[tde-users] Re: Do you have anything in /opt/trinity/share/dconf/profile/user

On 11/18/24 4:38 PM, Jim via tde-users wrote: Hi Jim, Long time Slacker here and part of the original team of malcontents :) who contributed to TDE. I'm running TDE 14.1.2 on Slackware 15.0. The described problem goes back to the original TDE fork days. The root cause is TDE is installed in what I call /opt hell. This is necessary because the 900 pound gorilla KDE is installed in /usr and that is never going to change. Despite improvements in TDE, there remains many binaries with the same name as the KDE commands. Installing TDE in /usr would cause many conflicts. No other DE is designed this way, all being presumed to be installed in /usr. There are related bug reports, both in the old bugzilla and in the gitea thingie. The result is some confusion with XDG environment variables and paths. If the TDE paths are placed before the standard paths, then external software looks for files and libraries in the TDE paths before looking in the standard /usr paths. Not doing this results in other software not knowing where to find anything related to TDE. I have tinkered to find a happy half-way point, but there is a point of diminishing returns. The question is whether to enable TDE paths and environment variables when using other DEs. One way to attack the problem in Slackware is with a custom /etc/profile.d script. Another method is write custom shell script wrappers for specific TDE tools desired when using other DEs. I use TDE but primarily use KDE. Two TDE tools I use within KDE are KAlarm and KMail. For both I use shell script wrappers to avoid XDG and path issues when using KDE. When I use TDE these same script wrappers adjust the paths and variables. Michele and I have discussed the issue, but moving TDE to install in /usr is on the back table. There was a related discussion in this mail list not too long ago. I'm guessing many TDE users do not experience this issue because they do not use multiple DEs. With many people only using TDE they are unlikely to experience issues related to installing TDE to /opt/trinity. I suspect many TDE users do not have KDE installed at all and as can be learned from the mail list discussion, really don't care that TDE is installed in /opt/trinity. That is the case here for me on one system where I only use TDE. Another glitch is the /opt/trinity/bin/starttde script is missing some checks with respect to XDG variables. TDM was patched to address some of that but not starttde. Search the gitea thingie for the respective bug report. I don't know what your scripting skills are like. While there is a nominal package build environment found at github, the scripts are unorthodox and incomplete. I can't manage or lead such a project, but I would volunteer to help build a full SBo compatible collection of TDE build scripts. I don't know if that kind project might attract you. I have blabbered too much, but I hope something here helps you.