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KDE Responds To Misconceptions About KDE 4
Jiilik Oiolosse writes "PJ at Groklaw speaks with a member of the KDE team about some of the common myths circulating about KDE 4. 'There has been a bit of a dustup about KDE 4.0. A lot of opinions have been expressed, but I thought you might like to hear from KDE. So I wrote to them and asked if they'd be willing to explain their choices and answer the main complaints. They graciously agreed.' Among the topics discussed are: 'Releasing KDE 4.0 was a mistake,' 'I cannot put files on my desktop,' and 'KDE should just have ported KDE 3.5 to Qt 4 and not add all that other experimental stuff right away.'"
perhaps some people DO have a life after all on slashdot. It is afterall, between 0500 and 0200 for most of the Western Hemisphere.
http://linuxhaters.blogspot.com/2008/07/wild-rationalizations.html
For the unaquainted, here is the birth of K Pride Week:
http://linuxhaters.blogspot.com/2008/07/k-pride.html
The fact that you replied tells us what about you having a life...? ;-)
Who reads the article? Thats so last decade.
that if you install a mirror plasmoid and say "goatse" three times, RMS will appear and strangle you with his beard.
Wow, 7 minutes after the article was posted, and STILL no postings! Could this be my first FP? COULD IT???
You're entering a realm which is, unusual, the vicinity of an area adjacent to a location.......
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
I've always preferred KDE over Gnome, but unlike many I didn't rush to install KDE 4.0 (what with it being an incomplete beta and all.) I didn't get XP until it had been out for years either, and by the time I'm considering Vista it'll be lying in a shallow grave from the sound of things.
Basically, I see KDE 4.x as something to play with alongside my regular desktop. I'll jump onboard properly when things calm down, but in the meantime I have work to do.
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
Twilight Zone tune chiming in...
KDE 4 has great ideas, but kde 4.0 was not ready for use by the masses and was very buggy (I have a collegue using 4.0.5 and he's constantly having kwin crashes and other problematic behaviour especially with dual screens in either extend and clone mode).
While KDE 4.1 will be a lot better, again several important features have been moved to 4.2. For example with KDE 4.1, users will have a desktop where they can put desktop icons the a folderview widget or outside of that widget, on the plasma desktop itself. These two "desktop icon types" have very different behaviour, which will be extremely different to understand to non-geeks. This will be really fixed in 4.2 where it will be possible to set the folderview as the desktop itself. The number of plasma widgets shipped by default in KDE 4.2 is still rather limited (no good RSS reader, weather applet, system monitor etc). Phonon/xine/knotify4 as included in KDE 4.1 is not very friendly for your laptop's battery life. All of this will probably be fixed for KDE 4.2.
I heard the administrator mode in systemsettings is not working and that a migration to policykit to make this work, is planned for kde 4.2. GNOME is using policykit already since a year if I'm not mistaken.
So while KDE 4.1 is a great release for advanced users (I'm typing this from KDE 4.1 RC1 with nice desktop effects!), you don't want to migrate your average non-geek family member friend or collegue to it.
It's unfortunate that KDE developers still try to deny or at least greatly minimize the impact of these kind of problems. A little bit more understanding from both sides (developers and users) and a bit less technology hyping, would be a nice thing.
The OSS community have managed to build a better browser than IE, but how come they haven't been able to duplicate the Apple GUI experience? Is it just a case of OSS lagging behind commercial companies etc., and soon Linux will be on par with OS X. Or is there more to it than that, such as difference philosophies or lack of people with good a understanding of user psychology and graphic design principles?
The developers are not denying anything (except comments like 'KDE is dying!'). They just didn't realize that calling the package that included the completed KDE4 libs "KDE 4.0" meant that distributions would start pushing it out to users, and publicizing it before it was objectively 'ready'.
"Egotards"
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Simply put, I had to revert to KDE3 in order to be able to work with my laptop.
