[Gllug] Thoughts on the breadth of Free Software

[Tethys]

Nix writes:

>You appear to be suffering under the misapprehension that Konqueror is a
>web browser.

Oh no, I'm well aware that Konqueror is more than just a web browser,
but it's just that I'm not remotely interested in those aspects of it.
In principle, the base package could be pretty minimal, and the web
browser, file browser and kitchen sink components could be packaged
as extras that konq could use if installed or skip if they're not
present. But no one's interested in writing lean software these days.
The prevailing attitude seems to be to just throw everything in, and
that same mentality is being applied to packaging.

>It's half a web browser and half a file manager and `universal
>viewing application', and makes extensive use of most of kdelibs
>and big hunks of kdecore.

Yes, but how extensive is that use for just browsing the web? Sure,
it'll make use of bits and pieces here and there, but I doubt it needs
as much as it seems to.

>There are other browsers based on KHTML (Safari and something on Nokia
>smartphones, plus *many* other parts of KDE use KHTML themselves while
>not being full-blown browsers)

Yes, but I want a full KHTML based browser on the Linux desktop, without
all of the other crap that goes with Konqueror. It saddens me that such
a beast doesn't seem to exist (although I suspect that if the problem
couldn't be solved completely, the situation could at least be improved
with more intelligent packaging[1]).

Tet

[1] Without knowing the architecture and code in any detail, this is
    pure speculation on my part, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't so.
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