LWN: Comments on "KDE 4, distributors, and bleeding-edge software"

capricious changes...

cjcoats — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 19:52:51 +0000

Disclaimer: Like Linus, I'm a developer -- of environmental modeling applications, which means high performance computing in a mix of Fortran and C. I've a quarter of a million lines of code out there in operational use -- half of it Open Source. It also means I don't have enough spare time to re-invent the entire universe.

One of the thing I've come to expect with X window managers is some degree of menu-configurability for mouse clicks in the root window -- and I've been at it since at least OLWM on SPARC2s in the early Nineties. For the sort of work I do, it is . It's absence is an absolute show-stopper.

One good thing about KDE3 has been the best such configurability I've ever run into: you do

KControl > Desktop > Beahvior > Mouse Button Actions

and set it up any way you want.

And in at least Mandriva's KDE4.1.3, mouse button menus are completely broken. From what I hear, it may be gone forever. I had no conception that such universal functionality would be abandoned, and evidently (from the attitudes I see displayed here) my input would have been completely ignored if I knew it would be needed. Such arrogance is not encouraging.

fwiw

KDE 4 is a huge step back in design!

astrophoenix — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 19:16:36 +0000

there are capricious changes to make things worse in kde4 than before.

my two favorite examples: akregator and kmail. akregator used to display a list of feed names,
followed by a number in parens to show how many unread messages there were. now akregator has
a multi-column display: feed name, num messages, num unread. it's now much more difficult to
scan through the list to see what has unread messages.

kmail used to have a nice set of columns to show messages, with columns for things like subject,
from, date, etc. you could click on a column to sort by it. Now kmail show messages in horrid
multi-line format. it's much more difficult to scan through a list of messages by eye.

so to summarize, akregator gained columns where they weren't needed, and kmail lost columns
where they are needed!

and the kde devs wonder why people want to try something else??

KDE 4, distributors, and bleeding-edge software

pyellman — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 02:17:43 +0000

I think the "fundamental social contract" is about communication, not numbering systems, which, despite your assertion, are obviously still a point of significant disagreement and divergence. I thought the KDE team communicated the meaning and intent of the 4.0 release quite clearly. I might cut some slack to a novice user who was surprised when 4.0 was dumped on him/her, but it's just plain weird to hear those kind of comments from LWN readers, whom I expect to be better informed.

It's impossible to escape the conclusion that there was a cadre of people out there -- not novice users at all, but really, power/expert users -- who, despite knowing full well how the KDE team had characterized the 4.0 release, insisted as a matter of highlighting a "higher" principle (the ".0" principle) on installing it and treating it as what they insist a .0 release should be, and then using any negatives from that experience as ammunition and fodder to attack the KDE team -- all to grind into the face of the KDE team (and the rest of us) -- the consequences of messing with their beloved ".0" definition.

Peter Yellman

KDE 4, distributors, and bleeding-edge software

pyellman — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 02:03:00 +0000

Huh. I don't consider myself to be tightly in any loop, but I got the message pretty loud and clear. I kept myself reasonably abreast of opinions and developments by reading occasional early reviews and feedback. I also tested the final beta, 4.0, and 4.1 using live CDs. All in all, not that much more investment of my time than I would spend tracking and testing a favorite piece of software like Amarok. I've tentatively decided that I might be ready to make the jump to KDE 4.2 -- of course, after I find the time to pop a live CD into a spare computer and take it for a test drive. As such, I don't expected to be surprised, disappointed, or fooled.

If the distribution I mainly use (Debian Testing, and still on KDE 3.5.x) had parachuted 4.0 on me without the option of staying with 3.5 for a while, yes, I would have been upset -- but not at the KDE team.

Peter Yellman

KDE 4, distributors, and bleeding-edge software

xorbe — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 17:30:54 +0000

If they needed beta testers to find bugs in KDE 4.0.0 then something is very, very wrong in the KDE QC department.

Linus is using the wrong distro

oblio — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 10:09:31 +0000

By your own admission, if I'm a PHP developer writing websites, I should be running Linux-2.6.34-pre-alpha to debug it? Maybe I want to write a kernel module in my spare time, too?