If KDE4 is not finished, why announcing it as a deliverable product?
What everyone expects from a new major release is no less features and stability than the older ones.
Whenever this is not the case, a flop is waiting at the corner (as a lot of people learned from Vista).
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
The first impression I get, after a quick skim of the article, is that it sounds like they are having the same kind of problems with KDE 4 acceptance that Microsoft is having with Vista. Their users like the previous version a lot, don't see the value of the changes, and so on.
I'm in Europe, you insensitive clod!
I've tried various distro's with live CD's which use KDE4, don't want to mess a working system. It looks nice, I like the idea of the applications being put on the desktop like you can with Karamba, but with less CPU usage.
One main gripe for me is the file manager, it looks average, but is less useful. Not being able to open multiple tabs of different directories, ergo making drag / drop copying harder is a pain. It's like the developers wanted to regress to the shitty Windows way of it's file manager works. I don't want multiple windows open for an application, which is what I have to do with Windows explorer, and now Dolphin (the KDE4 file manager).
Take Nobody's Word For It.
Problems with what? You're running around like a geek trying to run a piece of software that hasn't been out for even a few months and you're complaining it has shortcomings and some things missing? Stop press, news at 11.
Meanwhile, back on planet Earth people are still using KDE 3.5.x, they will probably use successive versions of it as well, and when the general consensus is that KDE 4.x looks OK then you'll start to see a natural move to it. That's what naturally tends to happen with these things. You just......................stop worrying. If you're an early adopter then that's exactly what you are. I hear that people actually pay for licenses for that privilege, and they complain less than the furore we've had with KDE 4. Go figure.
how come they haven't been able to duplicate the Apple GUI experience?
Because they're trying to duplicate the Windows GUI experience, complete with periodically pissing off half the user base by changing the entire interface for oddball reasons.
They say "the desktop hasn't had a radical redesign in X years!" So what? The command line hasn't had a radical redesign since the Bourne shell, unless you're using Plan 9, and that was about 30 years ago. You don't *need* a radical redesign of things that work well. You don't *need* to break applications and force people to upgrade to a new API, either. Yes I'm looking at YOU, Trolltech... what's the point of using an OO programming language if you don't take advantage of the fact that you can have multiple methods with the same name, so you don't HAVE to remove the old calls when you change the calling sequence?
That's like when Microsoft declared "all new code will be in .NET" and had people hanging on to Visual Studio 6 for years because that was the only way to stay backwards compatible.
(and, no, I don't think Apple's going to get everyone to dump Carbon either)
Yes, you occasionally have to break stuff, but unless you're doing it because of security problems you do it after a transition period, and I don't think (for one random example) "directory.exists(name, TRUE)" counts as a security hole.
Or is there more to it than that, such as difference philosophies or lack of people with good a understanding of user psychology and graphic design principles?
All of the above. Not that Apple's user interface is perfect (god knows it isn't), but it's proof that you don't have to blindly clone everything Microsoft does to produce a great user experience.
The OSS community have managed to build a better browser than IE, but how come they haven't been able to duplicate the Apple GUI experience?
A lot of the Apple GUI experience is driven by three things: (1) what Apple users are used to, (2) creating a distinctive Apple "community", (3) looking nice in the store and being easy to market.
such as difference philosophies or lack of people with good a understanding of user psychology and graphic design principles?
Apple machines have nice graphic design, but KDE and Gnome also do (if different).
As for "psychology", try to find some actual evidence that the Apple UI is objectively superior.
In fact, all that is know about GUIs is public and out there, and all major GUI developers incorporate it into their systems, so there simply aren't any big differences between GUIs.
I think your premise is wrong: KDE, Gnome, Vista, and OS X do not differ much in the quality of their user interface design. They differ somewhat in the quality of their interaction design (e.g., Vista's annoying pseudo-security pop-ups), but even there, Apple also has issues.
