[Fwd: Re: [opensuse] KDE3-4 did teams change?]

At the risk of incurring a flaming, could this thread be moved to someplace else? -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [opensuse] KDE3-4 did teams change? Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2008 11:00:14 -0500 From: Richard Reply-To: ricreig@gmail.com To: opensuse@opensuse.org References: <492D06DD.1050009@suddenlinkmail.com> <493D2EA8.7010404@rogers.com> <493D37B8.4010603@opensuse.org> On Mon December 8 2008 10:05:28 am Herbert Graeber wrote:

Phil Savoie schrieb:

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Larry Stotler wrote:

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Meanwhile, on the mailing lists of Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva etc... we are seeing the same kind of discussions all over again. Every argument is being duplicated and repeated, and none of it flows back to where it should: the KDE project. What a terrible waste of time and energy! Some are of the opinion that KDE4 was a huge waste of time and effort. I don't see it that way, but I need to consider whether KDE4 is actually a compelling reason to switch, and so far, the "new" features don't interest me, and the lack of features has been an issue. Slow speed and lack of stability have also impacted that. I haven't updated to the current build service, so I can't say whether things have improved, but I hear they have. I will reserve judgment until I have a chance to test 11.1 next weekend. I've download several betas and the RC, and haven't had the time to really do anything with any of

On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 4:08 AM, Amedee Van Gasse wrote: them even when I did actually manage to finish an install.....

One of my issues is that I have to relearn how to do simple things because there is this "new & better" way of doing things. KDE4 is a huge change, and anyone who thought that there wouldn't be resistance was kidding themselves.

Larry,

Well said. Not to start any flame wars, but I shake my head as to why they went the route of alpha/beta for kde in a very polished distro is beyond me. Nothing like relearning how to do simple things to brighten up your day. This is the biggest reason why I am staying put with 11 with the previous working kde.

I don't mind change, but God in Heaven, let's wait until it works first shall we? I sure hope the PHB's at opensuse has heard the backlash and have stopped this notion of pushing unfinished and broken crap down the pipe all for the sake of change.

That's easy to understand. There are at least as many users who expect to get KDE4, as complaining here about going this way. I think, even *much* more than that, but that's difficult to guess, because these users are much more silent, because they will get what they expect.

Second, there is the pressure from other distributions going this way.

Third, knowing that KDE3 development has stopped, it is more attractive to invest in the new technology than in old one and work on making KDE4 as polished as KDE3. And there is significant progress since openSUSE 11.0, isn't it?

Forth, the KDE4 project needs the pressure from major distributions, to make it more polished and usable for KDE3 upstream. KDE4 needs real users to become better. And the KDE developers known that, because that's the reason, why KDE 4.0 has been released in such an incomplete state.

For me KDE4 is already better in most areas, but I accept that not everybody feels the same...

Herbert

Most of the time, I do a lot of 'snipping' to reduce the length of a quoted message, however, this short series of messages from both sides of the KDE3/4 camps lucidly discusses some of the main issues and I'd like to add my $.02 worth and I know "many" people that do not have or use modern 'threaded' mail readers so I feel the context of my statement is somewhat pertenant. Most of the 'flames' have been regarding 'bling' or 'functionality' or a totally stupid discussion about statistics involving the word(s) "many" or "most" or "xth". I think that upon reading the past several months posts in this and other lists, too many posters have missed the whole point. On one side, the KDE4 camp seems to say it is plenty good enough, is pretty and represents the future. On the other, most of the KDE3 camp seems to say that it wasn't/isn't ready for prime time because it *appears* that form rather than function is the driving force and that KDE3 wasn't broken enough to throw out. It is my opinion that both sides seem to be 'attacking' or 'defending' the KDE devs. I believe the KDE devs made a rational decision to produce a new product that eventually would be able to take the place of KDE3 as the premier desktop of choice for (here's that word again) "many", if not "most" Linux users (across many distros). I applaud them for taking on such a project and I see great progress, albeit for me at least, it still isn't quite ready to be my prime desktop over v3.5.10, but it is improving. No, the problem as I see it was and is not the KDE devs, not the testers, not the fact that early releases were (IMO) of 'alpha' quality, but that too many DISTROS, including our own openSuSE.org, PREMATURELY decided to push v4.x in preference to v3.x of KDE for their distros. Some, like (I believe it is) Ubuntu seem to pulling away from KDE entirely now as a result. OpenSuSE at least after much gnashing of teeth, put (rather, left) v3.5.x in the distro, albeit increasingly hidden and obtuse regarding where to find it and how to ensure a 'pure' version of the older version of KDE if that was the user's choice. Some other distros apparently didn't even do that much. So the problem, I feel, really boils down to the decision makers in the various distros jumping on a 'bigger numerical version' without regard to the fact that even at the time of the release of v4.0 by KDE, it was admitted that it was a work in progress and features were being added to increase it's functionality at a rapid pace. The DISTRO decision makers mistake, IMO, was to ignore a basic step: RESEARCH. In other words, simple things like "is it really ready?", "What do our users think?" "How should we offer it?" and a myriad of other pertenant questions needed to be explored, especially the 2nd question. Even if the answer to the first question was "No, it isn't really ready", it still could have been offered as a cutting edge alpha, optional, desktop with encouragement to try it out and provide feedback. The distros for the most part seemed to just choose to make it the primary choice, or the first choice, or the only choice in some cases. This to me is where the fault lies, not with the KDE devs, but with the distro decision makers. I personally enjoy testing KDE4 and other new projects EVEN THOUGH I DON"T YET USE IT for my production machines because of what to me are shortcomings that preclude that promotion. I fervantly hope for the eventual success of KDE4, as I also fervantly hope that the distros, especially openSuSE will continue to provide KDE3 in ALL releases until they have taken a proper poll of their userbase and asked them the questions they should have asked before SuSE 11.0 was even released, much less 11.1 and 11.2 which they summarily stated would NOT have KDE3 support in the distro. Some packages may be left out due to legal constraints, such as those with certain multimedia packages, but to the best of my knowledge, no such constraints exist for KDE3.x, only a preconcieved notion that KDE4 would be 'ready' and KDE3 would be ancient history and not needed by their userbase. Maybe their crystal ball is better than mine, but with such a short time between releases of openSuSE and the complexity of KDE, I fail to see how they can be so adamant about killing KDE3 which despite a few warts and freckles, works quite well and is still used by enough people to spark numerous flame wars in numerous mailing lists on more than one distro. Richard -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org -- -- Stephen P. Molnar, Ph.D. Life is a fuzzy set Foundation for Chemistry Stochastic and multivariate http://www.geocities.com/FoundationForChemistry -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org