LWN.net Logo

Shuttleworth: Not convinced by rolling releases

Shuttleworth: Not convinced by rolling releases

Posted Mar 11, 2013 15:48 UTC (Mon) by nye (guest, #51576)
In reply to: Shuttleworth: Not convinced by rolling releases by pboddie
Parent article: Shuttleworth: Not convinced by rolling releases

It was definitely in all of the 3.5 releases that I recall, but it was not in the first couple of KDE 4 releases (and then there was at least one release in which it was there, but didn't actually work).

I know this because I found it incredibly frustrating to use the system without it.

I'm constantly saddened by drives to remove all the features that differentiate Linux from Windows for me, in the name of the mythical 'new users'. This has already reached the point where I don't bother to use Linux on my home desktop any more; at some point I'll probably end up having to give up on it at work as well :(.


(Log in to post comments)

Shuttleworth: Not convinced by rolling releases

Posted Mar 11, 2013 15:58 UTC (Mon) by BlueLightning (subscriber, #38978) [Link]

That's not why features got "removed" in KDE 4. Features unfortunately disappeared because a lot of the workspace code was rewritten from scratch; as time went on they were added back in. For the most part KDE 4 has surpassed the feature set of 3.x by now, so assuming you are a KDE user why give up now?

Shuttleworth: Not convinced by rolling releases

Posted Mar 11, 2013 16:05 UTC (Mon) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]

Binding scrollwheel motions on the root window to "switch desktop" is an excellent feature which (a) is well worth including in a way that makes it easy to enable (b) is no longer a sane default, regardless of whether it was a sane default when it was first added.

Shuttleworth: Not convinced by rolling releases

Posted Mar 11, 2013 19:08 UTC (Mon) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link]

Well, I just looked again and I can't find how to switch this feature on or off in KDE 3.5, so unless someone can actually point me to the dialogue in question, I'll take my own experiences with my current desktop over people's recollections.

As for whether it's a useful feature, I'm sure people do like it, but I've always been happy with the Ctrl-F<n> shortcuts and don't use the equivalent workspace-cycling shortcuts that are equivalent to the scrollwheel actions.

I also take exception to the "only new users would hate this" insinuation. First of all, new users might like it if it didn't impact them because of the mousepad scrolling region functionality, which is another area that you either love or hate regardless of whether you are new to computers or not. It is almost like pressing the wrong part of the space bar and experiencing the same effect as holding down Alt-Tab.

But I can see the point of it: you might want to navigate by depth which either means navigating the window stack or navigating workspaces, and the mousewheel provides that extra dimension of navigation. What is quite clear, however, is that no-one thought that this potentially useful function would "leak out" and damage usability elsewhere. We get lectured all the time about how the smart usability people know much more than us, but either the people exposed to the feature with a mousepad during testing were comfortable with it already (and probably using a mousepad they were already familiar with) or it didn't get usability tested in that environment at all.

My regret is that we're still having to deal with such annoyances when we could have moved far beyond them instead by now.

Copyright © 2013, Eklektix, Inc.
Comments and public postings are copyrighted by their creators.
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds