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loell
July 4th, 2008, 03:57 AM
a few criticizes KDE 4, another shouts fork! and a developer quits. :(

whats happening? :confused:

natedawg
July 4th, 2008, 04:08 AM
not sure... After testing KDE 4.1 beta I have to say I am impressed although it is still lacking big time in some areas. Bugs are still everywhere and I can't stand the lack of icons on the desktop(the folder widget doesn't cut it)... Anyway it will be interesting to see what happens. I think the devs just need more time to make KDE 4 live up to its full potential.

loell
July 4th, 2008, 04:23 AM
i'll surely try KDE 4 in intrepid ibex, though I already heard good things about version 4 from some of my freinds. what puzzled me and I couldn't connect the events that led to the supposedly flame wars in the mailing list and the call for a fork.

DarkOx
July 4th, 2008, 04:39 AM
I think the devs just need more time to make KDE 4 live up to its full potential.

Amen to that. Honestly, I think a large part of KDE4's problems have been due to a) over hyping and b) a push towards KDE4 by distros.

KDE4 has promised a lot. And credit where it's due, it looks like KDE will get there... eventually. But it's not there yet. And already, we have distributions that are packaging KDE4 as the default environment (openSUSE).

So users go and try KDE4, and find that it's not finished. In many ways, it's a regression from what they had on KDE 3.5. And to make matters worse, users are expecting a desktop just as complete as KDE 3.5 (after all, distros are packaging it, right?) or even worse, something that blasts the desktop paradigm light years ahead (after all, wasn't there supposed to be hype?)

When users find that KDE4 is good but has a ways to go yet, they're disappointed and angry. So they yell at the devs. And, as there are more users than devs, the devs have to put up with the same complaints, ad nauseum. That kind of thing naturally wears people down.

The only real solution is to manage user expectations. Distros should clearly mark that KDE4 is not feature-complete with KDE 3.5 yet, and warn users that it may not fill their needs yet.

GeneralZod
July 4th, 2008, 06:03 AM
i'll surely try KDE 4 in intrepid ibex, though I already heard good things about version 4 from some of my freinds. what puzzled me and I couldn't connect the events that led to the supposedly flame wars in the mailing list and the call for a fork.

The call for a fork and the erroneous reporting of a developer "quitting" (the source article is here (http://troy-at-kde.livejournal.com/18018.html) and ends with a very clear "I'll be back") both come from the same fellow, SJVN:

http://practical-tech.com/

You can draw your own conclusions as to why someone would scream "Fork KDE!" to accomplish things the KDE devs are already working on and take "I'm too busy working on my thesis to work on KDE, but I'll be back" and turn it into an article called "KDE developer quits" :)

loell
July 4th, 2008, 06:20 AM
The call for a fork and the erroneous reporting of a developer "quitting" (the source article is here (http://troy-at-kde.livejournal.com/18018.html) and ends with a very clear "I'll be back") both come from the same fellow, SJVN:

http://practical-tech.com/

You can draw your own conclusions as to why someone would scream "Fork KDE!" to accomplish things the KDE devs are already working on and take "I'm too busy working on my thesis to work on KDE, but I'll be back" and turn it into an article called "KDE developer quits" :)

:lolflag: hah! so its just an overblown story on the blogosphere! :popcorn:

DeadSuperHero
July 4th, 2008, 06:52 AM
I'm mostly unhappy about Aaron Seigo not having a public KDE blog anymore.
That bums me out. I always loved his blog entries, and his explanations of how different KDE technologies work.

23meg
July 4th, 2008, 01:09 PM
what's happenning to the KDE community lately?

A small group of senseless whiners, bashers and opportunists are getting a bit louder, alienating a small group of top contributors. That's it.

Similar things happen just before and just after pretty much every Ubuntu release, in an ever increasing scale. At least it's a periodic wave, so we know when to expect it and have become somewhat proficient in countering it. Just another advantage of the fixed release cycle (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TimeBasedReleases).

