John Andersen said the following on 10/28/2008 01:58 AM:
On SLED you have to go out of your way to get KDE to work at all. It comes GNOME.
That's why I gave up on Mandriva! All its admin functions, while 'lightweight' in that they are perl scripts rather than compiled code, rely on the Gnome libraries. I'd run Mandrake/Mandriva happily for over 5 years and then along comes '09 with KDE4, and a lot of things I'd taken for granted were broken. Not just the KDE4 stuff but handling of usb devices, mouse. Mandriva's big hook with '09 was that it boots fast. Yes it does, blindingly so. But I turn my machines off maybe once a week when I clean my study, so what benefit is that to me? I can understand the benefits of more efficient libraries & so on, but the description of the mock-up car just rings too true. For me, the things like comparing the old and new panels & available widgets & control over them highlights this deficiency. If KDE4 is meant to be a new conceptualization of the interface, then perhaps it should come with a better user's guide. Another car analogy: The old 1957/58 Ford Edsel is an example of a failure. Whether you view it as an engineering or a marketing disaster, it certainly tried introducing too many new things and was poorly presented. Does this seem like KDE4? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edsel#The_wrong_car_at_the_wrong_time http://www.failuremag.com/arch_history_edsel.html "Those who ignore the past are doomed to repeat it" http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1658545_1657867_16577... The 50 worst cars of all time - #12, the Ford Edsel Or if we are still talking BMW ... http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1658545_1658544_16585... To close, I'd like to refer to an old book. I bought a crate of these and used to hand them out to my staff back in the days when I was a SW Development PM. I still have one copy. "Programming as if People Mattered" Nathaniel S Borenstein ISBN 0-691-08752-0 http://www.amazon.com/Programming-People-Mattered-Engineering-Delusions/dp/0... Does this mean I'm going to dump KDE4, try out another distribution? Well, its not quite like investing a new car that's a lemon, but the reality is that like so many of us, I have a life and don't have time to do the fiddly bits like the step-and-repeat of trying out distributions. My computer is a tool, not a toy, and I'm not a magazine reviewer who gets paid to try out distributions. But the issue just isn't the code, its the communication. If there was better communication FROM the designers and implemented as to what this was and why they had decide to do things, for example the new panels &widgets (and what happened to the old ones and why we can't stack the pager and box unless we grow the panel to an unreasonable height ... stuff like that. But guys, lets keep this reasonable and logical. The developers aren't going to respond is all we do is make emotionally laden complaints. The "missing features list" is a good start! -- There are still places where people think that the function of the media is to supply information -- Donn Rottenburg -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org