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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."

5 of 593 comments (clear)

  1. Maybe he will join MandrakeSoft again! by joestar · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Mandrake 9.0 seems to respect KDE & GNOME, and Bero has been part of MandrakeSoft in 1999!

  2. Re:You people are missing the point by Coplan · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Wish I had mod points right now...I'd mod you up rather than reply.

    I agree with you 100%. But I can also see where some people are worried. A respectable man disowns a company he works for over political reasons such as the modification of KDE, and it will make people question the company. Things like this will always bring rise to the Redhat/Microsoft comparison that happens way too often.

    BUT the whole Lemming mentality happens way too often as well. Someone respectable leaves something like redhat behind, and all of the sudden people think it's tainted. Now, don't get me wrong. In a situation like this, questions do arise in my head. But I further research an analyze the situation. Perhaps our hero doesn't want to modify KDE because he thinks it works BEST the default way. Makes sense. But I'm willing to try out the new modified version before I agree with him.

    So I announce now that I will go against the grain, and I will at least try out Redhat 8.0 before I denounce it. I will try Xandros too, and the latest Debian, and so on. I'm an OS mosquito, I go where the brightest light is.

  3. Re:It's rather sad. by krmt · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Whereas the low end (kernel developers, compiler writers, etc.) and high end (clustering software, 3D modelling and rendering, etc.) of development is led by strong, well-organised teams of well-trained developers with vision and understanding, the middle ground of the Linux world is polluted with warring egos and silly spats like this. There are myriad competing, mutually incompatible yet separately inadequate office suites (Star Office, KOffice, Applix,...), desktop environments (KDE, Gnome, XFCE, CDE, UDE, ROX,...), and X servers (XFree86, MetroX, XiG).
    That's funny, you must never read the LKML if you think there's no bickering going on. Perhaps you're too young to know about the gcc/egcs split of a few years back. How about the emacs/xemacs feud? Even stable, mature projects have their splits and their differences, including those on the lower levels of the tool chain.

    And even the lower levels have their problems. There might be one Linux kernel (excepting -ac and other myriad branches and patches), but there's also BSD, Mach, Darwin, and the Hurd out there.

    As for "simple" things like reading Word documents, you try reading a document that's really and collection of embedded COM objects and see how well you do with it. Things like that aren't easy. On the other hand, I can read and write my windows partition, as well as many other file systems, quite easily in Linux, which is something Windows can't do now. I also have virtual desktops, which is simple to implement in your WM using X, but Windows can't do this "simple" thing by default. Every environment has its advantages and disadvantages.

    All those diseparate projects like KDE/Gnome, OO/KOffice, etc. will either learn to cooperate or one will die out. KDE and Gnome have very very slowly been taking steps to meet on some levels, and distros can step in at other levels (like Debian's excellent menu system). OO and Koffice are working towards using the same file format, or at least being able to read and write the same formats. Things will get there, just be patient.

    Oh, and incidentally, I get better frames in Q3 on Linux than I do in Windows.
    --

    "I may not have morals, but I have standards."

  4. Amen by 0x0d0a · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Very true. Red Hat is doing something that consumers have wanted (and Linux tweakers have been doing for some time with themes) -- making their KDE and GNOME apps look similar.

    KDE people whining about this are going to be ignored. The GNOME people have accepted the loss of their icons without throwing fits, though it certainly changes RH GNOME's "look and feel". I can't figure out why the KDE people can't do the same for the changes that affected their "look and feel."

    --
    May we never see th
  5. Re:Anyone who's used it likes it. by Nailer · · Score: 5, Interesting

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

    Since KDE has never released a proper announcement of what their issues with Red Hat beyond some generally false stuff in their forums (cheers Mosfet) and as an extensive KDE user I haven't encountered them, I may indeed not know everything.

    I didn't put a RH spin on anything. Users should pick the best apps. RH aren't trying to turn KDE into Gnome - 2 of 3 non KDE their `best apps' aren't Gnome apps either. And Konq, KMail etc still work (apart from the plugin bug you mentioned). I'm a Konq fan, but at the end of the day, Mozilla can render more pages (such as www.ninemsn.com.au, the most popular site in the country) and Konq can't. And as I said, every KDE app I've rebuilt for Null has been fine.

    The Xft additions seem to work well enough that I haven't noticed them negatively at all - just that for once I got Xfthack quality font rendering out of the box on a Linux distro without having to screw around. This is a good thing. I don't know what's buggy about it and when I do notice something, I spend a bit of time in Bugzilla reporting it or checking it out.

    Konqueror plugisn are broken, huh? Flash works fine on www.xdude.com works fine (using the Flash 6 beta under Konqueror on the current Null). Quicktime / Crossover also work fine, albeit a little slowly than I'd like. But I accept there are likely remaining bugs in Konq plugins, as Macromedia.com doesn't work properly, and last time I looked its also in Mozilla marked for RH to fix, along with the latest Nautilus fuckups. How is this malicious? What have Red Hat done to deliberately break it? And why would they deliberately break it if they're going to fix it? You haven't said so I'll treat RH as innocent until proven guilty.

    I don't know about what applications vfolders you're talking about, or what `service names are'. Care to tell or give us a bugzilla link?