Chame_Wizard
July 4th, 2008, 01:22 PM
I don't like KDE on Windows[-X

chucky chuckaluck
July 4th, 2008, 01:26 PM
i've been messing with kde4.1 somewhat and i think it looks like it'll be fun once they get it finished. right now, it's just about ready for a first alpha release.

tubasoldier
July 4th, 2008, 01:30 PM
I've lost a lot of respect for SJVN and his so called "journalistic" standpoint. It wasn't that long ago that he was writing decent stories on DesktopLinux.com.

KDE4 does have a long way to go, but there have been amazing improvements since 4.0 first came out.

When I first heard about the icon widget I was a bit curious. I don't like icons on my desktop anyways, so no biggie for me. But after 4.1 RC2 came out I thought I would try it on for size. It can be a very useful tool if used properly. It will display the contents of *any* folder, not just those of the desktop. Plus you can have as many of them as will fit on your screen. And you can throw as many icons in there as you want and still have them available to you, unlike your desktop which can run out of space to place things. On top of that it just adds to the widget way of doing things.

Aaron Seigo's public blog was closed because of all the personal attacks he was getting. I liked it too. I read it the day he posted about the new destop icon widgets. I understand why he did it and am willing to sit back and wait for things to cool off.

In a year or maybe even two, KDE4 will be a sweet destop environment. By then it will have all the features into it that KDE3 does. Because it was a complete rewrite of the desktop, there will be lots of bugs to iron out for each new release. KDE3 was pretty similar when it first came out. Thats how it is with new software. The best thing to do is to use it occasionally and file bug reports.

xebian
July 4th, 2008, 01:41 PM
The call for a fork and the erroneous reporting of a developer "quitting" (the source article is here (http://troy-at-kde.livejournal.com/18018.html) and ends with a very clear "I'll be back") both come from the same fellow, SJVN:

http://practical-tech.com/

You can draw your own conclusions as to why someone would scream "Fork KDE!" to accomplish things the KDE devs are already working on and take "I'm too busy working on my thesis to work on KDE, but I'll be back" and turn it into an article called "KDE developer quits" :)

This guy SJVN thinks KDE4 is being written for his own personal pleasure. Heck, if you don't like it, move on, or as he says fork it yourself.

He is the guy who has the nerve to tell the Debian community to 'go back to coding' about a couple of years ago when Debian was having some controversies internally.

KDE4 is still in infancy, and already looking great. I'm sure the 4.08.4 would be awesome.
:guitar:

Exsecrabilus
July 4th, 2008, 02:36 PM
KDE4 has promised a lot. And credit where it's due, it looks like KDE will get there... eventually. But it's not there yet. And already, we have distributions that are packaging KDE4 as the default environment (openSUSE).
Why do you say that? Do you know what the OpenSUSE team had to go through--because of all the flames it was receiving--to let the Linux world know that KDE4 isn't the default environment in OpenSUSE 11? It's just one of three environment options you get at install; it doesn't even suggest you use KDE4, KDE3 or GNOME, it's just an option, not default.

DarkOx
July 4th, 2008, 04:12 PM
Why do you say that? Do you know what the OpenSUSE team had to go through--because of all the flames it was receiving--to let the Linux world know that KDE4 isn't the default environment in OpenSUSE 11?

I was basing it off of their download site (http://software.opensuse.org/), where the Live CD download options say "Gnome" and "KDE 4", with no mention of a KDE 3 version. I take it that the DVD offers KDE 3.5 as an install option? If so, I was mistaken in calling KDE 4 the default.

I still think that distros should do more to make people aware that KDE 4 is not yet a drop-in replacement for the 3.5 series. I can't say whether or not SUSE's guilty of this (I downloaded the live CD, not the DVD), but Kubuntu, rather than just calling KDE 4 "cutting edge" (http://www.kubuntu.org/download.php), should point out that KDE 4 isn't feature complete yet, but is being worked on.

Foster Grant
July 4th, 2008, 04:43 PM
Amen to that. Honestly, I think a large part of KDE4's problems have been due to a) over hyping and b) a push towards KDE4 by distros.