Not all developers are born/bred/interested/working alike.

Of course, in this case things are reversed, you have a hardcore hacker trying a new DE. But just because he can write an operating system kernel, it doesn't mean he's interested in contributing to a DE...

KDE 4, distributors, and bleeding-edge software

yokem_55 — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 00:32:35 +0000

Gentoo gets this right fairly well. You can co-install different versions of kde, and there are live ebuilds that download, compile and install packages from svn that are just as integrated as the standard releases. I've followed the development of kde from about October of 2007 on with this method without a whole lot of pain.

Perhaps

malor — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 20:48:14 +0000

No, you weren't being too subtle. Your insult was obvious.

Perhaps

cry_regarder — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 19:49:32 +0000

I think I was too subtle.

1. The prev poster was implying that free software will get some sort of reputation because of things like KDE4. As if non-free software doesn't already have that reputation.

2. When I did customer support back in late 80s, the corporate policy was that if a customer for our product called too often and was belligerent to very carefully and politely introduce him to the competitor's product. Sometimes even with phone numbers for their sales department. The reasoning was that a troublesome customer is going to be troublesome for everybody...so he might as well be troublesome for your competition.

Cry

KDE 4, distributors, and bleeding-edge software

hppnq — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 12:18:58 +0000

In the desktop world there are 11 kinds of people.

There are those who think that having multiple desktop environment projects is counterproductive: a waste of valuable developer resources, and therefore a suboptimal user experience.

There are those who think that having multiple desktop environments means healthy competition between groups of developers competing for (one or two of) speed, features and stability, and therefore, ultimately, a better user experience.

And there are those who think that grandma should partake in the peeing contest.

KDE 4, distributors, and bleeding-edge software

mgb — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 07:41:32 +0000

You fooled me once (KDE 4.0). And shame on me, you fooled me twice (KDE 4.1). Don't expect me to try KDE 4.2.

I too wasted inordinate amounts of time on KDE 4.x. Our laptops and desktops now run Debian Lenny which comes with KDE 3.5.10 - undoubtedly the best KDE release to date and supported by Debian for some years hence.

Kudos for all the experimental work that the KDE team is doing in 4.x. If they keep the good and throw out the bad then there is reason to hope that the KDE 4.x series will eventually surpass KDE 3.5.10.

But as a useful working environment, rather than as an interesting programming exercise, KDE 4.x still has a lot of catching up to do.

KDE 4, distributors, and bleeding-edge software

mrshiny — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 05:08:17 +0000

KDE4.2 is a damn fine desktop environment offering functionality that isn't available _anywhere_ else, in an attractive, stable and very usable package. I merely tell you this because the sentence quoted above seems to indicate you haven't tried it for yourself yet; otherwise you'd have known already, of course, and wouldn't have felt the need to play cassandra.

You'll have to excuse me. My KDE 4.1 environment is so close to being totally unusuable that I didn't feel the need to rush out and download 4.2 on release day just to see if they finally fixed the problems they shouldn't have introduced in the first place. Call me cynical, or too pragmatic, or whatever, but I feel let down by the 4.0 and 4.1 releases: even after all this time the 4.1 release is still quite unpolished and is, in many ways, a severe regression from 3.x. Don't get me wrong: there are lots of good ideas and intentions in 4.x. But users expect more and in fact need more than what 4.1 delivered. You say 4.2 is awesome. I hope it is; I know the KDE team can deliver awesome. But after being burned I will wait until the updates come from my distro, because I already waste too much time administering my computer instead of getting stuff done with it. And if 4.2 doesn't deliver, I for one will switch, because I won't be able to take it anymore.

KDE 4, distributors, and bleeding-edge software

malor — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 22:36:31 +0000

As soon as you start valuing 'the project' above 'the users of the project', then your development process has gone off the rails.

but didn't want to let all of KDE wait and suffer because it wasn't finished yet.

