On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 6:33 AM, Will Stephenson <wstephenson@suse.de> wrote:
Indeed. Even in a 'simple' desktop like KDE 3, there are so many different ways to use the desktop, that it's impossible for us to be aware of them all and check they still work in KDE 4.
I understand that.
To those who rationalise the difference between KDE 4 and KDE 3 as the replacement of a team of sober getting-things-done engineers with a bunch of bling-happy kids. It hasn't happened. We're still the same guys and frankly we have the reputation in KDE as being the boring ones who make stuff work, sometimes at the cost of annoying the bling-happy kids.
But that's what happens when I load KDE4. I get a desktop with a bunch of useless bling that works very different from KDE3. They say first impressions are the most important. Well, some users, who like bling, are probably happy. But a lot of the long time KDE3 users are unhappy because not only is KDE4 full of bling, it doesn't work the way we expect it to work. Then when we point these things out, we are called ranters. I personally don't have the time to go through all the existing bug reports to see if what I feel is missing has been reported. That's why a lot of us bring up these things here. I asked the KDE devs to include KPersonalizer at startup of KDE4 to turn off the bling, but the notes from the meeting stated that it hadn't been ported. However, no mention of whether that was going to happen or not was in the meeting. So, am I supposed to assume that the devs, who are now aware of this, are going to see about taking care of it or do I need to open a bugreport? Communication, which seems to be lacking in some cases.
So let's look at what's going on upstream: The 'KDE wants to be Vista' mindset stems from the replacement of kdesktop and kicker with Plasma. Plasma is being successful in making desktop development accessible to a larger set of hackers and these may have priorities different to your own (more eye candy). KDE is, more than ever, a big and rapidly growing project. These new faces blog and videocast vocally, unlike the old guard who have been doing this since the 90s. But this expansion doesn't mean that the project has shifted its overall goals of producing a usable and complete Free desktop. The Plasma project as a whole has had the short term (KDE 4.1 and especially 4.2) goal of reaching parity with the old feature set of the KDE 3 desktop, and has explicitly postponed some of its $insert_buzzword_here innovations until this is done. Away from the desktop shell, we continue refining the productivity apps, rolling out Akonadi so Kontact is robust and efficient, making Dolphin the best Free file manager, and filling in missing utilities like NetworkManager clients.
It comes down to the "if it aint broke, why fix it?" mentaility. A lot of us don't see why there was such a need for the change, even if you guys have your reasons. But, what bothers us is that the functionality we have come to expect from KDE and the ease of use is now gone in a lot of cases. We are being told that we have to relearn how to use KDE because the new stuff is so much better. And we're like Huh? I have used KDE from 1.x on and I had no problems like this when they changed versions. Of course, over time I have learned more about how to use it, and as I have seen and found features, whether new or not, I've come to expect them. So, when I tried KDE4.04 in 11.0, I was left with an un-customizable mess. Needless to say, I ended up dumping my install and used those KDE3 LiveCDs to re-install with. I did update it to the build service's 4.1.x, but I don't have time to continue to update my system in the "hope" that it will now work the way I expect it to. I barely have the time to try to test any of the betas right now.....
When I read the rest of this thread, I saw unfounded conjecture and a tendency to assume that KDE and openSUSE don't care about long term, loyal users' needs. I don't really understand why. We are aware of KDE 4's current shortcomings, and we've tried harder than any other distro to make sure that KDE 3 remains a viable alternative while we work to resolve them. The sky isn't falling!
And that's because myself and others make it known that we felt it was necessary. And we (at least I) appreciate that. However, what a lot of you guys seem to miss out is that a lot of openSUSE users don't hang out on these lists and they don't make their thought available. Also, a lot of 11.0 users are probably still using KDE4.04 because they don't KNOW that you can add in the build service and update it. So, there's a disconnect not with those of us here, but for those who aren't here. Lack of communication. Honestly, so long as KDE4 has a large share of shortcomings, I personally feel that it shouldn't be pushed over KDE3, which is and will be the case with 11.1,since KDE3 won't be given billing as an easy to find install options. Most people won't realize it's there since it's been moved to the "other" desktop list. That shows the direction that you guys want to take, but so long as KDE4 is lacking or just not an interest for a majority of users(which IS the case since at least the last poll that showed more KDE3 than KDE4 users) then it shouldn't be given top billing. However, you guys disagree, so there's not much I can do about it. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org