KDE4 has promised a lot. And credit where it's due, it looks like KDE will get there... eventually. But it's not there yet. And already, we have distributions that are packaging KDE4 as the default environment (openSUSE).

So users go and try KDE4, and find that it's not finished. In many ways, it's a regression from what they had on KDE 3.5. And to make matters worse, users are expecting a desktop just as complete as KDE 3.5 (after all, distros are packaging it, right?) or even worse, something that blasts the desktop paradigm light years ahead (after all, wasn't there supposed to be hype?)

When users find that KDE4 is good but has a ways to go yet, they're disappointed and angry. So they yell at the devs. And, as there are more users than devs, the devs have to put up with the same complaints, ad nauseum. That kind of thing naturally wears people down.

The only real solution is to manage user expectations. Distros should clearly mark that KDE4 is not feature-complete with KDE 3.5 yet, and warn users that it may not fill their needs yet.

At least part of the problem with KDE4 is developer over-reaching — "let's shove all these updates into the new version no matter how much public goodwill it costs us." To put it very bluntly, a point-zero release that is neither feature-equivalent with a preceding version nor able to fill users' needs yet is an alpha version and should be labeled as such. Realistically, they needed to do one of three things:


scale back their plans,
extend some of them to a later version, or
pick a later release date for version 4.0 so all planned 3.5-->4.x upgrades could have been included in the initial release.

As the very least, they're making themselves look very bad because to the world at large (which does not use *nix), it looks like the developers of one of the two major desktop environments can't deliver working software on schedule. The absolute worst-case scenario is that the non-*nix community will look at this and conclude that all open-source development is "just like KDE, and look how badly they screwed up." We know better, but that's because we use it every day. And of course, they can always say that we "have a pro-Linux agenda." ](*,)

If KDE were a product of a major business, there would be repercussions to the senior developers' employment status. There are things in the KDE team's handling of version 4 that remind me of Microsoft — specifically, the fact that many Microsoft OS releases aren't ready for prime time upon initial release and end up hurting the company's public image to users.

I imagine the GNOME dev team is looking at the experience of KDE's crew and taking extensive notes. I suspect that when they get around to crafting GNOME 3.0, it won't have the problems that came with KDE 4.

dresnu
July 5th, 2008, 12:02 AM
Amen to that. Honestly, I think a large part of KDE4's problems have been due to a) over hyping and b) a push towards KDE4 by distros.

KDE4 has promised a lot. And credit where it's due, it looks like KDE will get there... eventually. But it's not there yet. And already, we have distributions that are packaging KDE4 as the default environment (openSUSE).

So users go and try KDE4, and find that it's not finished. In many ways, it's a regression from what they had on KDE 3.5. And to make matters worse, users are expecting a desktop just as complete as KDE 3.5 (after all, distros are packaging it, right?) or even worse, something that blasts the desktop paradigm light years ahead (after all, wasn't there supposed to be hype?)

Except for the fact that... it's the developers that created the hype from the beginning, not the users! That's the whole problem I think.

Before KDE4 was released we read those big titles in blogs about this new DE that would change the way the desktop is perceived, with a faster more productive conception of the pc and a breakthrough technology.

And then what did we get? A premature, alpha version of an abortion of a DE that was UNUSABLE!

The thing is that it's your choise to release or not a crapy/buggy version of a software but if you do so, after you have raised the expectations that high, then you must also be prepared to absorb the great wave of criticism that might come. And when you 're in the open source world, with such a direct way of communication well, heat can raise pretty fast.

It's up to you then to understand and separate positive criticism from negative(useless).


A small group of senseless whiners, bashers and opportunists are getting a bit louder, alienating a small group of top contributors. That's it.

Oh my... contributors must be a very sensitive breed of human beings...