It changes after every logout and I still don't know how to fix it. I've searched through the ~/.kde4 directory, but I couldn't find any config file relating to the issue. Anybody knows how to fix this?
"Die endgueltige Teilung Deutschlands - das ist unser Auftrag." - Chlodwig Poth
Comment removed based on user account deletion
People really need to cut the KDE developers some slack. The devs specifically said that the first releases will be lacking, it's a major rewrite after all. Keeping that in mind, they're doing a wonderful job. Would you rather the release schedule looked like e17's?
Also, lots of the people flaming KDE4 sound like the KDE team owed them something... that's really so embarrassing for the open source community.
Why, yes I know. Don't feed the trolls... I just can't resist here.
That would have helped so tremedously! It would have made clear to trolls and dumb people that it is not for them and real FOSS lovers would have still tested it and filed bug reports and feature request.
So I'm dumb or a troll for feeling let down when a stable release (which a 4.0.X release should be) of a major open source project tends to crash on me constantly? In the FLOSS community, release management has a lot to do with honesty.
If your 4.0 branch has scathing architectural deficiencies that make it unusable for production environments, call it 3.9, if you already had that, call it 3.10. Now KDE has their own gnome 2.0.0. Anyone who remembers that one awful experience?
Naming convention for the future:
*Insert big FOSS project X.0 ( X > 1 )* "Developer Release"
Otherwise all the dumb users will think it is Photoshop CS4 or something.
IMHO that is the path to happiness!
BTW KDE4.1 ROCKS!
If it's not 4.0 don't call it 4.0 -- it's that simple.
That's true.
That is pretty much it too. KDE 4 is changing everything about KDE's underlying structure with the hope of unifying things in ways that were literally hacks before. The concepts are great to the point of moving away from the "desktop" unfortunately they as you said finished up the libraries and hadn't finished up the front end.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
I seem to remember some griping about kde 4 not being the default for Hearty Heroin (or whatever the hell it's called).
Do you understand why that decision was made, kids?
by the time I'm considering Vista it'll be lying in a shallow grave
Not too shallow, I hope - it already stinks.
you had me at #!
Well, to be fair, calling it KDE 4.0 suggests it's relatively bug-free (else it would have been 4.0-beta), and feature-complete (else it would have been 4.0-alpha).
From what I've read it was neither of those...
this sig has intentionally been left blank
However I firmly believe that KDE really messed up when it comes to mamaging user expectations.
Call something KDE 4.0 and people will believe it's fully functional ready to roll. And find themselves sorely disappointed. Call it "KDE 4.0 Developer Release" and people will understand what it is and is not.
One thing that irks me in KDE's reply though is that they give the impression that they clearly communicated what KDE 4.0 was and was not. I disagree. I visited kde.org a few times to find precisely that information, and it simply wasn't there.
That's why I was so happy with SuSE's honest and up-front statement about KDE 4.0 (see http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=528652&cid=23135548 ) that told me everything KDE.org didn't. No amount of post-furor explanations will take that away.
Many people uphold OSX or Vista as the pinnacles of desktop beauty, and in the case of Mac, usability and user experience, yet the beauty possible on modern Linuxen desktops is not only equal to that of the Big Two, but in fact far surpassing them. Yes, I am talking a lot about "beauty" and "aesthetics", terms that programmers and techheads usually spurn or dismiss as irrelevant or superfluous. However, because it is not in the front of many geeks' minds does not mean it is irrelevant (especially considered I being a programmer myself) - beauty is important! In KDE, in particular KDE4, and especially coupled with technologies such as Compiz-Fusion and/or Metisse, the Linux desktop is far ahead any competition in presentation aesthetics, a fact seldom recognised.
That said, I am not using it on my production system and will not until release 4.2.
The problem as I see it, and the mistake made by the KDE dev team, lies in using a version numbering system that makes great sense for them but has little relation to how it will be interpreted and understood outside the development circles. For the devs, according to TFA, the "4.0" in KDE 4.0 means
For most of the world, the release of a new major version means both something new and exiting, which KDE4.0 certainly delivers, but also a finished and usable system that will be refined, embellished and updated. The KDE devs, on the other hand, means it as a platform on which a functioning system can and will be built. Their mistake lies in not realising that public perception of "4.0" would differ from their intention.
That said, this is a very common mistake in all human communication. Seldom indeed does intention transmit perfectly into perception.
Hmm, is that really the case?
I'm on gentoo. Kde-4.0 is hard masked which means it's not officially in the tree. You can unmask it if you really want to play with it but in order to do so you have to edit some config files which makes sure you know what you're doing. Kde-4.1 will eventually go into unstable (there you also find gnome-2.22, firefox-3, openoffice-4 etc).
Did other distros directly push kde-4.0 to stable?
Firing up ditrowatch I get 8 distributions with kde-4 and around 400 with kde-3. Among the 8 are Ubuntu, openSUSE, Feodora and PC-BSD.
Hmm, looking into the Ubuntu package database, I see kde4 is an extra package (no automatic update?) in Universe which has (I quote) no guarantee of security fixes and support.
It seems to be in Feodora-9, though. Is there a stable/unstable or whatsoever?
And it is in the just released openSUSE-11. Same here. Is it really in the default install?
If anyone was wondering why KDE 4 was so user unfriendly, then this article pretty much says it all. None of the answers are user friendly. They are all argumentative and poor excuses at best.
KDE 4.0 is the starting line, not the finishing line.
Isn't that the precise definition of BETA software? They released KDE 4.0 Beta as the finished product, and are now ARGUING that it is not finished, but a "new beginning." Well, thanks for telling us beforehand, which btw would have been as simple as adding "beta" to the name. If 4 is so backward compatible and "user friendly" then why have so many users failed to "make use" of KDE 4? If they listen to their users, then why do they feel they haven't been heard? If you disagree with them then fine, but you cannot argue with them and expect to win anyone over and claim that that is listening.
Why, exactly, is it surprising that, when the product is announced to be "out of beta and released", it will be pushed out to end users?
If it's not "objectively ready", then it's not even beta, it's alpha. If the libs are ready but not the desktop itself, then release "kdelibs-4.0", and keep the version of the desktop itself at alpha until that part is finished.
This isnÂt true.
If you went to kde.org after KDE 4.0 was released, looked in the "download" section and selected the current stable release, you got KDE 4.0. The old 3.5.* was called legacy or something. If the developers didnÂt expect distributions to start pushing it out, they shouldnÂt have said it was the current stable release.
I notice its changed now.
The rockstars of the mac development world are the people who craft applications with amazing user experiences.
The rockstars of the OSS development world are Linux kernel hackers.
I'm using Mandriva 2008.1, and it's an option on there. The default KDE is still 3.5, but it's really easy to install KDE4. You can install them both at the same time, and the settings and all libraries are separate, so you can play around with 4, without having to commit to using it.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Isn't that the whole point of the distro though? They should do some testing to ensure that packages they release with their distro are really up to snuff. Just because somebody decides to call something ready, doesn't mean it should be included in the distro. Different distros take different approaches with what they consider ready. Debian stable usually stays well behind the curve, while Fedora seems to be quite bleeding edge. I also think KDE should have made it really clear that it wasn't feature complete, and also not stable, but the distros shouldn't blindly pick it up and push it on users, regardless of what KDE says about it.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
The thing to do with the new version may be just to identify the bits that misbehave on you and use something else in their place.
Things aren't rosy elsewhere. Fedora 9 is a bit of a mess with both KDE 4 and a version of gdm (log in manager) that can not have it's configuration changed by the GUI tools that come with it. Init is broken for changing run levels and the default fonts are not enough for many applications so I really do not know why it was released in that state.
I tried KDE 4.0 when it came out. I found it lacking but viewed it as a nice start. I had to uninstall it though as for some reason it was screwing with my wireless network setup, suddenly network-manager couldn't connect. I waited and installed KDE 4.1 beta 2 and found it to be more feature complete but also much more buggy. Things would just crash for no reason, simple things like moving files wouldn't work. It was Alpha, not Beta, regardless of what title they gave it.
The KDE team made the same mistake that the Warhammer online team is making (article from yesterday about releasing with a large amount of content missing). KDE 4 has flopped hard because first impressions are everything.
I went back to gnome because, while somewhat limited in functionality (unless you know what to tweak), it's stable as a damn rock, does everything I need it too, and with GTK themes and Compiz it looks nice while maintaining a reasonable speed.
My whole problem with the KDE team is they just seem to be so arrogant. It's like they are hoping we wont notice they screwed up and if we do we're talked down to and told we're wrong. THEY gave it 4.0 status, NOT us.
But are they on the right path? From what I have seen in KDE4.0, it seems to me that everything they have done is a step backwards.
Basically, the problem is: if it's working fine, why change? For instance, I'm still using the KDE-classic icon set because I see no reason to get glossier icons, I recognize instantly the old icons and that's what matters.
The big point about KDE has always been its capability for personal configuration. I prefer to use just one desktop, so I don't have a desktop selector applet in my taskbar. I prefer not to put icons on my desktop, since the desktop is always covered by the windows I'm using, so I have my favorite apps icons in my taskbar and use konqueror in the file management mode to open documents. That's the way I prefer, other people think differently, but KDE3.5 lets everyone be happy with their choices.
I've never adapted to Gnome, because the philosophy is different there, it seems to be about making it easier to do things, at the expense of configurability. Well, for me the easiest way to do things is to do them the way I find easier, not the way someone else prefers.
I can hear people telling me, "OK, if you don't like things as they are, just go ahead and change them, the source code is there". Well, I have neither the time nor the inclination to start developing the KDE user interface. I'm not complaining, they were under no obligation to develop KDE for me anyhow, but let's say I'm lamenting the way things are going.
So when Vista is first released and nothing really works and a lot of programs aren't compatible - Microsoft doesn't know what they are doing and the OS is labeled a failure.
When KDE releases the same type of program - there are 'misconceptions' and you have look at it in the 'Grand Scheme of Things to Come'.
Give me a break.
(Yes, I realize the two are functionally different pieces of software, I'm not comparing that. I'm comparing the level of criticism and PR cover-up here.)
This particular line is especially pathetic — even if truthful. Yes, according to others, we royally screwed up, but, fortunately, we had our own definitions of the goals.
To see this guys try to wriggle out of this shame is as unpleasant as trying to use their software. They've "redefined" an alpha pre-release as a "4.0". They've followed up with several minor post-releases (it is at 4.0.4 right now, is not it?) — which continue to be both feature-incomplete and buggy. But, I guess, if none of that was among their "clearly stated goals", things are dandy...
To call release of Plasma — the "new development from the ground up" — a "success" by any definition is a bad joke. The software screws itself up every once in a while so badly, the Internet-forums are already full of of advises, like this "just delete .kde/share/config/plasmarc".
KDE appears to have grown a serious marketing department some time ago — I noticed this during their pre-release "tension build-up", which was not unlike that of a new X-Box or iPhone. Heck, their "release party" was Google-sponsored! Except the new X-Box and iPhone work (save, maybe, for a few glitches). KDE4, on the other hand, does not — by anybody's definition, except, maybe, their own.
This most recent "gracious" response is just another marketing spin-attempt...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The problem is that {k}ubuntu people don't have a polite education on free software. Most of them recently moved from windows and are not adapted to opensource philosophy.
I'm a developer on a major Linux distribution. I can tell that everytime more people shows up on the official IRC channels with the "Feature X is b0rken, you suck!" attitude.
I believe this new generation of lame and lazy users will damage some opensource software a bit, specially software who have a bigger community.
That would have helped so tremedously! It would have made clear to trolls and dumb people that it is not for them and real FOSS lovers would have still tested it and filed bug reports and feature request.
Quote++
Please extend some tolerance to these people - they're clearly making a credible effort to emulate the commercial software sector by communicating in marketing bullspeak (which is especially difficult for native speakers of Ancient Geek) - so the occasional misunderstanding is inevitable.
E.g. when the TFA says:
Many of the official release announcements posted on kde.org contained the following text: "The aim of the KDE project for the 4.0 release is to put the foundations in place for future innovations on the Free Desktop. The many newly introduced technologies incorporated in the KDE libraries will make it easier for developers to add rich functionality to their applications, combining and connecting different components in any way they want."
What they are trying to say is "KDE 4.0 doesn't have all the user features in it yet - we're only releasing it so that developers can start working with the new libraries - users should stick with 3.5 for a while yet".
However, due to their inexperience with the subtleties of Bullspeak they've inadvertently used the "future speculative masturbatory" tense (by conjoining the word "innovation" with hyperbolic capitalization of "Free Desktop") thus indicating that the entire paragraph is intended to be glossed over and treated as a general endorsement - so its unsurprising that people have gone ahead and used 4.0 in user-facing systems.
The KDE developers should be praised for their attempt to attain synergy with the wider enterprise by leveraging the didactic techniques of content-neutral intercourse, and the community should exhibit greater empathy when this initiative leads to non-positive communication outcomes.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
He's informing us of what he heard.
Yeah. If Canonical can look at KDE4 and say "no, this isn't ready, we're sticking with KDE3, but here's an alternative distro if you *really* like pain", why can't the other distros at least see that they should keep KDE3 at least until the following release?
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
I had been playing around with a couple different linux/BSD combos on a client's machine. Everytime I always installed KDE 3.5 or the distro loaded KDE 3.5 by default (PC-BSD, etc..)
The client took OpenSuSE 11 and installed it with KDE 4, thinking "Hey 4.0 is greater than 3.5".
My gut reaction was to cringe and he asked me why. And I told them that KDE 4.0 had issues and the other part of it was it was too new. It hadn't been out long enough in my book to switch.
And there have been some odd things happen with programs crashing and the way some systems function.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Although I agree that lack of politeness is a bad thing, that has nothing to do with the KDE4.0 debacle.
The problem was that the KDE team didn't want to miss the Ubuntu Long Term Support edition, so they tried to get a KDE4 formal release for Ubuntu 8.04 LTS. The alternative would have been to keep maintaining KDE3.5 until the next Ubuntu LTS, which, considering the facts, would have been a much wiser decision.
I think the problem in this incident is we don't know who is official KDE representative. So most comments (and attacks) then go to most visible man like Aaron Seigo. It's good to see "Sebastian Kügler of KDE.org and representing the Board of Directors" in this article.
I actually RTFA (I know... shocker). My favorite part was:
"Many of the problems in KDE 4.0 can and will be fixed by the KDE hackers."
It's nice to see when organizations view hacking in a positive light. Its like the old gun control argument. Hackers don't hose your system, script kiddies do.
That is just silly.
The reason for the major version number to change is to indicate breaks in compatibility with earlier versions. A version like 3.X indicates that everything written with 3.Y (Y <= X) will still work with 3.X.
This should have been KDE 3.9 and not 4.0 to stablish this is not a user release
Just shows that KDE made the wrong decision. Not technically mind you, just the wrong release decision.
When you have to go back and justify your actions, that means you did something wrong in the eyes of the consumer. If you continually find yourself doing this, you're going to have an uphill battle.
While plasma is nascent technology, I think everyone sees it as cool.
I think starting with a port of KDE to Qt4 would have been the best idea. It would have provided a crucial step between designs and shown off Qt4's improvements over Qt3. Then with everything ported release 4.0. Then in 4.0 deliver a beta of Plasma and/or a release of Plasma in 4.1. There was absolutely no need to ever include plasma. Plasma is based off the QGraphicsView class. At the time Plasma was started and even up until the 1st release, you could not put a widget in the GraphicsView. This should have been a show stopper, or at least a "wait for" feature before Plasma was forced on people. That one feature should have made it clear - port to Qt4 and release as 4.0. But that's not what happened.
Still we have KDE saying "no, we're right" despite the various criticisms. If KDE really listed to their users they'd say "we're changing our release policy to a user-centric one"
Disclaimer: KDE is my favorite desktop, I only have interest in it succeeding, and that is why I am critical of it. But I realize that the user, not the code is the most important factor.
The bolt-on technology should have come second. It is completely optional. It should have been separated out like Aero is from Vista.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
I've never tried kde 4, but after reading here, I just don't understand what there is to complain about, if you are using a major distro.
kubuntu - has always been unstable.
fedora- ment to be experimental.
suse- warned their users before.
freebsd- hasn't included kde 4 yet.
debian- hasn't included kde 4 yet.
gentoo- a typical gentoo user is used to this.
and so on
This looks like a lot of noise over nothing. Those complaining are probably gnome users who never used kde. I just cant understand that end users have been affected so much about this.
So in other words seasoned developers somehow didn't know what an X.0 release signified?
BULLSHIT.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
>> For example with KDE 4.1, users will have a desktop where they can put desktop icons the a folderview widget or outside of that widget, on the plasma desktop itself.
No. Support for icons on the background has been removed. Icons can only live in the folderview widget.
>> Phonon/xine/knotify4 as included in KDE 4.1 is not very friendly for your laptop's battery life.
Really? Can you point me towards a test? This is the first I've heard of this issue.
KDE is built on top of Trolltech's QT framework, which I think is a good thing, and Trolltech just updated to QT 4.0.
So one way or another KDE will have to follow suit. This means a top-to-bottom rework anyway if you want to take advantage of all new QT4.0 features (which you probably want to since they're genuine improvements). So it's going to take a lot of time anyway, ok?
Now one of the things in KDE's reply that struck me as informative was that bit about porting KDE 3.x to QT 4.0. They could have done that, but then they would probably have ended up with two binary-incompatible versions of KDE 3.x, which would also have been very confusing. So they decided to make a clean break of it and went for KDE 4.0. Perhaps that takes even more time than reworking KDE 3.x, but it should be cleaner and it gives KDE the opportunity to correct previous design flaws (like the scalability issue they mentioned). So far so good. That shouldn't affect the way KDE is going, just the pace at which it's traveling.
Another thing that I've missed in KDE 3.x are folders (you know: like the ones you have in MS Windows; you open the folder, it shows you your icons and you can lick on them to launch things). Now in KDE 4.x, "folder lookalikes" have been introduced. They can call 'em plasmoids and containers if they want, but we're not fooled. They're just folders. And they're a good idea. So that's the second thing KDE 4.x has going for it.
In addition there are the looks of the thing. Personally I was quite happy with the Windows NT look, but KDE may be legitimately concerned that they will be seen as laggards if they don't sport glitzy whiz-bang graphics. And then some with that "drape your desktop around a cube" thingy. *shrugs* Whatever. As long as they're happy and *I* can banish the darn thing at the drop of an option parameter. As far as I understand from KDE's response, KDE 4 will be backward compatible. I.e. configurable so that you essentially don't notice the difference. I like that! Perhaps that's another thing that militates for KDE 4.0.
Another reasonable remark from KDE is that FOSS developers like to develop new and exciting features rather than polish dull old ones (something I can totally understand: if I'm to do dreary-but-exacting maintenance programming that's so much like work that I'd want to get paid for it). That, the KDE response states, is a difference between FOSS and commercial development that has bitten KDE (and other projects) in the past. Basically it's the price we end-users pay to get something for nothing: development is led partly by "what is fun for developers" rather than "what would users and project managers most like to see".