KDE is code. It can't suffer. Only your user community can experience pain. You inflicted a great deal of it on them, to benefit some abstract code. From other comments here, it sounds like your users got shut out of bugfixes and maintenance on 3.5 while you guys focused on 4.0. (I switched away when 4.0 shipped, so I haven't been watching that at all.) If that's true, you not only didn't provide a replacement, but also stopped improving the old stuff as well. Your focus shifted so completely to the project that you abandoned the actual users OF the project -- presumably, the original reason you started developing KDE at all.

So we did hurt a portion of that 1% to be able to get to the point where we could aim for the other 99%.

That is true, but it strikes me as shortsighted. You're punishing the people who trusted you, to go after the people who haven't. Your existing user base is your best advertising tool; their evangelism matters. When you screw them, you get people pissed off -- some of whom are annoyed enough to post screeds to LWN.

And if you're willing to screw that 1%, and it works, will you be willing to screw your 5% six or seven years from now? Why would people adopt your desktop when you're focused on your project, and don't care about their benefit?

I think you might want to collectively ask yourselves, "Why are we doing this project at all?" If that answer, and your ultimate focus, isn't on making the lives of your users better, every day, then you're probably in the wrong area for development. Users and developers would be well-served by avoiding dependency on your desktop and libraries.

You're going up against an entrenched monolith, whose user-abusing mistakes are legion. But they can get away with it, because they're a monopoly. It's those user abuses that, in many ways, prompted the entire Free Software movement. But you're not a monopoly. If you abuse users for the benefit of your project, you ultimately harm it more than you help it. You and GNOME both are tiny players, goldfish among sharks. If you're not obsessively focused on user benefit, then the other teams who ARE will take them away from you.

I'm sure you want your project to move faster, but no matter how good your program is, people won't take it up based on technical merit alone. Just look at Sony's decisions with Beta -- chasing off users they didn't like, porn-mongers, ended up being a huge blow to the format, eventually driving it off the market. If you continue doing this sort of thing, you'll end up with the best desktop that nobody uses.

Growth rates are always off how many users you have already. If you double your annual growth rate from 12.5% to 25% by abusive development practices, but cut your community in half in so doing, it'll take three years just to get back to where you started, and it'll take seven years to get back to parity with where your project would have been at the 12.5% growth rate.

The real numbers won't be that large, but carefully, carefully consider anything that makes a user switch away. Each and every one is a seed that can grow into more users -- and, if you get lucky, more developers.

Failing to water seeds you already have because you want to hike to what looks a bigger field on yonder mesa is a good way to starve.

KDE 4, distributors, and bleeding-edge software

GregMartyn — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 19:27:53 +0000

I can't help but notice that you were unable to address the package manager issues raised by my post.

Compiling software from source (kdesvn-build) is not easy. This happens to be the route I chose through the KDE4 release cycle, and can confidently say that it is not something most end users would do.

Running beta software in a VM (kde4daily) is not convenient. Do you copy all the files you want to work on to the VM? Do you set up a shared directory? Ugh. It also doesn't help spot problems like what we saw with KDE4 and the Nvidia binary driver.

Finally, binary snapshot packages have the problems detailed in my previous post.

KDE 4, distributors, and bleeding-edge software

halla — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 18:32:15 +0000

"If KDE 4.2 doesn't resolve the problems KDE4 has I suspect KDE will lose a
lot of market share."

You know? KDE4.2 is a damn fine desktop environment offering functionality
that isn't available _anywhere_ else, in an attractive, stable and very
usable package. I merely tell you this because the sentence quoted above
seems to indicate you haven't tried it for yourself yet; otherwise you'd
have known already, of course, and wouldn't have felt the need to play
cassandra.

In any case, in my KDE4.2 environment I can run all the KDE3 applications
that I need, and I never had a problem running the KDE4 application under
KDE3 either. Nor running a pure KDE4 or a pure KDE3 environment on the same
laptop.

KDE 4, distributors, and bleeding-edge software

halla — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 18:25:45 +0000

But it is not hard at all to try out betas. There have been KDE4 vm's
available for download that are updated regularly:
http://etotheipiplusone.com/kde4daily/docs/kde4daily.html. People didn't
use that. There have been regular binary snapshot packages for many
distributions, easy to install on a vm or any old box you might have had
lying around. People didn't do that. There has been kde-svn build
(http://kdesvn-build.kde.org/) which makes it easy to keep up to date to
the minute. All these options have been widely advertised.

