Will Stephenson wrote:
On Thursday 06 Oct 2011 11:56:56 Stephan Kulow wrote:
But this would be a major divergence with upstream's default, so I would like to discuss more widely first. What's your oppinion?
Do you prefer virtual desktops or plasma activities?
This is an oversimplified choice, since you can, if you want, use virtual desktops inside Activities.
My opinion (slightly subject to what you actually feel are wrong with activities, but going with the "are annoying" you posted later in the thread) is that we should not go configuring upstream's flagship features out because Statler and Waldorf find them annoying.
1) That way lies stagnation and death - you might as well stop shipping new versions of KDE after 4.4, or fork the damn thing.
2) This sends a terrible message to upstream that we just consider their features unfixably broken, when instead we should be actively working with them to communicate problems and suggest fixes.
3) Upstream app authors will be coding against new features and we will get bug reports that people can't find the Activities switcher when they try to use apps which use Activities. Don't expect them to code their apps to hide Activity features when the panel does not contain an activity switcher either. For an example, see the Activity-specific power management options mentioned in this screencast: http://drfav.wordpress.com/2011/10/04/power-management-a- new-screencast/
4) Extra overhead 1: we'll have to document how we are changing upstream's defaults
5) Extra overhead 2: The KDE:Release:* projects, which stick to upstream defaults, will have to take care that they don't inadvertently ship our changes.
So I think we should identify what's wrong with Activities and see what is needed to make them work first.
As a user I agree with everything here. I began using KDE circa sometime around KDE 1.45 (something like that) on FreeBSD. Used it many years as it evolved. FreeBSD only patches the source to get it to build, install, and run so it is very plain-vanilla pure upstream. While my servers are still FreeBSD I made the move to openSUSE as a desktop aprox 2 1/2 years ago. I tried Kubuntu about three times and always returned to openSUSE because I found it so annoying that they would dumb down their KDE to the point I had to undo all their meddling. But then I am used to having everything "on" out of the box and I'll config it the way I want it, thank you very much. I despise having half of what KDE can do turned off just because some distro thinks "oh - it's too complicated for our user audience and we know better....". I've used KDE for so long I'll take it anyway it comes. I prefer plain- vanilla upstream actually. However, this may not be a representative attitude relative to newcomers who may be seeing KDE for the first time. I like the idea of Activities _and_ virtual desktops, especially since there can be virtual desktops _inside_ Activities. In the end I will ultimately config it the way I want it, but I do like to see the 'state-of-the-art' move forward. Just my $.02 from someone who has used KDE since before many even knew of its existance. -Mike -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-kde+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-kde+owner@opensuse.org