Hey just a word ;
Too many patches to compare ! I think the only ones I have that you don't are RHEL/Fedora specific, so they won't go upstream. An important point is the famous "startkde" script. Should we try to have a stable updated script upstream, or should we keep distro-specific changes in every packaging ?
I am definitely for it to have stable upstream updated script. And to solve specific distribution in it. I do not know how big parts are the distribution specific. But I believe it would go through to resolve by the conditions, or spin-off into a separate "include".
I don't think it's too smart to have distribution specific coding in the start file. I think that would be better to keep patched in. For example this leads to legacy code when a distribution is no longer included, then you end up with lots of extraneous checks that aren't really doing anything. That is my opinion. This is just a general principle, if something is actually broken (eg there is a incorrect path) it is often because things have been hardcoded a long time ago for a single distribution or method that has changed or outdated.
I think it's best to keep distribution specific patches in our git repository tde-packaging, that was it _is_ available for anyone else to see and use, and pull in to their sources, but it's not muddying up the main tree.
Calvin