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KDE 4.4.0 Released
KDE Software Compilation 4.4.0 Introduces Netbook Interface, Window Tabbing and Authentication Framework KDE Software Compilation 4.4.0 (Codename: "Caikaku") Released 9th February, 2010. Today KDE announces the immediate availability of the KDE Software Compilation 4.4, "Caikaku", bringing an innovative collection of applications to Free Software users. Major new technologies have been introduced, including social networking and online collaboration features, a new netbook- oriented interface and infrastructural innovations such as the KAuth authentication framework. According to KDE's bug-tracking system, 7293 bugs have been fixed and 1433 new feature requests were implemented. The KDE community would like to thank everybody who has helped to make this release possible. Read the Visual Guide To KDE Software Compilation 4.4 for more details on the improvements in 4.4: http://www.kde.org/announcements/4.4/guide.php Read more: http://www.kde.org/announcements/4.4/ Cheers, -- sebas http://www.kde.org | http://vizZzion.org | GPG Key ID: 9119 0EF9 _______________________________________________ kde-announce mailing list kde-announce@kde.org https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-announce (Log in to post comments)
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 9, 2010 19:54 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Yay!
(where do we report spelling errors in the announcements? Last I
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 9, 2010 20:22 UTC (Tue) by sebas (subscriber, #51660) [Link]
Best in that case is popping by on #kde-www (freenode) and tell somebody, or emailing webmaster@kde.org. Reporting spelling errors is quite useful, and there's always something that slips.
I've fixed that one, thanks for the note.
back in kde Posted Feb 9, 2010 20:49 UTC (Tue) by astrophoenix (guest, #13528) [Link]
I'm running kde 4.3.2 on ubuntu 9.10 (karmic). this was the first version
of kde4 I dared try again, and I've been able to use it. I hope kde 4.4 will be the first kde4 release I'll be excited about!
once kubuntu made it difficult to stay up to date and still run kde3, I
back in kde Posted Feb 9, 2010 21:24 UTC (Tue) by horen (subscriber, #2514) [Link]
If you like KDE/4.3.2, you'll LOVE the current /4.3.5!
back in kde Posted Feb 9, 2010 23:11 UTC (Tue) by dowdle (subscriber, #659) [Link]
KDE has been quite usable since 4.1.0... then they updated that several times... and then came 4.2.0 which they updated several times... and then came 4.3.0 which they updated several times... most recently 4.3.5. 4.4.0 comes from that so I'd imagine it is even better more good than 4.3.x. :)
I'm a Fedora user and I've gone through every release since Fedora 9 - Fedora 12... and I hope they release 4.4.x for currently supported Fedora releases (11 and 12). They just released the updates to 4.3.5 this week.
back in kde Posted Feb 10, 2010 6:45 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
It will be available soon as updates and Fedora kde team is working on it
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/users/2010-Febru...
back in kde Posted Feb 10, 2010 11:06 UTC (Wed) by jwakely (subscriber, #60262) [Link]
> KDE has been quite usable since 4.1.0
Not compared to KDE3
> I'm a Fedora user and I've gone through every release since Fedora 9 - Fedora 12
Me too but I've been using it since RH5 and every previous version of KDE was less buggy than KDE4. The panel is the latest component to fail, having regressed since 4.2
Yes, I'm moaning in the wrong place, and yes I use KDE's bugzilla.
back in kde Posted Feb 10, 2010 11:11 UTC (Wed) by jwakely (subscriber, #60262) [Link]
Apologies for the trollish post, but I don't think it was significantly less constructive than its parent, which basically said "they've made releases! woo!"
kde3 in Kubuntu Posted Feb 9, 2010 23:46 UTC (Tue) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link]
I'm happily running both KDE3 and KDE4 on my Kubuntu 9.10/Karmic machines.
https://wiki.kubuntu.org/Kubuntu/Kde3/Karmic
Though since KDE 4.3 came along I've been quite happy with KDE4. Now the
kde3 in Kubuntu Posted Feb 10, 2010 10:52 UTC (Wed) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
Nice! If I'd known about this a while back I probably wouldn't have switched my desktop to Windows.
Amarok? Posted Feb 10, 2010 14:30 UTC (Wed) by sebas (subscriber, #51660) [Link]
To be honest, I don't really understand why people are so convinced of
Amarok 1.4. Compared to the KDE 3 version, I find the new Amarok (2.2) to be a lot easier on the eye, more straight-forward to use, better suitable on small screens (or non-fullscreen mode) and in general just a really well working media player. Important for me is the support for Audio CDs as well, which now blend in very nicely into the music collection.
I think in the newer Amarok2, they've also made the main parts of the UI
I understand that every use case is special and unique, but usually the
Amarok? Posted Feb 10, 2010 15:48 UTC (Wed) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link]
I'm more convinced of the usability of Amarok 1.4 than of the *un*usability
of Amarok 2.2, but right now I depend too much on the way 1.4 works (except some minor annoyances) and don't have time to mess with the potential breakage of a major upgrade (e.g. lost features, lost data).
I will definitely move to the new Amarok at some point, but I just can't
I can say, however, that for a while a major thing keeping me from
Life with KDE would definitely be easier if the major rewrites could better
I have great respect for what the KDE developers are doing, however, and
Amarok? Posted Feb 10, 2010 21:37 UTC (Wed) by sebas (subscriber, #51660) [Link]
> Life with KDE would definitely be easier if the major rewrites could better
> account for the possibility of having both old and new versions installed > and working simultaneously.
That's possible. As long as you set your $KDEHOME (the path where all KDE apps save their settings and user data) to a different directory for Amarok 1.x than 2.x, they won't even touch each other's settings.
We (KDE) have actually put considerable amounts of work into supporting that scenario. It's a shame it's not more widely recognized.
old and new versions installed simultaneously Posted Feb 10, 2010 22:03 UTC (Wed) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link]
While I really do appreciate that work, and I make use of it for Amarok,
it's not as easy to make use of as I'd like, especially considering that we're talking about a GUI environment. But before that, just getting the different versions installed simultaneously is a problem. (I also realize that part of the problem is likely in distributor packaging.)
But at this point things are mature enough that it's not as big an issue as
old and new versions installed simultaneously Posted Feb 11, 2010 8:28 UTC (Thu) by wstephenson (subscriber, #14795) [Link]
It's an old solved problem on openSUSE; both Amarok versions (and both KDE
versions, and any other KDE3/4 app pair, with the exception of the ksysguardd daemon, because it's identical in both 3 and 4) can be installed and run in parallel without manually hacking KDEHOME or your PATH or anything else. Just like any other 2 apps.
Amarok? Posted Feb 10, 2010 16:37 UTC (Wed) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link]
BTW, you mainly talked about the Amarok GUI being better, which ignores the
functionality behind the GUI. - If the features I need aren't there (and honestly at this point I don't know if they're there or not) then it doesn't matter if the GUI is better. - If the 1.4 GUI is good enough for me, then I probably don't care about the 2.2 GUI being better.
