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yet another layer ?
by polux on Wednesday 04/Jan/2006, @10:54

Hi,
i'm a big kde fan but i'm wondering why there is the need for such a low-level library integrated in a high-level component : the desktop. I have the feeling that solid will be another layer on the top of hal and dbus and that the knowledge base will profit kde users only. I imagine this is not the purpose of the developers but the article sounds a bit like that.

Could you explain the need of implementing such a lib into kde if i'm wrong ? I'm not sure i've understood the whole thing.

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Re: yet another layer ?
by Ian Monroe on Wednesday 04/Jan/2006, @11:02

An example use of this technology is that when you plug in your MP3 player, amaroK would recognize it and add it to the list of media devices. Without something like Solid or media:/, amaroK would have to depend on HAL directly (which is what Banshee does).

Really I would consider the DE to be part of the operating system, as it plays roles given to the OS in MS or Mac.

And yea, Solid is a KDE library...

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Re: yet another layer ?
by Brandybuck on Thursday 05/Jan/2006, @00:42

"Really I would consider the DE to be part of the operating system"

But the Unix desktop is NOT part of the operating system, no matter how often Microsoft and Apple tell you otherwise. The Unix model is an onion, with the desktop being a layer on top of lower level layers. Because of this, KDE can run on *ANY* Unix system with an X11 server. Yes, the desktop does need to access kernel services and other low level resources, but that doesn't mean you have to tightly couple the desktop to the operating system the way Microsoft and Apple do.

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Re: yet another layer ?
by Tobias König on Thursday 05/Jan/2006, @02:08

"KDE can run on *ANY* Unix..."

Right, but not any Unix provides HAL or D-Bus, for this reason we need yet another abstraction layer.

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Re: yet another layer ?
by Ian Monroe on Friday 06/Jan/2006, @10:33

Right I'm saying the definition of "operating systems" now encompasses the functions of a DE. It isn't a stretch to say that providing to developers easy access to multimedia, hardware, and an HTML viewer are functions of an operating system. I'm not saying that this somehow means that DE's need to be unportable and stuck on a kernel.

I mean, if you look at the functionality KDE provides they are often because on the other platforms Qt resides they are already provided by the OS.

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Re: yet another layer ?
by FreddyTheTeddy on Monday 09/Jan/2006, @02:41

In a Java VM, you get the core interpreter, which basically knows about the byte code and the underlying OS. But no Java Runtime or SDK comes without a huge set of libraries (handling IO, ZIP files, GUI stuff), but Java would be long dead if it did not come with them. They are bundled with the JDK, but not part of the core system, and yet Java specific. some of them have OS-dependent back-ends too.
Solid will be that set of libs shipping with for a given OS, for KDE apps. And who knows, future may lead to have Gnome and KDE sync up on this topic too :-)

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Re: yet another layer ?
by superstoned on Wednesday 04/Jan/2006, @11:06

if there would be no solid, every application has to support several different ways of getting hardware information. it would mean a lot duplication of effort...

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Re: yet another layer ?
by Aaron J. Seigo on Wednesday 04/Jan/2006, @11:11

it's actually more of a "mid-level" library much like Qt is: it sits between low level (usually OS-specific, often non-portable) implementations and desktop GUI apps. this provides both abstraction (and portability) and a more friendly API.

this way a KDE app has exactly one API to deal with for hardware instead of one per platform. superkaramba, ksim, ksysgaurd and others have all duplicated efforts trying to achieve this for that one app to varying degrees of success.

as a bonus, the API is much like the ones KDE/Qt developers are already familiar with. they don't have to learn yet another API style, they can remain portable and start interacting better with hardware for a minimal time investment.

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Re: yet another layer ?
by Evan "JabberWokky" E. on Wednesday 04/Jan/2006, @13:25

HAL is Linux specific. KDE isn't, and thus Solid isn't.

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Re: yet another layer ?
by Reply on Wednesday 04/Jan/2006, @15:58

Correction: HAL is portable software with only a Linux backend available at the time.

Sun is working on porting it to Solaris, and there are people working on a FreeBSD port too.

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Re: yet another layer ?
by Malte on Thursday 05/Jan/2006, @02:03

Honestly this is a core misconception of the Linux Desktop. You cannot leave low level stuff to distributors or set your desktop environment on it in an abstract manner.

It is time for the desktop environments to get into the dirty low-level stuff because only desktop environments can unify the mess the distributors diversity created.

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