On Wednesday 2009 January 07 12:08:39 Sven Burmeister wrote:
Am Mittwoch, 7. Januar 2009 17:32:27 schrieb Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.:
Because KDE3 is final, i.e. a dead-end and because of all the advantages KDE4 has, e.g. a very flexible desktop that kde3 does not provide.
But, KDE 3 is a mature, featureful desktop environment in it's own right and it all works. KDE 4.0 and 4.1 are broken, experimental development versions that are missing a lot of *expected* features and, have a significantly higher crash rate.
Says who? All people I know, do not have those problems. Maybe it is a personal thing.
Well, my message has a quote from "Clayton" to this effect. It's not just him, either: "Some components, like the Plasma desktop layer, are still under heavy development and don't yet provide feature parity with their KDE 3.5.x counterparts. The incompleteness, which will likely frustrate some users, gives KDE 4.0 the feel something akin to a technical preview rather than a production-ready release." http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080111-kde-4-0-rough-but-ready-for-ac... "Despite being a stable release, it was intended for early adopters. Continuing to use KDE 3.5 was suggested for users wanting a more stable, "feature complete" desktop. The intent was for 4.0 to be a developers release." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDE_4 "While KDE 4.1 aims at being the first release suitable for early adopting users, some features you are used to in KDE 3.5 are not implemented yet." http://www.kde.org/announcements/4.1/
KDE 3 should have been the default until KDE 4 was really ready for brand-new Linux users. Specifically, those that don't want to take part in experimentation and development, but rather be handed a finished[1] product. Yes, KDE 4 should have been available but *not* the default.
KDE4 is better already and the future, hence it is the default choice. Read the mail by the guy who installed it for a new-to-linux-user.
I read that mail. While it is great that it works for them[1], experiences with KDE 4 are quite mixed and it is not yet ready to be the default from someone new too Linux. the chances are too high that it won't work long enough for them to figure out how to get help. It should be available and it is the future. It should not be the default. Hopefully, 4.2 will be that desktop. -- Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. ,= ,-_-. =. bss@iguanasuicide.net ((_/)o o(\_)) ICQ: 514984 YM/AIM: DaTwinkDaddy `-'(. .)`-' http://iguanasuicide.net/ \_/ [1] And that was an experienced user helping set up an new user, not a new user out on their own.