That's not to say that 1.4 is perfect (ID3v2 tags and UTF-8 support are my
Amarok? Posted Feb 10, 2010 21:14 UTC (Wed) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link]
So I just checked Amarok 2.2.2 (what this Kubuntu machine happens to have
right now). Nope. Still hate the GUI: the middle panel widget selector buttons are unreadable unless you expand the window a lot (especially if you've added more widgets), and the left panel is confusing and doesn't really help find what's available as easily as in 1.4.
Plus I'll have to re-enter and re-download all my podcasts, not to mention
Luckily I have 1.4 installed as part of the KDE3 installation I mentioned
#!/bin/sh
(If I remember right, running Amarok 1.4 under KDE4 like this may fail to
Amarok? Posted Feb 12, 2010 13:33 UTC (Fri) by dmaxwell (guest, #14010) [Link]
Actually FULL id3 tag support has been an issue with every version of Amarok though I was able to address it with 3rd party scripts with 1.4. My mp3s have lyrics and artwork embedded in the ID3 tags. As I said, with addons Amarok 1.4 can be made to do the right thing and pull that data from the tags first and network second. Amarok 2.2 insists on pulling low resolution and possibly incorrect artwork from the network and lyrics are hit and miss. The artwork and lyrics I've painstakingly provided right in the file are ignored and I have NOT found any scripts to replace the functionality scripts gave me in 1.4.
I'm aware there is some history there and the devs are afraid of Amarok being banned from artwork and lyric providers but Amarok should still support READING that info from tags even if writing it is a hot potato. I use other apps entirely to create and maintain my tags anyway.
Now I can't even stick with 1.4. The lyric script I was using with 1.4 depends on a python-kde3 binding that won't co-exist with KDE 4 on Kubuntu. I fully expect other such uses of KDE3 to get more and more untenable as times go on.
I gave Songbird a try and only had to add one (maintained) add-on to get the type of lyric support I want. This was a breath of fresh air! The app understands it should look for my lyrics and covers locally first THEN search the net for them. I'll continue watching the progress of Amarok 2.2 but the current support of full metadata is a dealbreaker.
Amarok? Posted Feb 11, 2010 14:44 UTC (Thu) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
>To be honest, I don't really understand why people are so convinced of Amarok 1.4.
Well, here are a few examples (lack of the first two is a complete deal-breaker for me):
Musicbrainz support
Without these things - or at least the first few - the only thing to recommend Amarok 2 over any other media player is the 'stop after selected track' option, which most players don't seem to have for some mystifying reason. Some of them at least have 'stop after *current*'.
The good news is, at least some of these features are planned, so Amarok 2 might be a good choice *at some point in the future*, but it isn't *right now*. OTOH, there is nothing about it that makes it better than 1.4 for my uses, and I've not heard any plans for new features that sound at all useful.
Amarok? Posted Feb 11, 2010 15:14 UTC (Thu) by sebas (subscriber, #51660) [Link]
I think it would be good if you gave the latest Amarok another spin. Looks like most of the things you are complaining about (the more specific ones, anyway) are fixed in recent releases.
Development of KDE apps and desktop, and Amarok specifically goes *very* fast, yesterday's opinion on some piece of software can be outdated today. Maybe that's where our differing opinions come from...
Amarok? Posted Feb 11, 2010 17:15 UTC (Thu) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
For the specific issues I'm subscribed to the relevant bugs, so that I can track the progress without having to try it every few weeks.
I may well want to use Amarok 2 when those few hurdles are passed, but at the moment it doesn't actually offer anything to me that 1.4 doesn't.
But I would like to point out that I wasn't complaining - you asked for reasons why somebody might prefer to stick with 1.4, so I gave the reasons that apply to me. Also, I forgot to include "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".
back in kde Posted Feb 12, 2010 18:44 UTC (Fri) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]
Don't blame kubuntu. Gentoo has just formally dropped KDE3 support afaict. I run gentoo/KDE ( -gnome in my use flags :-)
More and more stuff coming down the KDE4 pipe from upstream has broken KDE3 support, and the gentoo devs have just said "if we can keep it running we will, but if upstream broke it don't expect us to fix it".
Cheers,
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 9, 2010 22:35 UTC (Tue) by bcw (guest, #63458) [Link]
OK, Linux users a few suggestions:
- Stop naming revisions "Koala" and "Caikaku" instead of just 4.4.0?
- Stop using the buzzword "innovation" when "bizarre" is a better term?
- Stop making giant changes to Linux projects, breaking years of stable code?
- Start taking basic computer science courses like Software Engineering?
And what is the "bizarre" state of Amarok 2.2.0 right now?
What happened to the really good Amarok from KDE 3.5?
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 9, 2010 23:22 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
Wow. Thank god you came along. I simply had no idea.
Thanks!
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 10, 2010 0:32 UTC (Wed) by jc_adams (guest, #63461) [Link] > Wow. Thank god you came along. I simply had no idea. It might be tempting to dismiss the suggestions, but bcw does have a few valid points. Perhaps to not all Linux users, but certainly to KDE developers. To wit: >> - Stop making giant changes to Linux projects, breaking years of stable code? >> - Start taking basic computer science courses like Software Engineering? KDE did a bad thing by making several big changes in one hit for the 4 series. They should have taken a much more evolutionary approach, where one or perhaps two major components were changed per release. For example, first port to (at the time) new version of Qt. Once everybody is happy that it works, start with another change (e.g. Plasma et al). Doing everything in one hit is a recipe for disaster. While I am not a fan of Gnome's use of an antiquated language (i.e. C) and the consequently bizarre hacks to graft an object system into C (which slows down development considerably), at the very least they have gotten the evolutionary development approach right.
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 10, 2010 2:02 UTC (Wed) by clump (subscriber, #27801) [Link]
The OP was trolling. I also note that both of you are guests, and your accounts were created at roughly the same time. You, jc_adams (guest, #63461), and OP, bcw (guest, #63458).
Pretty lame.
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 10, 2010 2:38 UTC (Wed) by jc_adams (guest, #63461) [Link] > I also note that both of you are guests, and your accounts were created at roughly the same time Sorry, I'm not bcw. Just happen to share some of his/her views.
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 10, 2010 4:46 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
The KDE release drama has been done to death on this website. Nobody cares
anymore as all the lessons that are ever going to get learned have been learned.
Consider the dead horse beaten. Please.
There are cleverer things to troll on this website if your so inclined.
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 10, 2010 14:43 UTC (Wed) by dowdle (subscriber, #659) [Link]
I'll take the bait.
If you watch the intro video for KDE 4 back from Jan. 2008... they made it clear that the KDE 3 series had had a large number of bandaids applied to it... to a degree that it was no longer feasible to use it as a base for further development. The basic theory is that KDE 3's underlying design was quite old and had run its course and that they basically had to start over from scratch, using more modern design principles... put a lot of thought into the underlying infrastructure and libraries... and they spend a long time on that. They wanted a new base that would last at least another 10 years and that is what they have now with 4.x. Saying they lack software design / engineering skills is simply incorrect.
Like so many others, I've used KDE for a long, long time. I only mentioned the history of the 4.x series in my previous comment because 4.x was the subject... but I do recall compiling from source several the pre-1.0 releases and even writing a review of 1.0 shortly after it was released.