EDIT: Also, everybody here is talking about SJVN's recent posts. If it takes that little to demoralize KDE4 developers, well that is your number one problem leave apart the rest! But I think that the issue is just slightly deeper... or does anyone think that SJVN is such big crowd motivator that can convince the masses to oppose to the birth of KDE4?

blackbelt_jones
July 5th, 2008, 08:37 AM
Except for the fact that... it's the developers that created the hype from the beginning, not the users! That's the whole problem I think.

I agree, sort of. What everyone needs to understand is that this is a public relations problem, not necessarily a software problem. KDE 3.5 is going to remain viable for the foreseeable future, a new KDE 3.5 release is planned for a couple of months from now. (3.5.10) If you don't like KDE 4 in its present state, there's going to be time to evaluate whether or not a fork is needed. There's going to be time for KDE4 to take shape, and time for everyone to get used to it. I found the current version to be useless but promising.

As far as I can tell, they're doing a great job of developing, but they botched the public relations horribly. KDE has to be responsible for their public relations problems, because blaming the public for bad public relations solves nothing. They promoted it way too soon, people installed it, and they couldn't get it to work. When people couldn't get it to work, they freaked. They became angry and irrational, because they felt (incorrectly) that their desktop was threatened. For the same reason, pro-KDE4 people also became angry and irrational, and started weaving crazy conspiracy stories. The Gnome users were trying to kill KDE, etc, etc etc.

I was one of the angry anti- KDE4 folks, but I've come to believe that there is no threat to anyone's desktop. It's 100 percent PR.

ibutho
July 7th, 2008, 10:36 AM
The call for a fork and the erroneous reporting of a developer "quitting" (the source article is here (http://troy-at-kde.livejournal.com/18018.html) and ends with a very clear "I'll be back") both come from the same fellow, SJVN:

http://practical-tech.com/

You can draw your own conclusions as to why someone would scream "Fork KDE!" to accomplish things the KDE devs are already working on and take "I'm too busy working on my thesis to work on KDE, but I'll be back" and turn it into an article called "KDE developer quits" :)

I had lots of respect for this guy and he has generally been a good supporter of Linux, but lately he seems to have gone bonkers and has turned to trolling the KDE project at every opportunity.

joninkrakow
July 7th, 2008, 02:09 PM
And then what did we get? A premature, alpha version of an abortion of a DE that was UNUSABLE!


WOW! That sounds _horrible_!!!

::: fires up KDE4 to see just how unusable of an abortion of a DE it really is!:::

:::loads--check::
:::launches Konqueror and watches seeqpod load--check::
:::launches a few other apps--check::
:::does some file-browsing--check::
:::tries to add a plasmoid to the dock; drags it, and it sticks where he puts it!!!--check::
:::tries modifying other system settings--check::
::: plays with it for a while, stressing it, to get it to crash, freeze or show that somehow it is an abortion of a DE--fail::

Sorry.... Could you please share with me just how KDE 4 is unusable it is? I don't see it...

Granted, it is different, and there are some things that seem to be missing, or work in ways I might not have expected.... but an abortion??? Wow! Hyperbole!

Oh, and KDE4 is somehow running _faster_ on my Mac than either KDE3 or Gnome do. Go figure!

And for the record, thanks to your post, KDE4 is now the default DE on my Mac. Thanks!

-Jon

Ubuntiac
July 15th, 2008, 08:25 PM
Love KDE4 or not, the user interface is still (for the moment) just a bunch of windows, a menu and a desktop you can put widgets and icons (via folderview) on.

Are there differences? Of course? Are some of them good? Yep. Are some of them undesirable (even if temporary)? Sure. Would we like to see the undesirable ones made better. I'd say so. So what useful thing is there to do but get in and help out in *any* way on the projects designed to improve things. I can't program squat, but I can do a bunch of things that make life better for coders, freeing up their time to move faster on what they love doing.

Don't like folderview? With all this hoopla about icons, *someone* could write a plasmoid with more traditional icon usage (just like you can choose an older style menu). Find them and help them.

Don't like the menu? Go help out at Lancelot / Raptor / the Traditional Menu plasmoid sites.

