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Bero Quits Red Hat Over Treatment of KDE

Posted by chrisd on from the shades-of-raster dept.

Vicegrip writes "In an article on leaked release notes on Redhat 8.0 CNet also revealed that Bernhard Rosenkraenzer, known here on Slashdot as berorh, has quit over objections he has on what Redhat is doing to KDE in the new release. Bero says that the new version of KDE in Redhat 8.0 is going to be crippleware. I know I always found Bero's comments here on Slashdot helpful and insightful. His worries about what Redhat is doing to KDE for 8.0 have me rather concerned and thinking of switching distributions."

7 of 593 comments (clear)

  1. Anyone who's used it likes it. by Nailer · · Score: 5, Informative
    I'm a KDE user whose been using Null since release:

    Red Hat have:
    • Unified the default QT, GTK 1, GTK 2, and XMMS look. Someday every Linux distro will do the same.
    • Red Hat patched KDE to support the freedesktop.org standard taskbar system - yay, panel apps working in both KDE and Gnome. Older KDE taskbar apps still seem to work fine. Again, someday I think KDE will ship with this by default.
    • Selected what they consider the best applicatioon for each category (web browsing, email, office etc) and used those as default quick launchers on both the Gnome and KDE taskbar. This makes sense: users pick apps based on quality rather than toolkit. Mozilla renders more pages than Konqueror. OpenOffice is more capable than Abiword or KOffice. Evolution matches more of a Windows users understanding of a good PIM than KMail / Konrganizaer / Sylpheed, etc. This isn't a bias towards Gnome - 2 of the three main apps aren't even based on Gnome or GTK, and OpenOffice actually integrates better with KDE than Gnome. They haven't removed Konq, KMail or any other major KDE apps, they've just changed what's in the quicklaunch bar. Konq stil exists, and its still in the menu. So is Kmail. Again, I think someday every Linux distro will do the same. Most desktop users don't know, or care what a toolkit is, and they shouldn't have to.
    • Removed the About KDE dialog. Not that every copyright, author credit, and license are still there - in About -> App. The About KDE screen is a just an ad for KDE. Its not a big deal, I don't really care either way.
    • Made KDE use double click for desktop items - this was the only thing I disliked about 8.0 - its a really dumb idea and violates just about everything anybody's written on the subject of usign a mouse. Someone buy Havoc Pennington a Jacob Nielsen book. Then make KDE single click again, fix Gnome 2 to do the same, and thus don't require new users to click desktop items twice in the space of 500ms - and keep desktop icons consistent with web pages, and all their other apps. Ask anyone involved in usability - double click makes no sense.

    1. Re:Anyone who's used it likes it. by nonmaskable · · Score: 4, Informative

      > I'm a KDE user whose been using Null since
      > release:

      But not an informed one. You left a lot out, in addition to putting the RH spin on what you included. RH has also:

      - Added lots of buggy Xft stuff to QT
      - Buggy changes to support vfolder
      - Broke service name compatibility
      - Broke plugin handling

      The gruesome details are all in bugzilla.

      These are off the top of my head, I've probably left some out.

  2. Re:"free" software by Nailer · · Score: 4, Informative

    what's got everybody up in arms is that Redhat is trying to enhance its *brand* by hacking KDE.

    Anyone who's used the 8.0 beta can tell you they're enhancing their usability, nmot their brand with their changes. The grab bag of different applications, inconsistent themes, and desktop specific panel apps are there if you want them. But Red Hat have made themes and panel apps consistent by default and put what they consider the best apps forward by outting them on the quick launch area of the taskbar. Its no big deal, and Red Hat 8.0s KDE runs every KDE app I've built and packaged for it.

  3. Re:Sooner or later... by Frater+219 · · Score: 5, Informative
    RedHat pushes GNOME and GNOME was only created to kill KDE. (Yes, you can mod this down, but it's still the truth and you know it.)

    Actually, it's false, and I suspect you might not know it. GNOME was created by the GNU folks as an alternative to KDE at a time when KDE was dependent on a piece of non-free software, specifically the Qt libraries. Though it's now Free, Qt was at the time "shared source," more or less. Once Qt became Free, people kept developing and using GNOME because they were used to it and had come to prefer it.

    They did it for the same reason RMS started GNU in the first place: to give people who insist on Free Software a good system to use. RMS didn't start GNU to "kill" SunOS or HP/UX or BSD, but to have the kind of system that his ethics and aesthetics preferred. Yes, BSD was non-free when GNU was started: BSD depended on AT&T proprietary Unix code. That quit being the case in 1994 or so -- but you wouldn't expect all the GNU and Linux developers to suddenly jump ship for BSD, would you? Of course not; as with GNOME and KDE, they had come to prefer their own system and kept developing it because they wished to.

    That's called freedom. Not "killing" -- freedom. Learn to recognize it.

  4. Re:Make the switch by Wdomburg · · Score: 4, Informative

    >Go with Mandrake. It's not just for newbies
    >anymore. They go to the edge...
    >
    >Postfix over sendmail

    Postfix was added to Red Hat in 7.3.

    >Postgres over MySQL

    Postgres has been in since 5.0, about five years ago. (On a side note, MySQL didn't make it in until 7.0).

    >i586 over i386

    Red Hat compiles -mcpu=i586 -march=i386, which means optimization for i586, but without using instructions that are incompatible with i386. The performance increase for doing -march=i586 is negligable except in a few corner cases.

    However, the kernel and glibc are shipped with optimizations for multiple architectures, so as to provide most of the benefits without locking out non-pentium architectures.

    Matt

  5. Re:Sooner or later... by Frater+219 · · Score: 4, Informative
    Of course I do know that and it doesn't change the fact that GNOME would not exist without KDE.

    If you know the truth of proposition P (viz., that the purpose of the creation of GNOME was other than to "kill" KDE) but you assert in debate proposition not-P (that the purpose of creating GNOME was to "kill" KDE) then you engage in a wrongful act of lying. There is no place in intelligent debate for lying. The only purpose lying can serve in discussion is to attempt to lead another astray -- to cause another to think or act on the basis of information you know is wrong. Though lying may serve some useful purposes in certain social occasions (contra Kant) it has no justification in debate and is wholly immoral.

    Now, back on topic -- license problems may not be a "real life" issue to you if you are neither a Free Software developer or distributor, nor of the opinion that secret-source, thought-monopoly software is harmful. However, not all the world is in the same boat you are. To a substantial number of people -- among them the GNU and GNOME core developers, self-evidently -- these are issues most assuredly real. They would be remiss in their ethical duties to set aside their own principles simply because a fool might someday mock them as impractical.

  6. Re:Amen by fault0 · · Score: 4, Informative

    I don't think anyone would have complained if RedHat had just changed the default look. Other distros have been doing this forever. The fact that they introduced bugs, broke some third-party app compatability, and made KDE slower as a whole (replacing konq with Moz, etc.)

    RedHat should have given the user a choice at least. If the user installed KDE (not default), then by gosh, they probably wanted to run KDE.