Did the KDE developers make any mistakes? Sure... mainly a few distros adopted 4.0.x before it was ready but that did lead to more rapid development and bug fixing that might not have been possible otherwise. And again, as others have mentioned that has been talked about to death.
It'll be interesting to see how GNOME handles the transition from their 2.x series to 3.x. I haven't been keeping up with the GNOME developments but from little hints I've seen, it seems a lot less organized than KDE's 4.x was with a lot less master planning involved.
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 12, 2010 5:48 UTC (Fri) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link]
"KDE did a bad thing by making several big changes in one hit for the 4 series."
How much longer are people going to whine about that? It's been over 2 years already!
"They should have taken a much more evolutionary approach"
Says who? The problem with KDE 4.0 was not that it was a large rewrite instead of evolutionary
Doing what you suggest isn't really all that smart, since it would result in un-used resources. So
"Doing everything in one hit is a recipe for disaster."
Not necessarily. BEsides, had they taken your approach, KDE4 wouldn't be as advanced as it
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 10, 2010 5:44 UTC (Wed) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link]
OMG, finally!
I am so glad they didn't waste any time with garbage like good IMAP support or HTML Mail, or super advanced stuff like odd/even printing, and instead concentrated on social networking. As long as I have my favorite Twitter feeds on my desktop, I am happy. It is like finally getting Windows 98 Active Desktop all over again - pure joy.
It is not like I use my desktop for actual work and need email or printing anyway.
I realize that I am getting this for free, so I can't complain, but I would gladly pay for a usable Debian-based KDE business desktop. It is not about money - such an option simply doesn't exist.
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 10, 2010 6:47 UTC (Wed) by aseigo (guest, #18394) [Link]
> good IMAP support
this is one of the areas the Akonadi team has poured a lot of effort into. with 4.4 behind them, they are now moving to make apps like Kontact / KMail take full advantage of that.
i'm already using Akonadi with Kontact now (as can you with 4.4) though the UI is still limited (as in: what we have had in KDE3) relative to what Akonadi can allow for.
> or HTML Mail,
i can compose (though choose not to :) and receive HTML mail just fine in Kontact. you can even turn it on as the default if you wish.
> odd/even printing
odd (excuse the pun), but i have odd/even printing in my print dialogs: it's right there in Options as "Page Set" which lets me select "All", "Odd Pages" or "Even Pages". i believe it relies on cupsd being available at runtime (no point in reinventing all the wheels).
> instead concentrated on social networking
this is painfully inaccurate.
first, a lot of people _do_ care to use their computers for social networking. so there's a good reason efforts have gone into that (not least of all because if we don't, web services will continue to clamp down into a blackhole of lock in frenzies). so let's not be selfish and expect no effort to be put into things that others than ourselves may care about.
but even then, only some of the effort that went into the 4.4 release was related to social networking or other things i can only assume you don't really care about :)
for instance, there's the kiosk support in Plasma Desktop as well as the new scripting support for deployment management in Plasma Desktop. both of those sets of features were implemented in direct consultation with and purely to meet the needs of corporate users and Linux distributions. those are pure "business desktop" features, both new in 4.4 (with the kiosk support closing remaining gaps there between plasma-desktop and kicker/kdesktop, and actually event extending what was possible).
then we have KAuth which is also very much a "business" feature in that it allows control via PolicyKit on Linux, a key feature for larger deployments as well as the more enterprise oriented Linux distributions. this too is new in 4.4.
there are several such examples in 4.4. just because some people in KDE work on features you don't see the need for does not rule out other people working on aspects of the software that you will/do care about.
and in the specific cases you brought up, it seems you have remarkably less to complain about that you originally thought you did.
> It is not like I use my desktop for actual work and need email or
since we've covered those topics, may i suggest that before you exhibit your command of sarcasm in public that you first ensure that the target of your sarcasm actually exists. otherwise it all gets a bit awkward. :)
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 10, 2010 7:37 UTC (Wed) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link]
About printing, I go by bug reports and blogs:
http://bugreports.qt.nokia.com/browse/QTBUG-2444 http://www.layt.net/john/blog/odysseus/the_good_the_bad_a...
The work done there is admirable, but it does not inspire any confidence in KDE's printing capabilities. Such a situation would have been acceptable in a pre-beta version, but certainly not in release 4.4.
About HTML mail, you are sadly but completely wrong. Try replying to an HTML mail in Kontakt. You will be bitterly disappointed. While I am not a fan of HTML mail myself, you should be aware that it is an absolute must in a business environment.
You can examine this longstanding bug:
About the social networking. I wouldn't care about it, if the features I need were present... Plus, social networking, but no functional e-mail client? I find it very improbable that KDE can currently be taken seriously in a business environment.
Again, since I am not paying for KDE I have no right to expect anything from them and I fully realize that. However it seems that they are moving in a direction incompatible with my needs and I suspect this applies to other 'serious users' too - people like me who would use KDE in their day-to-day jobs.
I am beginning to think that the upgrade to KDE 4 simply isn't worth it, because the longstanding problems haven't been addressed. If I am upgrading to a new desktop, it might as well be Gnome. I find Gnome annoyingly restrictive, inconvenient and awkward to use, but I have to think that Evolution is more business-friendly.
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 10, 2010 7:58 UTC (Wed) by bangert (subscriber, #28342) [Link]
you may or may not have valid points.
in the end, though, I fail to see how you can believe that your whining will get you anywhere.
time and again my sympathy will side with the developers.
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 10, 2010 11:44 UTC (Wed) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link] in the end, though, I fail to see how you can believe that your whining will get you anywhere. time and again my sympathy will side with the developers. It's this kind of attitude that led to the KDE project having the reputation it has today. Sure, nobody likes their efforts being criticised, but in virtually every bug report you have the essence of something that can be improved and the interest to see the project become better. This "submit a patch or shut up" attitude (sitting uncomfortably with the "people don't feel adequate enough to get involved - why is this?!?" soul-searching, one must note) just fuels the perception that the developers are a bunch of elitists who regard end-users as simply "not worthy" to voice anything other than unconditional praise for everything from the technology to the strategic direction of the project. It's like the recent blog post where one of the developers admits to running KDE 3 and not wanting to run KDE 4. Instead of wondering whether a lot of other people have similar complaints, it's all "you are wrong!!!" from various parties. We should expect "why aren't we reaching everybody?!?" soul-searching as a consequence, I suppose.
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 10, 2010 20:49 UTC (Wed) by gwright (guest, #63480) [Link]
I'm the (ex) KDE developer that wrote that blog post.
I would like to start off by saying that my comments in no way affect the
However, I feel it is my duty to clear up a few things. I think the KDE 4
Another thing that is certain is that KDE 4, with each release, has been
In any case; feel free to try out 4.4, file bug reports if you have any
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 10, 2010 19:29 UTC (Wed) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link]
I happen to thinks that my complaints are objective and perfectly valid. If they are never voiced, they have zero chance of being addressed.
Since this is an announcement of a new KDE release, it is an appropriate place to discuss what it means, how it is being accepted, etc. My reaction happens to be negative and bitter because I was a big KDE fan (and still am a heavy KDE user).
Out of curiosity, what more productive alternative course of action would you suggest?