Saying "it's too hard to try out betas" is pure poppycock.

KDE 4, distributors, and bleeding-edge software

mrshiny — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 15:49:55 +0000

I guess I don't just mean "in parallel" as in "you can install both", but rather a hybrid KDE made up of the old pieces of KDE3 that are working and the new pieces of KDE4 that replace the old. This way, as new pieces become usable and stable they can supplant their older versions.

However, for a variety of reasons KDE major releases (2, 3, 4) are not binary compatible with older releases and thus the KDE team makes no attempt to do this sort of staged release. However for a majorly disruptive change such as KDE4, a staged release is the best way to achieve your goals whithout alienating your users. It is significantly harder, however, from a programming standpoint. If KDE 4.2 doesn't resolve the problems KDE4 has I suspect KDE will lose a lot of market share.

Thanks for KDE 3.5.10!

mgb — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 13:44:53 +0000

"what would benefit the users most? Having a good, stable KDE in 2009"

Fortunately there is a good, stable KDE in 2009. It's 3.5.10.

Many thanks to the subset of KDE developers who are still supporting their stable 3.x series, even while experimenting with new ideas (some good some bad) in the 4.x development series.

KDE 4, distributors, and bleeding-edge software

jospoortvliet — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 11:53:14 +0000

You're right in that users are important, but it is very annoying that you simply ignore most that I wrote. We didn't release 4.0 to get more testers nor users, we did it to get more developers.

Well, ok, some parts of KDE needed testers, some parts were ready for that, and benefited from testing. In many other area's (plasma) we knew what the issues were, but didn't want to let all of KDE wait and suffer because it wasn't finished yet.

Again, it was a long-term decision which did hurt users in the short term but benefit all in the long term. You focus on a 1 year period (or even shorter). Linus went away for now - and so did many. Is that bad? Well, it sucks, but when you factor in the increase in speed of development, it is reasonable to expect them to be back. After all, the free desktop has what, 1% of the whole desktop market? So we did hurt a portion of that 1% to be able to get to the point where we could aim for the other 99%.

We're simply more ambitious than you think, I guess.

We can say sorry to those users we've hurt (even though I still think the distributions are to blame as well). But shouldn't the users say thank you now KDE 42 has proven us to be right?

Fedora with GNOME is no better

jospoortvliet — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 11:47:04 +0000

Sure the final goal for what we do is for users. You are right in that. At the same time, what would benefit the users most? Having a good, stable KDE in 2009 or making them wait for 2010? We wanted to move as fast as possible. If we wouldn't have released 4.0 in 2008, we would have slowed development (or, not accelerated it) and KDE 4.x would still be a lot less mature.

You can look at it either way - the short term annoyances were worth the trouble. I honestly believe time will prove us right.

KDE 4, distributors, and bleeding-edge software

GregMartyn — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 07:49:38 +0000

I think it's time that we acknowledged that the biggest reason that "people don't test when it's alpha or even beta" is because it is too hard to try out betas.

Our package managers have ingrained the idea of "latest is greatest," but that breaks down when trying out beta software. Sure, I can try out the latest from rawhide (or unstable, or its distro-specific equivalent), but then my current version is removed, and multiple beta dependencies are installed. My system is either permanently unstable (from constantly fetching the latest betas), or frozen in time with no updates until all the betas become full stable releases.

Switching between beta and the release version is very difficult -- having multiple versions of the same software is rarely well supported. This is exacerbated by the difficulty of downgrading software.

Fedora with GNOME is no better

malor — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 00:30:09 +0000

End users were simply not the target for this release

You have explicitly said you called it 4.0 to get more testing; I'd say that users were exactly the target for the release. You wanted them to start yelling at other teams to fix the bugs you wanted fixed. You deliberately inflicted pain on your userbase so that they would browbeat other teams into doing things the way you wanted.

But, guess what? You're writing a desktop. If you're not completely focused on users, you're doing it wrong. You deliberately inflicted pain on people to make your own lives easier, and you did it through deception. And you seem to believe that it was even worth it, while GNOME keeps eating you. You're losing, and you are losing because the people who vote, the users, aren't the people you're really trying to help.