Don't like how the pro/anti KDE4 community is reacting? You can fan the flames with your opinion or you can help make KDE 4 a DE best able to please the most people possible. Find the project you would love to see advanced and help out. Yes, I mean you.

Oh, and don't forget to laugh at yourself somewhere along the way. It's just a desktop environment for your computer folks. :popcorn:

Now, given that I have no desire or ability to code, I'm off to go work on a new theme for a well known KDE website.

Have fun kids and play nice.

Ubuntiac

DigitalDuality
July 15th, 2008, 10:58 PM
d

luca.b
July 16th, 2008, 10:58 AM
It depends on how you define usability. I can't go back to 3.5.9 anymore after using activities and the ZUI. I'm much more productive with 4.1.

ukripper
July 16th, 2008, 11:49 AM
Still using KDE3.5 on one of my machine. Tried KDE4 and decided it is not for me!

the_darkside_986
July 16th, 2008, 02:13 PM
I tried the openSUSE 11 KDE4 LiveCD and it is a very nice presentation of KDE4. Some of the plasma widgets crashed and were buggy but other than that it has a lot of potential. But I forgot to check, does KDE4 finally have a way of entering Unicode characters with control keys and a number, a feature that has been in Gnome for some time?

Anonymous Penguin
August 2nd, 2008, 09:25 AM
In a year or maybe even two, KDE4 will be a sweet destop environment.

Well, if that is the case, responsible distributions should make KDE3.5 available for another year or two. You can't expect users to work in a buggy environment which misses features.

mikjp
August 2nd, 2008, 01:00 PM
Well, if that is the case, responsible distributions should make KDE3.5 available for another year or two. You can't expect users to work in a buggy environment which misses features.

KDE4 is ready, when Patrick Volkerding accepts it in Slackware ;-)

Greetings,

mikko

cardinals_fan
August 2nd, 2008, 06:31 PM
KDE4 is ready, when Patrick Volkerding accepts it in Slackware ;-)

Greetings,

mikko
You've hit the nail on the head. Absolutely correct!

original_jamingrit
August 2nd, 2008, 06:53 PM
KDE4 is ready, when Patrick Volkerding accepts it in Slackware ;-)

Greetings,

mikko

Cheers to that!

I haven't yet tried out KDE4+ yet though. Can anyone recommend a good livecd to sample it on?

EDIT: I've found this Debian KDE4 http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=101792

EDIT 2: Nevermind it seems to be dead.

Vadi
August 2nd, 2008, 06:58 PM
KDE 4.1 - "Don't look back."

I find it amusing, because at the time of KDE 4.0, everyone was saying that you'd be using kde 3.5 and kde 4.0 along-side together. And guess what? A lot of apps still aren't ported over, so I do have to look back.

It's a mess imho, but I don't care, not a dev or anything like that. Just a user who's not convinced.

Anonymous Penguin
August 4th, 2008, 09:06 PM
KDE4 is ready, when Patrick Volkerding accepts it in Slackware ;-)

Greetings,

mikko

I couldn't agree more. You took the words out of my mouth :-D

muep
August 4th, 2008, 10:45 PM
Well, if that is the case, responsible distributions should make KDE3.5 available for another year or two. You can't expect users to work in a buggy environment which misses features.

I think it is very sweet already, and it will only keep getting better! It is not a superset of KDE 3.5 series yet, maybe will never be. But it's great, and I already like it a lot more than KDE 3.5.

Will possibly never use KDE 3.5 as my main desktop again...

KDE devs, keep up the good work! :)

HTML-insane
September 8th, 2008, 10:58 PM
Amen to that. Honestly, I think a large part of KDE4's problems have been due to a) over hyping and b) a push towards KDE4 by distros.

KDE4 has promised a lot. And credit where it's due, it looks like KDE will get there... eventually. But it's not there yet. And already, we have distributions that are packaging KDE4 as the default environment (openSUSE).