Alas, it is not realistically within my capabilities as a developer to address these problems myself, nor I can afford to sponsor a team of others to work on them.
My only realistic option is to choose something that works better (Gnome, but just barely) and to explain why I am doing it, hoping that may be some day the KDE project will come to its senses and recover its former glory.
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 11, 2010 11:31 UTC (Thu) by modernjazz (subscriber, #4185) [Link]
Voicing your concerns is great, because if people don't know about them
they may not get fixed.
I would merely take more care in how you voice your concerns. These issues
An announcement of a new release, reflecting a great deal of work and
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 11, 2010 21:31 UTC (Thu) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link]
You are probably right that I could have been less sarcastic. In my defense earlier I did admit that I was bitter because I was disappointed - one only exhibits such emotions about something that they are already attached to. I also did say that I realized that KDE didn't owe me anything.
That said, I definitely disagree with your gift analogy. KDE (and Linux) are being positioned as serious and usable alternatives for professional desktop usage. I judge them with the same criteria that I apply to all my other professional tools (including Windows).
Gift or no gift, I am very picky because I need good tools. If I have to compromise severely because I am getting something for free, then it is not for me and I must find something better (for me). Really, no hard feelings. Except disappointment because KDE3.5 was close to ideal.
About hitting Bugzilla: the big report for HTML mail is from about 2004, IIRC... I really can't wait that long to have a usable desktop. I need a desktop at this very moment - after all I am typing this from a desktop, which I use for work.
Don't get me wrong: I love free software and all. In my (sadly, limited) free time I play with all kinds of software, test, report bugs, etc. But this is all for fun. I will be disappointed if that is where KDE4 fits, but that is what you seem to be saying.
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 12, 2010 10:25 UTC (Fri) by modernjazz (subscriber, #4185) [Link]
You can be picky about what _you use_, but it's not fair to be rude in
public. Just like the green sweater: it would be really obnoxious to tell her that you hate it, but no one says you have to wear it.
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 12, 2010 10:42 UTC (Fri) by modernjazz (subscriber, #4185) [Link] Don't get me wrong: I love free software and all. In my (sadly, limited) free time I play with all kinds of software, test, report bugs, etc. But this is all for fun. I will be disappointed if that is where KDE4 fits, but that is what you seem to be saying. Sorry, I should also have responded to this. I'm not saying KDE4 or any other free software is bad, I'm saying that you get to decide what you think for yourself. If it works for you, maybe even better than any other alternative, then great. If it doesn't work for you, then you should try to get over any sense of entitlement, that someone owes you something. They don't. They're doing this for free, so you are not entitled to anything. I'm sorry, but think about it from the perspective of a developer: how would you respond if someone demanded that you come over to their house and wash their dishes every evening for free? It's a ridiculous request, and you'd be well justified at being annoyed by it. You can try to raise money to fund development of a feature you want, code it yourself, or pay for a proprietary program that does a better job. "Freedom isn't always free" even if it sometimes works out that way. Another way to say it, "there is no them, there is only us." It's not they who should provide it, it is we (i.e., including you personally) who need to provide it.
Producers and consumers Posted Feb 12, 2010 14:44 UTC (Fri) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link] If it doesn't work for you, then you should try to get over any sense of entitlement, that someone owes you something. They don't. They're doing this for free, so you are not entitled to anything. Although people are getting something that they haven't made or contributed to themselves, I don't think it's fair to portray the relationship as a purely producer-consumer affair. When people complain, there is still a contribution being made, and for many people that contribution is the limit of their immediate technical ability. Of course, the developers can say that people shouldn't expect anything more than what they've been given, but by doing so they limit their own ambitions - frequently, one of those being the widespread use of the software - and miss out on useful suggestions for improvements. I'm sorry, but think about it from the perspective of a developer: how would you respond if someone demanded that you come over to their house and wash their dishes every evening for free? It's a ridiculous request, and you'd be well justified at being annoyed by it. This isn't an accurate analogy at all. When people get frustrated enough that the complaints become negative, it is often for a number of more complicated reasons than "those ungrateful users just want more". Someone may find that the software no longer works like it used to, and yet they've become dependent on that software and have no ability of their own to deal with regressions. Having users become dependent on a project or product is a positive thing for the developers - it validates their work - but such benefits also come with responsibilities. If no-one had anything to say about a project it would mean that either everyone is completely satisfied or that no-one uses the software. Given that most Free Software developers who aspire to have their work validated and appreciated do want users of their work, it should then become an issue of focusing on positive criticism - even if that means distilling negative criticism with any merit - and cultivating the resulting mutual help that such activities encourage, not pretending that the software is a work of art that must be appreciated as it is or by telling the person whose networking/application/camera/disk/keyboard no longer works that they must approach the artist on their knees to seek a remedy for their problems.
Producers and consumers Posted Feb 13, 2010 0:26 UTC (Sat) by modernjazz (subscriber, #4185) [Link]
Your points are excellent, but I think we agree with each other more than
may be apparent. I'm simply saying, when you do bring up the faults (and I do so myself), you should do so _politely_, with all due appreciation for the value of what you have been given. That's the entire substance to my point---complain, but complain nicely, without this tone of entitlement, because there isn't really any justification for it. The tussle over KDE4 would have been much diminished if people would have just kept that in mind.
This is no different from any other interaction in the workplace, and it's
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 12, 2010 12:12 UTC (Fri) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] I've run into various KDE folks who appear to want to keep their cake and eat it, too: They'd like KDE to be perceived as a professional-type, dependable desktop and complain because so much corporate funding goes to GNOME instead. On the other hand the standard argument if one points to things in KDE that don't quite work is »We're not getting paid for this, go fix it yourself if it is that important to you«. KDE 4 has progressed to a point where it is almost usable for daily work. However, some of the people I support are on platforms such as Debian Lenny or older Ubuntu, which come with KDE 3.5, and I see no way of upgrading them to the next version (which includes KDE 4) anytime soon because there are so many regressions in the user experience from KDE 3.5 to KDE 4 that they will not perceive this as an improvement. Much of this involves little things like KDE 3.5 making it possible to »print« a document to a Kmail PDF attachment, which KDE 4 doesn't do (yet -- as far as I can see). These are features that these users like and that contribute to them preferring Linux over Windows, and I would find it very difficult to explain to them that they are gone for no apparent reason and may or may not return some time in the future. (These people will be sublimely uninterested in hearing that there is, say, a great infrastructure called Akonadi that will perhaps at some point make the system nicer for them -- they find the system quite nice already, thank you very much, and would prefer it to stay that way.) I think trying to improve the infrastructure behind KDE is important, but it is also important not to regress as far as the day-to-day user experience is concerned. In that respect KDE 4.x is a dismal failure (IMHO). Frankly I'm almost sure that there are people in KDE who are already planning KDE 5, which will have a much cleaner and more powerful design than KDE 4 if only they could get everybody to move on :^)
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 12, 2010 20:15 UTC (Fri) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link]
Well said. I think that pretty much sums up my thoughts much better than I could have explained.
