Dale posted on Tue, 23 Apr 2013 03:16:04 -0500 as excerpted: > James Tyrer wrote: >> >> I just have this strange idea that things should work very well, not >> just 80% to 90% and I would like to see KDE develop a release process >> that could produce a 99% working product as well as producing new >> nifty features. >> > I can't pass this up. ;-) Just when KDE3 was getting pretty darn good, > they dropped it.
It had been reasonably good for awhile, but you're right, they dropped the kde3 that was working very well for an alpha-state kde4 that they insisted was "ready for ordinary use" (NOT talking the 4.0 that nobody thought was ready, but 4.2, which was still alpha state by the ordinary description of such, not even beta, but that's exactly what they declared ready for ordinary use, 4.3 reached beta, 4.4 rc, and 4.5 finally reached what should have been dot-zero quality 4.0-release) just because they SAID it was. > I figure KDE4 will end up the same way too. Just when > they get everything ginning along really good, drop it. Given the history you have reason to fear. However, the frameworks modularization and efforts to allow running kde-frameworks and kde4 apps side by side without interference (unlike kde3/kde4) gives me rather more optimism than that. Plus, I don't believe most will be taken in by a promise to support the earlier version as long as there are users, that's then broken, as many were with kde3/kde4. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me... and I don't think the community will buy it this time, even if someone from kde is stupid enough to make the same promise again. That alone will mean this time's different, as the community won't have any of that foolery this time around, as has been demonstrated by the quick creation of the various gnome3 alternatives when it tried the same trick (tho to their credit I don't believe they promised support they couldn't/ didn't deliver, as kde did with kde3). > I don't mind working out a few minor issues here and there but I was > VERY displeased with them dropping KDE3 way before KDE4 was anywhere > near ready. ... despite the promise to support it as long as there were users. But of course you weren't the only one displeased, and as I mentioned above, the community now has demonstrated both capacity and willingness to both create forks/alternative at the dev/distro level, and to switch to them, at the user level. Regardless of what kde does, 4/frameworks will NOT be a repeat of 3/4. But I think they realize that, and thus wouldn't try it again, even if they might otherwise. > I kept using KDE3 for a good while since almost nothing worked in KDE4, > for me at least. Luckily Gentoo kept KDE3 up as long as it did. I like to see these things coming and get working on them early. Which I did with kde4, originally trying it even before the .0 release and periodically thereafter, but finding it simply not ready. But when the intent was declared to drop gentoo/kde3 support because upstream kde was dropping it, I decided it was time to move to 4 or move on, and move to 4 I did, tho it was far more difficult to do than it should have been due to the alpha state that kde4 was still in as of 4.2, despite upstream insistence to the contrary. But between that and later events (the ssl certificate management fiasco thru 4.6-ish, the 4.6.2 infamous konqueror double-form-submission bug in a so-called bugfix series that took two monthly bugfix releases to fix, the akonadified kmail thing in 4.6 that was a repeat in small of the whole early kde4 sickness in kdepim...), I ultimately moved on for most of my critical apps anyway. Pretty much all that remains of kde here is the desktop itself (stripped of the kde4 bullet-point feature semantic- desktop, BTW) including plasma and the general environment, and most of the kde games collection. Plus superkaramba, but I believe there are non- kde alternatives to it, too. And switching desktops wouldn't be that bad, and I only use a few of the games to any degree anyway, with non-kde alternatives available for most of them (but for palapeli, the jigsaw-puzzle app, which I know of no alternative for tho there might be one, but I doubt I'd find it worth installing and building updates for all the kde support structure just for it). I have my eye on razor-qt, tho if I dropped kde entirely I'd probably drop qt as well, and choose either something gtk based like lxde/xfce, or try enlightenment, as some of the stuff I've read about it has been quite interesting indeed. > I've said this before, if KDE repeats this process again, I may be > switching to something a little more dependable during switching. It's > not like I don't have any options either. I have people that depend on > me to be online and if I can't depend on my GUI, they can't depend on me > either. > > Let's hope this thing works out better this time. Indeed. Due to the whole modularity thing I believe it will, and even if it doesn't for individual apps it'll be a whole lot easier to pick and choose best-of-breed individual kde apps to mix in with a non-kde environment or other apps. But I'm prepared if it doesn't, this time, and the cost of moving off of the remaining kde components I use here will be far lower than off the standardized-on-kde3 that I was back then. ... Which to the slightly superstitious in the same vein as I (emotionally, tho logically I know it isn't really so) sort of think that I've never been in a major fire or other disaster because I try to be prepared for them... could be seen as further support for why the kde- frameworks upgrade will be rather smooth (at least for me)... because I'm actually prepared to switch to alternatives this time, if they try pulling the same tricks again... so they won't... or at least if they do the bugs aren't likely to affect me. =;^P -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman ___________________________________________________ This message is from the kde-linux mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-linux. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