So users go and try KDE4, and find that it's not finished. In many ways, it's a regression from what they had on KDE 3.5. And to make matters worse, users are expecting a desktop just as complete as KDE 3.5 (after all, distros are packaging it, right?) or even worse, something that blasts the desktop paradigm light years ahead (after all, wasn't there supposed to be hype?)

When users find that KDE4 is good but has a ways to go yet, they're disappointed and angry. So they yell at the devs. And, as there are more users than devs, the devs have to put up with the same complaints, ad nauseum. That kind of thing naturally wears people down.

The only real solution is to manage user expectations. Distros should clearly mark that KDE4 is not feature-complete with KDE 3.5 yet, and warn users that it may not fill their needs yet.

That's got to be the most well-thought-out post I've seen reguarding KDE 4 >.<

happysmileman
September 9th, 2008, 12:49 AM
A problem I'm seeing is that some people tend to say KDE4 isn't ready because Amaok, K3b, KDevelop (insert other KDE program) aren't ported yet, without realising that none of these are actually part of KDE, they're 3rd party programs with different release schedules.

From what I've seen (YMMV, newer NVidia cards definitely don't work as well with KDE4, that's a fault of the drivers and has been made known to NVidia) KDE4 is far superior, KDE4 with desktop effects is faster than Gnome or KDE3.5 both with and without Compiz. And 4.1 is even faster than 4.0, so that makes it seem likely that it won't really slow down much as features are added.

From a programming point of view I personally think it is far easier to make programs for KDE4 than it is for Gnome or KDE3.5, which may mean more programs are released for it and/or programs are written quicker. Of course this is my biased opinion as someone with pretty much no experience with GTK.

Of course, KDE4 is not as feature-packed or customisable as KDE3.5 yet, but keep in mind that from 3.0 to 3.5 took a very, very long time, and getting KDE4 from 4.0 to such a finished state will also take time.

A problem I can see is that users might not want distros to include KDE4 until their favourite features are ready, but distros don't want to include 3.5 since it isn't getting as much developer attention (it gets bugfixes and security fixes only from this point on I think). And of course if the developers started working on KDE3.5 again then KDE4 development will be harmed. Developers also might not think that X is a good feature that people use, because users don't tell them, the users sometimes just make vague statements about KDE4 being bad, preferring to insult the software (and in some cases even the developers unfortunately) rather than make a constructive comment because at the time they are unhappy about the lack of features.

mips
September 9th, 2008, 01:16 PM
A problem I'm seeing is that some people tend to say KDE4 isn't ready because Amaok, K3b, KDevelop (insert other KDE program) aren't ported yet, without realising that none of these are actually part of KDE, they're 3rd party programs with different release schedules.

From what I've seen (YMMV, newer NVidia cards definitely don't work as well with KDE4, that's a fault of the drivers and has been made known to NVidia) KDE4 is far superior, KDE4 with desktop effects is faster than Gnome or KDE3.5 both with and without Compiz. And 4.1 is even faster than 4.0, so that makes it seem likely that it won't really slow down much as features are added.

From a programming point of view I personally think it is far easier to make programs for KDE4 than it is for Gnome or KDE3.5, which may mean more programs are released for it and/or programs are written quicker. Of course this is my biased opinion as someone with pretty much no experience with GTK.

Of course, KDE4 is not as feature-packed or customisable as KDE3.5 yet, but keep in mind that from 3.0 to 3.5 took a very, very long time, and getting KDE4 from 4.0 to such a finished state will also take time.

A problem I can see is that users might not want distros to include KDE4 until their favourite features are ready, but distros don't want to include 3.5 since it isn't getting as much developer attention (it gets bugfixes and security fixes only from this point on I think). And of course if the developers started working on KDE3.5 again then KDE4 development will be harmed. Developers also might not think that X is a good feature that people use, because users don't tell them, the users sometimes just make vague statements about KDE4 being bad, preferring to insult the software (and in some cases even the developers unfortunately) rather than make a constructive comment because at the time they are unhappy about the lack of features.

+1 You said it better than I could have.