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 13, 2010 16:27 UTC (Sat) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]
Well, I think then you both have valid points. I think the reason why many
KDE contributors (myself included) get a bit touchy sometimes is because we KNOW these things - at least most of them. The reason these features don't (yet) exist is simply because nobody felt like writing them. We, as in those responding to these comments, including me, often lack motivation or knowledge (me is no programmer at all) to fix those issues - and being pointed to them simply becomes a bit frustrating at times...
Esp if ppl all complain about a different (often small) feature calling it
About the commercial stuff, we have plenty of companies working in and
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 13, 2010 23:33 UTC (Sat) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] It seems to me that the problem with KDE isn't really about code or whether it supports feature X that used to be in the previous version. This is really a matter of how the project views and organises itself. KDE can't both be a dependable piece of infrastructure that people can rely on and a nifty playground where every developer gets to work on whatever they fancy. You have to pick one of those. It is true that KDE is a big project, but Debian GNU/Linux (for example) is even bigger and they seem to have this particular problem pretty much nailed. Debian may be ridiculed at times for the long time the project takes between stable releases but at least nobody seems to disagree that version n+1 offers a definite improvement over version n. So maybe there is something to be said for not releasing half-baked code, or at least not doing so in the guise of a »stable release«. I've been following KDE (from the outside) for quite some time and it seems to me that one of the major problems the project has is that people who used to maintain crucial parts of the software tend to disappear. At the same time the code they leave behind is apparently often in such a dismal state that nobody is ready to step up and carry on maintaining it. Instead, the code is either carried along in the hope that eventually somebody will have mercy, or else someone else comes up with a new program altogether, which may or may not have a lot to do, feature-wise, with the old program. For example, at some point the KDE project seems to have decided that Konqueror makes a lousy file manager, so the remedy, rather than fixing Konqueror, was to come up from scratch with a completely new file manager (which doesn't happen to also work as a web browser). This sort-of undermines the earlier »Konqueror + kioslaves« school of thought but there you are. The developers are happy because they get to play with new stuff but the users need to adjust to the fact that the idea KDE sold to them earlier (namely that Konqueror is a great innovative program because it works as both a file manager and a web browser, among other things) suddenly seems to be no longer valid -- even though from an end user's point of view, Konqueror, as file managers go, wasn't really all that bad compared to much of the competition. Of course there is nothing wrong with exploring alternatives to existing approaches (this is how innovation works, after all). However, if you want to be a dependable piece of infrastructure rather than a nifty playground for developers, there is a lot wrong with presenting users with gratuitous changes to what used to be their world view, even if things become a lot better for the developers in the process. In other words, if, say, the person in charge of »kprinter« goes away, then if KDE wants to be a dependable piece of infrastructure the first priority ought to be to figure out how the project is going to continue providing »kprinter«, with all its existing features, to its end users (who, after all, may have become accustomed to being able to »print« stuff to PDF mail attachments). If this means that some other developer needs to be cajoled into keeping the program going then that is just too bad. Of course if KDE really wants to be a nifty playground for developers then it is the end users' own fault if they become too attached to one simple little feature that may go away between today and tomorrow with no notice given. After all, aren't there ten other great features on the horizon which will become available the day after tomorrow, for sure (provided that the developers in charge don't find something else more interesting to occupy themselves)? Sometimes it seems to me that the best thing the KDE project could do would be to stop writing code for three to six months and work on decent documentation instead. It would certainly do wonders for making the project more accessible and understandable for new developers whose only option would otherwise be to start studying reams of (probably mostly undocumented) C++ code. The canned answer to this, of course, is »This is free software; you want documentation, you write it yourself.« To which I say: If the existing developers don't care enough about the project to do it, who else do they expect to care? If the KDE project is serious about attracting and keeping new people, this would be a much more important and worthy goal than coming up with, say, a Great Unifying Infrastructure for Whatever which will be great but end up so convoluted that when its original developers inevitably leave it will have to be rewritten from scratch because nobody else can understand it.
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 10, 2010 10:37 UTC (Wed) by HelloWorld (subscriber, #56129) [Link]
Even if Evolution better suits your needs, how is that a reason not to use KDE? Nothing stops you from running Evolution on a KDE Desktop.
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 10, 2010 19:20 UTC (Wed) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link]
That's true. In fact I am forced to run Thunderbird currently as my e-mail client and it works. I only mentioned Evolution because it is considered the most business-oriented client.
The problem is, GTK apps are not well integrated in KDE. They don't use KWallet, they start the wrong browser when clicking on links, printing sucks, the file selection dialogs are different, the anti-aliasing and font settings are different, the look & feel is different, etc, etc. None of these are really critical, and many of them can be addressed by tweaking (that's what I have been forced to do), but overall the experience is not very good.
It would be perfect if KDE would sponsor a KDE port of Mozilla and especially Thunderbird to address the above-mentioned issues. Porting Thunderbird to KDE would address 70% of all complaints I have in one big swath.
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 11, 2010 4:01 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] they start the wrong browser when clicking on links,Huh? They should honor the .desktop file specification were you can easily configure a default browser that should work. See: $ cat .local/share/applications/defaults.list [Default Applications] text/html=google-chrome.desktopThis is just basic stuff here. If your using Gnome applications they should always honor that sort of thing. It's what is provided for basic desktop interopability. It's a easy way to assign mime types to be used by specific applications. That defaults.list file should be automatically generated when you use your desktop and change stuff from the default configuration. Not all GTK applications are Gnome ones, unfortunately. Some are kinda bizzaro in the way they make you manually choose those sorts of configs specifically for themselves to use... Liferea does that, I think. In that case just configure them to use "xdg-browser" and "xdg-open" as the executable and they should automatically use your defaults from then on forward.
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 13, 2010 16:29 UTC (Sat) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]
Well, it'd be great if thunderbird, firefox, OO.o and other desktop-
independent apps would integrate better with KDE. And if Gnome apps would work more on integration. But they don't and unless someone pays them to (cuz that's what it often boils down to with more corporate-run communities) they won't.
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 11, 2010 3:58 UTC (Thu) by nixternal (guest, #41048) [Link]
I ran Evolution on my KDE desktop at my last job due to them using Exchange
Server. Funny thing was those using GNOME complained, where I had no complaints at all. It didn't crash for me the way it did for those using GNOME, and it seemed exceptionally faster for me as well. I actually became a fan again of Evolution, only with Exchange of course, cuz nothing beats Mutt :)
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 10, 2010 17:37 UTC (Wed) by aseigo (guest, #18394) [Link]
> About printing, I go by bug reports and blogs:
I'm going by what I have right in front of me with a KDE SC 4.4 installation, which happens to give me odd/even page printing.
There are certainly things I'd like to see added to the printing dialogs and system, but we're past the point where it's not useful, which it pretty much was in early 4.x releases.
> Try replying to an HTML mail in Kontakt
Ah! You want formatting preserved when replying to emails! Yes, that's not implemented yes as far as I can see; viewing and composing HTML email is, however.
> About the social networking.
The misconception here is that if all work on social networking features stopped the features you want would be there. Or that if you belittle features you don't care about, work you do care about will happen. That isn't how it works, however. Different groups work on different topics and the skills and interests are not often transferable.
> I find it very improbable that KDE can currently be
It's kind of like how Microsoft isn't taken seriously because they have a great gaming platform. They even put all that effort into the XBox -console- which has no business purpose!
