re: Kubuntu - KDE3 dropped

Well, so is KDE3. I mean, they just released a new version of KDE3. KDE4
has now existed for... what, 10 months? And people are already calling it
"never-ending story"? Linux has existed about 16 years, and it isn't
finished yet either. And what about Emacs?

I remember running KDE2 when it was released. It was crashy and many things
didn't work right. KDE3 was a smoother release, since the amount of changes
weren't as big as it was between KDE1 and KDE2, but it too was crashy and
had parts that didn't work right.

Now we have KDE4, which is still (for all intents and purposes) fresh out
the oven. And it works well. Maybe not perfect, but well. Is it 1:1 equal
to KDE3? Of course not. But that does not mean that it's worse. It means
that it's different. Some things are still lacking, and some other things
are clearly superior, when compared to KDE3.

People are now comparing KDE4, with boatload of new ideas, technologies,
apps and code, all wrapped up in a 10 month old release, to KDE3.5, which
is result of _years_ of developement.

It kinda reminds me of GNOME2-release. The whining was deafening back then.
But the GNOME-team went ahead and created something great. And now it's
been a whopping 10 months, and people are already acting like KDE has been
utterly ruined or something like that. 4.1 was a huge step forward, and
looking at 4.2, I can see that it's equally huge step forward, if not even
bigger.

You might have something to worry about if the project was standing still
or if user-requests were being ignored. But the way it seems to me, the
team is busy adding all the missing features, polishing the system and
killing bugs. The speed of development is so fast that it's insane.

Just relax you all. It will be insanely great :).

You can always keep using 8.04 which has 3.5.10 now.

Or just switch to Debian Lenny.

Kubuntu had to move on at some point and a most people think that time has definately come.

Sure it is. I'm running it on my laptop, and I can't really see any major
issues. I think the complaint about KDE4 not being "ready" is about KDE4
not being identical to KDE3. Well, it will never be.

It's like the complaints about GNOME2 vs. the "old GNOME". Or OS X vs. Mac
OS9. The change was substantial, and people complained. But in the end, the
result was a system that was clearly superior than the old.

KDE4 is now 10 months old. 10 months. Give it time. It's growing fast :).

I love the speed and efficiency of KDE4. Even with a lot of effects turned on, it's fast and stable. Especially impressive since my nVidia card has only 128 megs.

Some of the new look & feel doesn't do much for me, but doesn't get in the way either. It's just DIFFERENT. I've been years on ubuntu with the KDE(3) package installed on top. Of COURSE it's different.

I have 2 problems that I would love help with, though.

1) Syncronizing my Palm. Kpilot and KDEpim used to work so flawlessly together. It was better than the software from Palm, Handspring, and LOADS better than anything that forces you to sync with Outlook.

Since loading a clean install of kubuntu w/ kde4, I've tried opensync, kitchensync, multisync, kpilot and even Palm's Hotsync running through wine. Kpilot and multisync both crash. Kitchensync will mostly sync calendar and contacts, but refuses to install files.

PIM is a must-have for me.

Does anyone know a way to get Kpilot working in KDE4 with the KDEpim suite?

2) Scanning requires root priveleges. This problem occurred in the last few udev updates even before KDE4. It's not mission critical, but I'd love to not have to sudo every time I scan, and have to chown and chgrp all the images before I can use them as non-root.

Any help will be appreciated a lot.

ski_phreak