99s a workaround =
for Ardour
under KDE on X: https://manual.ardour.org/ardour-configuration/system-speci=
fic-setup/kde-plasma-5/ .
Other programs are affected as well. And there are a few other things I
don=E2=80=99t like. As I said, I prefer simple window managers without
additional layers on top, and I do a lot of things by command line
anyway. Bashisms (=C2=A0https://mywiki.wooledge.org/Bashism ) clearly don=
=E2=80=99t
belong in scripts, but they=E2=80=99re sometimes useful for working in the
command line. That saves me from having to use a file manager.

Regards,
Ralf