Of course, they have all those other people working on business solutions, some of which are great and many of which have holes, but are still useful to office workers and other professionals.
There's an analogy there somewhere. :)
> since I am not paying for KDE I have no right to expect anything
I don't think monetary incentive, particularly from end user to upstream developer, has much to do with it one way or the other. I also doubt your paying for proprietary solutions has much to do with getting your pet features included there either; it's a nice idea but in practice it doesn't happen that way very often at all.
What's really interesting in this is that the people who are responsible for Kontact, and therefore most likely to get to your HTML email wish, are paid to work on that software. Kontact and Akonadi are mostly paid-for projects with only a small contingent being volunteer based efforts.
> I am beginning to think that the upgrade to KDE 4 simply
The formatting-lost-on-reply-to-HTML-emails predates KDE 4, and the KDE PIM developers have been working almost exclusively on framework issues up to and through the 4.4 release cycle (read: haven't touched the UI bits much at all while that work is getting done and consuming their resources).
Of course, you are completely free to do what you want, that's the beauty of freedom and I would be the last to stand in the way of you switching to a desktop system you yourself describe as "annoyingly restrictive, inconvenient and awkward". Evolution, Thunderbird, or whatever else floats your boat works just fine in a KDE Workspace, just as KDE applications work just fine in a non-KDE workspace.
Dumping a workspace due to a groupware client is a bit like refusing to use gcc because you don't like emacs. To each their own, of course :)
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 10, 2010 20:01 UTC (Wed) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link]
> I'm going by what I have right in front of me with a KDE SC 4.4
> installation, which happens to give me odd/even page printing. > > There are certainly things I'd like to see added to the printing dialogs > and system, but we're past the point where it's not useful, which it > pretty much was in early 4.x releases.
I hope you are right. But I am reading the blog post mentioned earlier, from just a few months ago, and it talks about waiting for the next version of Qt, functionality and patches not making it into 4.4, ugly hacks, etc. This is all a normal part of the development process, but not in what is supposed to be a mature robust release, and not for something so essential as printing.
> Ah! You want formatting preserved when replying to emails! Yes, that's
Which is perfectly pointless, if you cannot even reply to your own e-mail :-) If there is an e-mail discussion and I reply to it just once from KMail, I ruin everybody else's formatting from there on.
Practically speaking, HTML mail has one big advantages over plain text - wrapping. But that's beside the point. Everybody else uses HTML mail for whatever silly reason, so without it I effectively don't have an e-mail client.
> The misconception here is that if all work on social networking features
I don't think that developing social networking takes resources away from more important things. However I do think it is an indication of a dangerous misdirection for the entire project. Since 4.0 we are being presented with supposedly mature releases which are missing fundamental, essential desktop functionality, and yet boast cosmetic features.
I personally find social networking extremely distracting and am confident that having it on your desktop all the time is a productivity killer, especially for people whose work requires concentration for extended periods of time.
So, from my point of view KDE no longer serves those people.
May be, as you say, they fixed printing somewhere between 4.0 and 4.4 - who knows? The problem is that I can't really trust them anymore because I am no longer their intended target. I used to be their target in the KDE 3.x series though, or at least it felt that way.
> It's kind of like how Microsoft isn't taken seriously because they have
No, I think you are missing my point. As it is, KDE is not usable in an business environment, sadly even its 3.x releases. No ifs or buts...
> Dumping a workspace due to a groupware client is a bit like refusing to
Email is probably 50% of all activity on a desktop. If it isn't well integrated with the rest, you lose productivity. I am forced to using Thunderbird, and while on its own it is an OK client, I am constantly annoyed and distracted by its lack of integration in KDE. Granted, it wouldn't be that much better integrated in Gnome, but Evolution sure is.
Although I am not 100% decided to switch yet (I do love my KDE, especially Konsole, Klipper, KPDF, Konqueror as a file browser), I do think that Email integration alone _is_ a good reason to switch.
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 10, 2010 10:07 UTC (Wed) by cloose (subscriber, #5066) [Link]
The problem is that business stuff like printing or HTML mail aren't very exciting for free-time contributors. So the are always some components in KDE that lack some love. For example the KDE printing expert who made KDE printing framework one of the best in the free software world, stepped down from maintainership and there was nobody who took over. So KDE only offers what Qt provides.
So as long as there isn't a company-backed developer who puts his work-time into this stuff, those components won't improve.
What I can't understand is, why big players like Novell, IBM, etc don't spend some money on these business needs. I'm sure it would make there offerings more interesting.
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 10, 2010 11:28 UTC (Wed) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] What I can't understand is, why big players like Novell, IBM, etc don't spend some money on these business needs. I'm sure it would make there offerings more interesting.Maybe it's simpler/cheaper to choose a desktop environment where the printing actually works?
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 10, 2010 14:24 UTC (Wed) by sebas (subscriber, #51660) [Link]
In fact, printing now has a great maintainer again, John Layt. He's been
adding the dearly missed odd/even pages back, the print preview is also back, there's many options for printer (most of which I myself don't use). Something I find handy is the printing of "overview pages", i.e. pages that show for example 6 or so pages on one printed sheet.
I personally don't have any problems with printing from KDE applications,
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 10, 2010 17:42 UTC (Wed) by aseigo (guest, #18394) [Link]
"The problem is that business stuff like printing or HTML mail aren't very exciting for free-time contributors."
If this is the reason, then explain to me why formatting-preserved-when-repying-to-HTML-email[1] isn't there when the KDE PIM project is overwhelming made up of paid-to-work-on-it developers. :) I don't think it's a monetary issue at all, and that if a free-time contributor stepped up it this particular features would actually get done faster.
It just so happens that in this case there are many more pressing things, as defined by "what paying customers want and are handing over money for", to be done by the developers getting paid to do so.
Then we get to printing, where the work is once again being done mostly by free-time contributors. Nokia has less interest in printing than other features which are important to them in the immediate term.
It's really not a volunteer / paid developer thing in these cases.
[1] viewing and creating HTML email is supported
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 11, 2010 4:19 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Printing is only important if you want people to use your software on their desktops. It is what is known as a "a absolutely critical, basic, and fundamental desktop feature that was solved by everybody* else 10-15 years ago". *meaning Apple** and Microsoft.** Apple even uses the same printing system that mostly _originated_ in Linux called 'CUPS'. KDE folks probably have been using it much longer then Apple ever has and yet Apple still does a much better job. Hell Apple completely gutted their printing system from 10.1 to 10.2 and still 10.2 was massively better at printing then anything I've seen on the Linux desktop so far. ------------ If KDE exists solely as a testbed for Nokia's QT ambitions on the mobile market then crappy printing support is something is perfectly acceptable. AND/OR: If KDE exists just as a programmer's and user's playground with very little importance placed on usability or meeting the needs of folks operating in the real world, then that is perfectly acceptable. HOWEVER: If the KDE folks maintain that KDE is meant to be used on people's desktops and have the hope of adoption by businesses then, no, crappy printing support is completely unacceptable. Now programmers and hackers don't have much use for printers, but the 4 printers behind my cubicle at work are going at pretty much 80% of the time through out the day. This is normal and is just about the status quo. This is not the worst thing in the world. I can understand printing sucking. It's a surprisingly difficult thing to get working and it's very unexciting and the sort of people that hack on KDE generally are not going to be the people that use printing as a core feature. But the response should be "Yeah. It sucks and I know it. Hopefully the KDE folks are working on fixing it!" rather then people trying to make excuses why the current status quo exists or even trying to justify it. Just pointing this out to reinforce the points made above by other people.