Remember: Linux users are generally developers of other projects. Their time is worth at least as much as yours.

we did it for other,equally (if not more) important reasons.

You're focused on your own team's needs intead of the needs of the broader public. This is damaging you, badly. If you don't want to focus on users first, then pick a different type of project.

KDE 4, distributors, and bleeding-edge software

malor — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 00:21:15 +0000

We didn't call KDE 4.0 that because it was stable

You're right. You called it 4.0 to get more testers.

We've been doing this since 10 years

I've been there the whole time, and I don't remember you guys ever before calling something 'done' that wasn't. Your .0 releases haven't always been that great, but to my memory, they've always been feature-complete. This time around, tou lied to us to get us to test your software before we normally would. That's new. And people are still pissed, a year later. This isn't coincidence.

FOSS is about developers first, users next.

The arrogance in this simple statement is breathtaking on two fronts. One is the fundamental belief that users are inferior.

On Linux, do you know what a user actually is? Almost always, a user is a developer of another project. And your particular software is very central to the use of their computer, if they chose your flavor of desktop, and if you screw it up, you damage the progress of other projects. They're dependent on you to get it right. Time they have to spend fixing your problems is time they can't spend fixing their own.

Further, it's worth pointing out that you lost Linus Torvalds, one of the most famous developers in the world, and yet here you're dismissively handwaving him away, lumping him in with the proletariat, the developers that aren't working on your project. Mere users. Scum.

Secondly, if you hadn't noticed, you're writing a desktop. If your focus isn't first, foremost, and always about users, then you picked the wrong hobby. Go write webservers or something. Every day you write code without thinking about users, users, users, is a day that GNOME eats a little more of your lunch.

They have come from essentially nowhere to gradually eclipsing you on the desktop. Eight years ago, only the diehard used GNOME. Today, you're in a substantial minority. This should be telling you something. And with 4.0, your focus on the needs of your own team, instead of the needs of your users, further accelerated your slide into irrelevance.

Distributions are for users, source code on some developer site is not.

This has never really been true. Remember: "users" are the people writing the kernel, too.

Your entire comment is damage control, apologia for an enormous mistake. Just admit the damn mistake, apologize, and move on. And stop lying to us. Maybe you'll start regaining some of the ground you've lost.

KDE 4, distributors, and bleeding-edge software

jospoortvliet — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 21:14:49 +0000

KDE will indeed probably be more popular with people who use a computer
regularly (for example those working in offices) and Gnome is more for the
casual grandma who checks mail once a month.

Then again, that might change. Gnome really needs to change stuff to get
development going again. Seeing how much time many KDE devs spend thinking
about usability makes me expect KDE to start doing much better in that
regard. 4.2 is already a clear testament to that, btw.

KDE 4, distributors, and bleeding-edge software

jospoortvliet — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 21:12:39 +0000

please read the comments before posting. Your proposal might sound sane to
you, but would've been bad for KDE and the Free Desktop.

Fedora with GNOME is no better

jospoortvliet — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 21:08:03 +0000

Kragil already makes a good point, but there were more reasons why a delay
of 4.0 would've been bad.

For example. NVidia would've continued to ignore our complaints about the
lack of proper XRENDER acceleration. The "better 4.0 release" would
therefor still have had horrible performance and corrupted systemtray
icons. Even 4.2 suffers, on some installs, from those issues - X.org and
the driver developers haven't been able to fix that in the last year. The
same goes for more pieces of technology, major functionality in Qt being
one of them.

Another reason to release was to get more developers. Because as you might
know, a FOSS project depends on developers, and doesn't really care about
users. Users only eat time away from the actually useful stuff:
development. The 4.0 release succeeded in this regard: over 300 new
developers in the last 12 months.

There are more reasons for releasing 4.0 when we did, but I hope I managed
to make clear that there was more than "the end users will love this". End
users were simply not the target for this release, we did it for other,
equally (if not more) important reasons.

