On Sat 28 Sep 2002 13:24, David Pastern wrote:
> thanks (i'm sure i'm going to get flamed for this but I don't care one
> iota).
I'm sorry your experience with KDE was not optimal, but blaming KDE alone is
an incorrect assumption.
The problems you've encountered are due to a large number of interacting
factors between Debian, GCC and KDE. The problem is timing. Debian is
currently upgrading it's version of GCC to 3.2. KDE3 has/had problems
compiling on GCC3.2, other software packages also have problems with GCC3.2.
The KDE maintainer has decided to only develop KDE3 with GCC3.2. Together
this creates a large list of compatibility problems depending on which
version of <name any tool here>. For stability, KDE2.2 is available for
Debian. This is stable and installable on any stable Debian with a simple
apt-get install. The current versions of KDE3 are 'unstable' and the various
versions are compiled against a variety of mixed stable/testing/unstable
systems. hence the difficulty of getting the mix right.
This is known. That is why it's called unstable. If you only want to try the
KDE desktop, without trying to help fix problems, then stick with the stable
version. It works! Unfortunately it's also old. This is one of the few faults
with Debian.
I use KDE because it is familiar. I've tried Gnome but can not get my head
around it at all. Again, it's down to personal preference. I respect your
preference for Gnome. It's what you know. But this is the strong point of
Linux, choice! I choose KDE, you choose Gnome. We both choose Debian for it's
superior packaging system. When I wanted to play with KDE3, I decided that
rather than face the problems you are having, I've been bitten too many times
when mixing stable with unstable, to try building a Linux From Scratch system
on a spare box for playing with. The base system is an 85M download and a
rather lengthy process of compiling and installing everything. I have the
sources for XFree864.2.0 and the sources for KDE3.0Beta2. There was a lot of
other things to install before I could finally compile and install KDE3. Now
I've got a box with a fully custom compiled and installed Linux system
including KDE3! As for my regular system, I'll just wait until the current
problems are ironed out and I can install KDE3 from the official Debian site,
thank you.
Please do not allow this complex interaction of a number of problems shade
your view of KDE. It is not KDE alone that caused your experiences.
Cheers,
John Gay
