KDE 3.2.0 Released

Quique writes "KDE 3.2 has just been released. The official announcement is available at the KDE site and the source tarballs are being replicated to the mirrors. There are already binary packages for a few distributions. Besides the usual bugfixes and new features, this release has been highly optimized and runs way faster than previous versions. This is a good opportunity for Windows users to migrate to a free desktop."

Comments

Re:Excuse me?

[W2k]

The only problem, I'd say, is that it's not obvious to most people which distro to use, and picking the wrong one is sure to end in, as you say "a HUGE waste of time" for first time users. This is unfortunate, but it doesn't really equal "Linux is unusable for everyone who isn't a programmer".

That is indeed a problem (though I can't agree with you that it's the only) but I will argue that the large amount of time it takes to get [some distro of] Linux up and running can make Linux unusable. There is a treshold; any user, no matter how committed, will stop trying to get Linux working after N hours of trying and failing, where N varies with the individual. I think my N is pretty high, but still not high enough, apparently. That, or I was just unlucky. My point is, Joe Home User has an abysmally small value for N. So Linux can and will be unusable to him because of that.

I do find it interesting that someone working in tech support at a major university condones piracy, but I'm not going to deny that you have a point there.

It wasn't my intention to condone piracy - I'm merely speaking from real experience, not saying the way it is is the way it _should_ be. In tech support (the hands-on kind), you get to see the hard drives of MANY people's computers. Even the non-savvy run Kazaa, DC and BitTorrent and stockpile gigs of warez, porn and movies on their fragile little laptops.

OTOH, non technical users seldom have the knowledge to locate pirated copies of the software they'd need (if they even know the software exists!)

See above. While at the university where I work, most people are pretty tech-savvy, there are also a huge number of people who are not. They're using warezed software all the same, having gotten it from their (savvier) friends. When everyone's on 100Mbit (11Mb on the WLAN) there's nothing stopping the warez from propagating. Though, for people who aren't tech-savvy themselves and don't have too many l33t h4x0rz in their social circles, you've got a point.