The only thing we imho could've done better is the release announcement
itself (compare it with the 4.1 announcement and see that we DO learn).
Pretty much every other piece of communication was handled well.

Perhaps

jospoortvliet — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 21:01:03 +0000

the final Vista gold wasn't that much better than KDE 4.0 - it did work,
basically, for most people but did a horrible job for some. Same with 4.0,
I suppose, even though 4.0 as a FOSS product doesn't have to be as stable
as a product by a big company. After all - we have the 'release early and
often' paradigm, they don't.

KDE 4, distributors, and bleeding-edge software

jospoortvliet — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 20:59:02 +0000

Malor, you don't get it.

We didn't call KDE 4.0 that because it was stable. We did call it 4.0
because we did major surgery, and now our libraries were stable again.
We've been doing this since 10 years, and many other FOSS projects have
done the same. Like the kernel, gnome, Amarok and many more.

The fact YOU think 4.0 was, in any way, telling you something about the
USER, is your mistake. FOSS is about developers first, users next.
Distributions are for users, source code on some developer site is not.
Distributions therefor have to ensure what they ship is ready for the users
they target.

Fedora targets bleeding edge users - they considered 4.0 good enough, I
suppose. Mandriva did not, neither did Kubuntu and OpenSuse. Their choice.

KDE 4, distributors, and bleeding-edge software

jospoortvliet — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 20:55:08 +0000

Funny to see the two announcements next to each other. Esp the screenshots
- our look & feel has improved a lot :D

KDE 4, distributors, and bleeding-edge software

roblucid — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 15:58:07 +0000

You're wrong. Though I don't expect you to change your perceptions.

There was an appeal for wide scale testing, before 4.0, giving
the reasons that the library redevelopment was quite good and stable now
and that they needed the applications to port, so they could finish
developing the new DE and get back to release discipline.

There was widely available info about the re-write, also the new Plasma
desktop, and everyone knew it wasn't finished.

The clear implication was that there'd been insufficient testing
so far.

The problem for a project like KDE, is it's hard to download the source,
just spend a few minutes doing ./configure; make; make install. They
needed a release infrastructure to make it feasible for most to try it out,
and submit bug reports. In practice that requires support by the distro's.

What KDE were, was naive about the process. Now I'm sure they see that
the approach to migration taken by developers of ext2/ext3/ext4 has a lot
to be said for it, to avoid PR problems. Especially as Desktops are an
area that hotheads find much more interesting than boring filesystems.

Fedora with GNOME is no better

kragil — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 14:08:24 +0000

OK, for sake of argument:

4.0 = 4.0 alpha
4.1 = 4.0 beta
4.2 = 4.0 RC
4.3 = 4.0

I will betcha that if they went down that road the 4.0 we would get in 6 months would have more unfinished blue sky features and frameworks and would have been less usable than the real 4.1. (again look at E17)
And I won't even talk about the number of ported apps.
Net result: 1 year+ wasted.

Release EARLY release OFTEN.

4.0 did work and was OK to release .. the "mostly erects the pillars of KDE for developers and upcoming releases" part is the only thing that should have been in big letters in every announcement and blog post and Fedora should have been more conservative.

Fedora with GNOME is no better

malor — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 05:53:11 +0000

All they had to do was call it "4.0 alpha", and about 90% of the potential problems would have instantly disappeared. The remaining anger at the flawed release would have been directed at the distros that packaged an alpha. And the whole thing would have blown over long ago.

It's really that simple. Call a product what it actually is, and it's amazing how much better consumers will like it.

Fedora with GNOME is no better

dkite — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 00:46:29 +0000

I have sold big ticket items in one of my iterations, and found it in my
interest to pop the emotional high that comes in these instances and
replace it by some caution and realistic expectations of what was going to
occur. Otherwise we would have ended up with the same level of satisfaction
as the KDE 4.0 release engendered.

Derek

Fedora with GNOME is no better

jspaleta — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 22:23:41 +0000

Indeed, I think you've hit the heart of the matter... the desktop isn't done.

I know that, you know that... and I know I know what the implications of that are. And I now know that you know as well. Or I think I do.

