@dalto Thank you for going to the effort to explain this to me. I think I understand why I've been having so many difficulties with KDE now. I did not know KDE Partition Manager and GParted were different front-ends for the same program. I didn't know that information about Extended Partitions. You made a number of really great points that I just never knew. My degree in computer science was mostly just a reward for finishing college.. I've never applied it to working in technology directly. I am very experienced with computers, building them, using them, software, etc, but certain aspects, like partitions and file systems, have always been very difficult for me.
Since you seem more educated than me on this issue @dalto I would really appreciate feedback on a few things so I have a better understanding of some things.
From what I have read about EXT4 it is supposed to be superior to NTSF. I can't recall exactly what I read.. but here is a StackExchange thread about EXT4 and increased system check speed. I was aware that NTSF and EXT4 were both journaliing systems but I simply thought that the EXT4 journaliing system was superior. From my experience transferring files from NTSF to EXT4 on my partner's computer the EXT4-to-EXT4 transfers feel faster. Am I totally wrong?
I said that Solus would fail on an NTSF drive. I don't know why I said that. Maybe my anti-Windows mentality is peaking out. I was totally wrong. Solus can be installed next to Windows.. I have never done this and I think I just assumed it couldn't be done. I am sorry @[deleted].
Good golly.. now I even understand why I corrupted my system. You are right, @dalto it wasn't the GTK and QT libraries that corrupted the system. It was having KDE and Budgie installed side by side. I was equating different desktop environments and different DE libraries as the same thing. They aren't.
You can ruin your system by having different desktop environments installed. I did it to my partner's computer. You cannot install different Desktop Environments side by side. Solus has documentation that says:
WARNING: Do NOT attempt to install ANY other desktop environments next to KDE Plasma Desktop. This scenario is NOT supported and you will be told so in no uncertain terms if asking for support.
After ruining my partners system (but before seeing the documentation above) I played with Manjaro and multiple desktop environments. I was able to have Cinnamon, KDE, Budgie, and Gnome all running on the same system.. but each had a different user that led to a different desktop environment.
What caused the corruption I had experienced was due to having KDE and Budgie installed side by side on the same user. I just didn't know any better. This ended up creating conflicting config files in the home folder that caused this like.. decay of the theming and appearance. The GTK and KDE themes were fighting with one another. It was the only time that something was so broken on Solus I couldn't fix it.
The part where I was wrong was that grabbing different libraries from different desktop environments isn't the same as installing different desktop environments side by side. I've had Budgie installed on this laptop since March 2019.. I installed Dolphin and KMail and some time later found my system was sluggish.. that was because I had baloo (KDE's indexing daemon) and tracker-miner (Gnome/Budgie's indexing daemon) running side by side. I had brought over tons of dependencies for KDE that slowed my entire system.
I was wrong about why I thought the way I did but in the end I still believe that it is best practice to keep GTK and QT as seperate as possible. WIth flatpaks this is simple.. If you run KDE, install Gnome applications through Flatpak. If you run Gnome/Budgie, install KDE through flatpaks. That prevents pulling dependencies.
dalto You cannot corrupt your system by mixing gtk and qt. The kde version of Solus ships with gtk apps and other than an individual desiring purity there is no reason not to mix them. The biggest issue with mixing them is that there are some look and feel differences that needed to be managed but installing through flatpak will just make that more difficult.
I get what you are saying here. Flatpak theming does suck. However there are ways to theme based on GTK theme.. and in KDE you can set the default GTK theme and then install the corresponding theme in flatpak. Here is an article about that. .
@dalto thanks for helping me to understand one of the biggest sources of trouble I've had with Linux over the last two years. @[deleted] this guy gives great advice. I would trust him about anything dealing with mount points and partitions over anything that I said because apparently I have been just wrong. Sorry!