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 11, 2010 15:02 UTC (Thu) by dowdle (subscriber, #659) [Link]
I use a mixture of KDE and GNOME/GTK apps... and printing works fine for me in all apps I've used. I don't use even / odd printing because I'm lucky enough to have printers at work that offer double sided printing without having to print one side first, and putting the paper back into the printer to print out the other side.
You usually only care about that feature on medium to large documents (like documentation)... and the trick to that is to print to PDF and the using another program (like Adobe Acrobat or other desired non-KDE-based PDF reader) to do the even / odd printing for you. I think that work around should work.
Because one particular feature in printing is broken (for only some it seems) doesn't mean that printing is broken or sucks in KDE. It works for me, but then again, I don't do a lot of printing with KDE apps... using mostly OpenOffice.org (or SoftMaker Office) for documents and Acrobat for PDFs... and Zimbra (in Firefox) for email.
I have to wonder how many of these problems are distro specific? GNOME/GTK apps are fairly well integrated with KDE on Fedora. I'm told that OpenSUSE does an extremely good job on that front as well.
Ok, so I love KDE and have been using it for a long time but I don't use KDE apps for everything. Those that want to use KDE apps for every app category are simply expecting too much.. by demanding that KDE have the best app for every category and deeming the desktop unusable because it doesn't. I think the analogy to switching from gcc because you don't like emacs is a good one.
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 11, 2010 21:42 UTC (Thu) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link]
> Because one particular feature in printing is broken (for only some it
> seems) doesn't mean that printing is broken or sucks in KDE. It works > for me, but then again, I don't do a lot of printing with KDE apps... > using mostly OpenOffice.org (or SoftMaker Office) for documents and > Acrobat for PDFs... and Zimbra (in Firefox) for email.
Actually I am sure that, possibly with some effort, I could print everything I need from within KDE4. The point is that printing is such a fundamental and old capability, that having it anything less than perfect in a stable desktop release is indicative (to me) of less than ideal project priorities. Same goes for e-mail.
Practically speaking, I think it is very sad and disappointing in this day and age to have to spend more effort in printing and e-mail in Linux compared to Windows. (Of course this is ignoring lack of support for some printers, but that is really not KDE's problem).
> Those that want to use KDE apps for every app
Email is not just "any app". Excellent email integration is an essential desktop feature. With calendaring, address book, integrated desktop search, even drag and drop, etc.
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 12, 2010 11:56 UTC (Fri) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] The point is that printing is such a fundamental and old capability, that having it anything less than perfect in a stable desktop release is indicative (to me) of less than ideal project priorities. In particular because KDE 3.5 was so much more capable in that area than KDE 4 is (KDE 4.3, anyway). I'd really like kprinter back if you don't mind, please!
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 10, 2010 15:15 UTC (Wed) by modernjazz (subscriber, #4185) [Link]
Let's all take a deep breath and remember how long it took for the Linux
kernel to properly support suspend/resume, or hotplugging devices, etc. Yet the kernel was not subject to the same "Linux suxx" criticism from actual Linux users. (Windows users, sure :-) ).
It takes 20 years to grow a baby into someone you'd trust your work to.
I'm excited to be the first here, it seems, to comment on how much I'm
(I am not a KDE developer, just a mostly-happy user. Especially when there
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 10, 2010 17:47 UTC (Wed) by aseigo (guest, #18394) [Link]
"And to think of the administrative work involved in simply _dealing_ with that number of bug reports, even if most were simply duplicates."
There are some true heroes out there, indeed. plasma-desktop gets an insane number of reports, mostly because it's one app most users of KDE software use (most other apps tend to be used by subsets of KDE users) and due to plasma-desktop using (and therefore providing use-coverage) of a huge % of KDE's and Qt's libraries. If there's a bug in Qt or KDE Libs, it's often reported against plasma-desktop, many times before it's reported anywhere else and often repeatedly ;)
Keeping up with this is a huge task, and we have some awesome bug triagers that help us do this. Two in particular are Dario Andres and Beat Wolf (we also have some of the contributors with the coolest names ;) who tirelessly keep the reports under control and do a great job of ensuring they are properly categorized, aggregated and where needed researched further.
We would not have nearly the bug destroying power without people like Dario and Beat. Hats off! :)
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 10, 2010 20:26 UTC (Wed) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link]
Don't think that I am unappreciative of the developers' hard work. The problem is, KDE3 was already close to perfect. All they had to do is complete a usable Email client, and KDE3 would have been a 100% complete, fully usable business/developer/home desktop.
It may have had some kinks, may feel outdated here and there (not really in my opinion, but to each his own), but it would have been consistently finished and usable for many years to come. I am sure that would have increased KDE's usage overall.
That would have given them time to work on KDE4 and basically do whatever they want.
What happened instead? After years and years, we have KDE4 which is still catching up to KDE3 in terms of stability and features, with misleading versioning, and the biggest problem (Email) hasn't been addressed at all. Instead we have all kinds of new functionality (plasmoids, social networking, whatever), which although nice, isn't at all crucial for _using your desktop_.
Your comparison with the Linux kernel really does not apply. The kernel never ever broke backwards binary compatibility for user level. What has made it so incredibly successful is exactly the incremental improvement. From a user viewpoint upgrading to a newer version never removed any working functionality. Upgrading to KDE4 definitely did remove stuff.
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 11, 2010 11:53 UTC (Thu) by modernjazz (subscriber, #4185) [Link]
But you can still use KDE 3.5 to this day. Wait until the dust settles in
KDE4, then switch. I tried KDE4 in the 4.1 days and felt it wasn't ready yet, but I like 4.3 quite well (still has rough edges) and am very much looking forward to trying 4.4. For your concerns I bet 4.6 will be quite dandy.
If you don't like the kernel analogy (I personally have experienced
The value of the analogy: X.org's development tends to be greeted with
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 11, 2010 13:51 UTC (Thu) by HelloWorld (subscriber, #56129) [Link] But you can still use KDE 3.5 to this day. Well, not really. Most Distros don't ship it any longer, and compiling KDE themselves is really not an option for most people.
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 11, 2010 20:59 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
so shouldn't you be complaining to Debian instead of to KDE?
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 12, 2010 10:47 UTC (Fri) by modernjazz (subscriber, #4185) [Link]
See the comments above regarding the Karmic remix.
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 12, 2010 17:39 UTC (Fri) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]
Kubuntu 8.04 still uses KDE 3.5.10, and it's a supported stable release until April 2011 (3 years from release for desktop). So anyone who wants to stay on KDE 3.5 a bit longer can just use that. There are probably other distros with more recent packages that still use KDE 3.5.