Anyways.... having the two of us understand what the reality of the desktop development landscape is lets us set our expectations on progress/regressions accordingly. But that doesn't automatically translate into a widespread understanding. I think the expectation mismatch between the user culture and the developer culture is real and if there's someone with some ideas on how to close that expectation gap in the future... I'm all ears.

-jef

Fedora with GNOME is no better

dkite — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 21:49:44 +0000

>I think user expectations on what distributions can accomplish with resources at hand are not calibrated to reality that the open desktop related software is going under heavy development.

Insert upstream projects into that statement.

This highlights a fundamental problem with the desktop.

If you look at server applications, for the most part when they are stable, they cover the use patterns of many, and people are content to stick with what works. New feature requirements are there, but the pace of implementation is slower. The software usage corresponds more to how a desktop application uses a library. Stability stability stability.

The desktop is much different. If I run across some new gizmo, I may be the one informing the developer of the need. And I want it right now. Or I am anxiously awaiting the ability to do something that another platform does with ease. I will use code written yesterday for that reason.

A stable LTS release is useless for the desktop unless there is a very limited usage pattern.

Of course, when I am that close to the edge, things will break.

It isn't a management issue. It is simply that the desktop isn't done, and every improvement is important. Reality forces developers to throw stuff away from time to time to get to the next level of capability.

And the very odd thing is that for a number of years, I've been running KDE from svn. Build every few days. Other than the very early KDE4 time, it works very well.

Derek

KDE 4, distributors, and bleeding-edge software

dkite — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 21:36:17 +0000

Heh, but I beg to differ, and I'm not a wilting flower when it comes to using bleeding edge stuff.

Some problems are bad, some problems are good.

KDE had(s) the problem where people want to use their stuff. They like the ideas, the applications, the way things work.

I suspect the distributions wouldn't have paid any attention to 'improved communication' with the 4.0 release. There was palpable demand for the offering. The moment anyone of them advertised that the new KDE 4.0 release was going to be on offer, all of them had to do the same. If I remember correctly, the developers had to make an effort to tone down the enthusiasm.

All in all, the only thing it has convinced me of is that releases are the spawn of the devil.

Derek

Perhaps

khim — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 20:13:44 +0000

Vista is very resource-hungry, but it's usable. KDE 4.0 was resource hungry and unusable. Now Microsoft created Vista+ (named Windows 7) which is less resource-hungry and more usable - we'll see how KDE 4.x will compare with that...

Yes, there are something else...

khim — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 20:10:54 +0000

Did I miss something?

Yes:
2a. If you preach that proper way is to install two versions of stuff at the same time - at least make it possible.

All distributions which shipped KDE3 and KDE4 in the same box were forced to heavily patch the thing. You can not just "./configure ; make ; make install" KDE3 and KDE4 on the same system (unlike GNOME 1.x/GNOME 2.x) - this makes all such talks hypocrisy. Even this "feature" was unfinished (granted - it was in the same state as everything else: mostly, but not 100% complete).

KDE 4, distributors, and bleeding-edge software

cry_regarder — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 18:10:44 +0000

Perhaps you should use Vista instead.

KDE 4, distributors, and bleeding-edge software

kragil — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 17:14:16 +0000

You really need to chill, dude. The past is the past and cannot be changed.

OK 4.0 should have been called "4.0 Developer Release/Foundations" or something, but other than that it was OK to release. That would have made the "KDE 4.0 is not KDE4" excuse more understandable.
But it did work and the libs were done. You cannot wait for 10 years to be totally perfect (just look at E17 ... that does obviously not work)
It had a lot of missing features and very few ported apps but people were able to use it productively AND IT WAS A GREAT STARTING POINT! (just look at 4.2 now)

So ..

Lessons learned:

1. Don't just call a release that mostly/only sets new foundations "$X+1.0" or people will whine for YEARS (like you do)
2. If you don't want distros to ship your stuff without fall back solutions make that very clear (mostly to Fedora devs)
3. Provide the OGG links for your blip.tv videos because then nobody can complain about a nearly perfect release [anouncement] (4.2)

Did I miss something?

I hope people will read this post before KDE 5.0 based on Qt5 is released ;)