Moksha Desktop environment pkgsrc port

naguam

On top of that, I would add that instead of porting yet another desktop, it could be awesome to polish one. This could actually help adoption or at least make life better for existing users.

TLDR:

Working UI battery status
UI Network configuration and status
Sound control
Screen locking and suspend working properly.
Working on stubs instead of fighting against linux practices es imho is the best solution.

I've tried multiple DE on NetBSD (And OpenBSD) and none have these working correctly.

Long story :

I mean a lot of people do not want to have to spend time to configure a manual minimalist WM and learn all the shortcuts to use it, me included being the reason BSD are only on tinkering or router/server command line systems on my side.

Not that I don't know how to use the command line and open a manual.
But If I want to actually work and use my computer, I prefer to have a fully complete well integrated desktop (XFCE, KDE, Gnome) on which :

Battery status
Basic Network Configuration and status
Keyboard/mouse settings
Suspend settings
Integrated Login manager (gdm on gnome and sddm, without having to fight to make it work)
Proper sound control.
Works and focus only on my work, not on fixing the problems.

Also helping web performance is a must because nowadays most resources even for development are online and honestly I prefer using Linux on that because of performance.

Not saying BSD should adopt Linux practices for everything.
But for Desktop components, I really think that making stubs that make things work (libinput, elogind, udev stub, dbus, upower, and things I forget) Is the best way not to fall in history and keep being relevant.

I also say that for a developer perspective. Having better experience (including UI) is much more confortable to just use the laptop, work with it and maybe contribute.

My developments on NetBSD (despite being small contributions) are mostly done throughout ssh on a lid closed laptop because the experience is so much better from my linux laptop
(Either ssh with Helix, or by exposing an NFS share and literally developing on Linux and then build on NetBSD)

I really think NetBSD would win into improving common (sadly linux, but again I think it is that or becoming even less relevant on the desktop side of things, fighting against is IMHO counter productive) desktop components support.

Yeah in the end I think it is counter productive to port yet another DE.

I Like NetBSD being the reason I care.
Otherwise I would just "Stay on Linux"

kc9udx

wpa_gui works very well with KDE,

xbattbar is far better than any cutesy battery icon I've seen. It works perfectly no matter what DE you use.

Keyboard/mouse, and kdm of course, work as expected in KDE.

naguam

kc9udx

It looks like (mentioning kdm) you use KDE 4 which last release was 10 years ago and maintainance release ended in 2017.

At the time Linux developed software was more Unix-ish.

I don't mind KDE4 but I think I can add "maintained" to every sentence of my previous post.
I think it is important.

For you point on xbattbar (based on the deprecated apmd instead of envsys).
Enters in the case of having to tinker to make it work which is not the point of fully fledged desktop (and having to tinker enters in the case of having to manually configure a WM. Some people might like it, but not everyone, I myself prefer a nice out of the box experience to put my energy on the work I am actually doing with my computer)

Of course you can make some things work by tinkering, that is beside my point.
Because my point is about integration and polishing.

And I am not speaking only about a battery indicator but also integrations in DE settings menu, power management settings.

Regarding e26/e27 BSD licensed and very efficient on slow systems makes it a very good option indeed @Jay
This could be a nice DE to focus effort for a nice experience.

rvp

kc9udx xbattbar is far better than any cutesy battery icon I've seen.

New to me, and it's nice! Thx.

naguam For you point on xbattbar (based on the deprecated apmd instead of envsys).

It uses envsys, but, the older, deprecated, non-plist ioctls. I mostly ignored these when I did my survey of the battery-stuff a few years ago. These older ioctls (ENVSYS_GTREINFO & ENVSYS_GTREDATA) are much easier to program--at least if you want only the battery stats.

(Note: there seem to be 2 xbattbars in the wild: 1.4.2, the older (patched) NetBSD version; and the 1.4.9 in Debian/Ubuntu which uses external scripts to gather battery stats.)

blckmaxima

@Jay I actually took a look at packaging Moksha, but instead focused on enlightenment-0.26. I had meant to write to pkgsrc-users asking for testers, but life got in the way :-)

e26 runs nicely on my ₇ year old laptop, with minimal resources. Would love feedback from others that try it.

I'm open to collaborating with others in this area, I've been a lurker here, and elsewhere, for the past few years.

blckmaxima Ahh, so that's you working on e26, thank you!

If it's working fine, it should be possible to review and import into the main branch.
Send an e-mail to pkgsrc-users and request a review.

Just one question, what's with these? Are they really needed? What is one missing without them?

Perhaps clarify that on the e-mail you send to the list.

Jay

blckmaxima any updates on E27 front ! 😃

Jay

@naguam that's why I was keen on Moksha or E26/27 that being BSD licensed it might be easier to integrate battery UI, network UI etc not sure how it can work out.

@blckmaxima agreed do write to pkgsrc mailing list someone might be interested there too 🙂 I tried old port in pkgsrc it works well with NetBSD that's why I got interested in Moksha desktop

naguam

rvp I must have read source of the wrong version, but anyway thats besides my point and still deprecated anyway.

rvp

naguam thats besides my point and still deprecated anyway.

I called your attention to it because with these compat ioctls you need neither proplib nor something like expat (what I used for my test) to parse the XML--ie. there's one less dependency. (Not asking you to rush out and change your code 😃)

blckmaxima

Jay I had an update to 0.27 ready to go, and I saw they released 0.27.1... I'll try and put it all together. Life is a bit full right now 🙃

Jay

blckmaxima is it in stable pkgsrc release? Or still in WIP?

blckmaxima

Jay I just updated it in wip, let me know if it works!