I agree about compiling KDE 3.5 - I actually did this to fix a Kopete bug, and it took many days of reading and re-running kdebuild before I got it built. Significantly harder than building the Linux kernel, mostly because kdebuild is aimed at current KDE developers rather than KDE users who know how to compile most packages.
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 12, 2010 18:47 UTC (Fri) by kragil (guest, #34373) [Link]
Wrong.
Kubuntu 8.04 had two versions none of them was LTS.
The one with KDE3 had support for 18 months and the one with KDE4 had
Only Ubuntu (as in Gnome) has desktop support until 2011.
If you want KDE3 with good support older enterprise distros and Debian are
Kubuntu 8.04 LTS? Posted Feb 15, 2010 11:51 UTC (Mon) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
I think I fell foul of this recently: I filed a bug and was told that it wasn't going to be fixed because 8.04 was no longer supported. "Huh," I wrote, or words to that effect, "the Wiki says that 8.04 is a long-term support release." I mean, why else would I be running it, especially when its successors have pushed KDE 4.x to the front?
I guess that if Kubuntu is excluded from this then that would explain matters somewhat, although I still get regular updates, so maybe it's a LTS/2 release or something, but I'm seriously considering switching to Debian when I next have time to upgrade.
Developing fixes Posted Feb 16, 2010 15:58 UTC (Tue) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
The point about fixing things in KDE has been made before, particularly with regard to the traditionally monolithic nature of KDE, although I think the response was that it isn't that hard to build stuff, and that the applications weren't really tied together in their bundles and could be built separately.
Still, even the most trivial changes are nothing like a one line Python-style hotfix - something which the less programming-oriented users could possibly attempt by themselves - but I get the impression that the developers regard anything other than C++ as mere playthings to distract such users away from the "grown-up activities".
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 11, 2010 23:55 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
KDE 3.5 is starting to become very sucky, actually. As of a couple of days
ago, even LWN no longer renders properly in Konqueror 3.5.10.
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 13, 2010 16:37 UTC (Sat) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]
FYI: the number of over 7000 resolved bugs is actually about RESOLVED
bugs. There have been over 21.000 bugs been CLOSED (and more than 20.000 bugs been reported).
Bugs closed as 'fixed', 'resolved' etc count under the 7000, bugs closed
You can build queries on bugs.kde.org yourself if you want to know more
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 11, 2010 20:24 UTC (Thu) by callegar (guest, #16148) [Link] Funny! The code is based on QT developed by Nokia and they seem to show no interest at all at letting you browse the content of your handy phone, download photos from it, etc. Being the fourth major release without kio support for bluetooth and obex I am starting to wonder... Is it so old fashion to still use a handy phone rather than a social desktop? :-)
Regressions Posted Feb 12, 2010 15:39 UTC (Fri) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
I noticed when I upgraded to Kubuntu 8.04 that fairly comprehensive Bluetooth support in KDE 3.5 had actually arrived. Sadly, I discovered that my existing tools for reading and deleting messages from my phone would no longer work: they would seemingly be prevented from making a Bluetooth socket connection. I'm not sure whether something in KDE now thinks it "owns" Bluetooth or whether the Ubuntu people changed some low-level aspect of device handling - USB hot-plugging seemed to be a bit slower in 8.04 than in previous releases - but this is one of those regressions that I imagine one is supposed to fix oneself or be silent about, despite having a long-standing solution which is rendered unusable by such a regression.
This is one of those matters which makes people frustrated when they encounter and report bugs. One minute, everything works; the next, nothing works and one has to take a bug-fixing tour through the entire software stack.
Regressions Posted Feb 12, 2010 18:54 UTC (Fri) by kragil (guest, #34373) [Link]
Kubtuntu 8.04 shipped with broken Bluetooth, because there were some "last
minute" changes in Ubuntu and the very tiny Kubuntu team couldn't fix Kubuntu in time. Not sure if that was ever fixed .. I think not.
Canonical cares a lot more about Ubuntu than about Kubuntu .. that is not
Regressions Posted Feb 15, 2010 12:00 UTC (Mon) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link] Canonical cares a lot more about Ubuntu than about Kubuntu .. that is not really a secret, is it? A casual observer wouldn't necessarily believe that assertion, though. Upon trying Ubuntu 8.04 recently, the task of setting up wireless networking was a level of frustration beyond anything seen before:
Oh, I know this is being so ungrateful, what with this software being provided to me with no money changing hands, and it is generally very good software too, but the effort that us end-users put in to shake the bugs out isn't without cost, either. That's frequently something that the developers forget.
Regressions Posted Feb 15, 2010 12:06 UTC (Mon) by johill (subscriber, #25196) [Link]
But whether that is too costly for you or not surely can be your own decision?
Regressions Posted Feb 15, 2010 13:33 UTC (Mon) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
I've actually been willing to sink time into finding out what is causing various bugs, at least if I stand a chance of navigating the various subsystems involved. Unlike proprietary platforms, GNU/Linux distributions provide plenty of tools to help figure out what is really going on, rather than everything happening in some kind of mystery, "don't break the seal" black box.
So it's a cost that I'm willing to incur up to a point, especially if the alternative is the use of a proprietary platform that will eventually need troubleshooting. But frequently, people like me stop short of providing a fix for various issues because we simply aren't tooled up to write one. Even in projects for which I can write patches - take CPython, for example - there's often a significant threshold that must be reached before the fix can be accepted, so the probability of crafting a fix for some random project is a lot more remote.
Where it's not feasible to actually fix things and provide those fixes for ready inclusion into the upstream project, all we can do is to say what we found out and hope that someone else can work with what we've told them. This is frequently done because such work is actually considered time well spent: it's an investment in the project. It's when such an investment is written off ("upgrade: the problem is probably gone") that people become disillusioned.
Regressions Posted Feb 15, 2010 21:24 UTC (Mon) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
is this a ubuntu/kubuntu problem or is this a network manager problem?
problems like this is why I uninstalled network manager and on my known networks just configure things manually, and when traveling fire up wicd to get connected.
Regressions Posted Feb 16, 2010 12:53 UTC (Tue) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]
It's either an Ubuntu problem or a GNOME problem, I guess. Occasionally I wonder whether the corporate backing of these projects couldn't be brought to bear in actually testing some of these things - that is, paying for a bunch of equipment to be sitting around configured in different ways.
Although users can in theory be asked to exercise various configurations, one has the impression that some of the testing could have been performed by the developers in order to avoid, well, regressions. And to follow on from my remarks on the demands placed on the end-user, noted somewhere else in this discussion, if us end-users were to give our utmost to each and every project whose software broke in some way, we'd be spread very thin indeed.
If one's free time quickly becomes swamped managing a bunch of tracker items, at what point did one become an unpaid member of staff in some distribution vendor? Because that's what it probably feels like after a while.
KDE 4.4.0 Released Posted Feb 13, 2010 16:39 UTC (Sat) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]
Sorry for the getting-old response - nobody apparently was interested in
such a feature. Ok, that's not entirely true as there has been work on infrastructural bits for bluetooth support which might show up in future releases. But for now, yes, clearly more developers were interested in social features. It'd be cool if you could find someone with the skills to fix this issue and do something about bluetooth...
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