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KDE 4.4.0 ReleasedKDE 4.4.0 ReleasedPosted Feb 10, 2010 20:26 UTC (Wed) by mikov (subscriber, #33179)In reply to: KDE 4.4.0 Released by modernjazz Parent article: KDE 4.4.0 Released
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It may have had some kinks, may feel outdated here and there (not really in my opinion, but to each his own), but it would have been consistently finished and usable for many years to come.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.
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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.
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