Fair enough I'd say. Especially since there is no way I'm going to spend even a single minute of my time on helping to develop a window manager for Linux (barring some beta testing), so I'll wait patiently until KDE gets it right. I'm happy to forget about the whole thing until it's done and done well (just don't wrongfoot me again like you did with KDE 4.0, ok?), even if it takes another 3 years.
And if they don't get it right in that timeframe? Well ... there's always KDE 3, MS Windows, the Linux command-line for servers, or perhaps even Gnome.
Looking at KDE's reply I think I can see that they realise that end-users don't necessarily want to work with their new gee-wiz effects, and that they're prepared to make things configurable so that we don't have to. So what's the rush?
KDE 4.0 wasn't what I might have thought it was, I didn't try KDE 4.1, and I'm patiently waiting for SuSE to incorporate KDE 4.2 or so. That's when I'll have another look at KDE 4.
Expecting a X.0 release to be feature complete and relatively stable is not too much to ask.
You are right, it has been out for MONTHS, which is why its continuing cluster fsck status is all the more surprising.
Well, you see, they are the ones who are true experts in user interface design -- you arn't. So, by definition, they are right, and you are wrong. Just try to propose a feature... and watch the UI police come out and tell you how your proposal is wrong -- even if it's very good suggestion. They favor consistency over usability.
Which one didn't?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Whichever ones the guy upthread is complaining about.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Meh, Fedora. They even put in a beta release of X.org 7.4 (in a new release that needs to be stable--how retarded is that?).
It seems to be in Feodora-9, though. Is there a stable/unstable or whatsoever?
Yes. Red Hat calls "stable" "Enterprise Linux", and calls "unstable" "Fedora". ;-)
That's actually usually a good thing, even for Fedora users, but it requires a little wariness. After playing with Fedora 9 on my laptop I can say I won't be upgrading my desktop or my work network right away. KDE 4.0 is a big part of the reason why.
The only feature necessary for 4.0 was fixing the binary compatibility. 4.0 has that, so yes, it was feature complete according to the planned feature set.
That doesn't preclude adding MORE features in later releases. Each one will be published when their planned features are finished - but some other features can be postponed for later.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
I don't know if it's so much that they lack education in open source, or if it's just that they don't care. There's a whole lot of people who just want their computer to work, and don't care about the code or philosophy which got it there. With all the talk of "this is the year of linux on the desktop", that's what you get. The average person is never going to have philosophical concerns about how their computers were created. You can lead them to linux if the system does what they need it to, you can't lead them to care.
Everything will be taken away from you.
Most of Europe is on the Eastern Hemisphere. Greenwich isn't in the Balkans.
> The problem was that the KDE team didn't want to miss the Ubuntu Long Term Support edition
I'm afraid this information is just plain wrong.
KDE 4.0 is the starting line, not the finishing line.
See, from the users' point of view and every other project out there, a "point oh" release means you are done with a development cycle, and have a finished release. I don't know why they deviated from this tradition. If this code base was so radically different, it should have been given another name or something.
I actually liked the old kernel naming scheme of x.y.z where if x was odd, it was developmental and if it were even it was stable. By that scheme, KDE 3.5 should have been named KDE 4.0.0 and the new line as 5.0.0 - we would know to expect it to be buggy until KDE 6.0.0
They didn't know, but should have known.
A number of people on kde-devel@ made exactly this argument -- calling it 4.0 would mislead people into thinking it was ready for end users when it's not.
It's not enough to say "Yay, KDE 4.0!", and then follow up with "oh, by the way, this is a technology preview/developer release".
Go read the KDE 4.0 Press Release. There is not one mention of the fact that 4.0 is intended for anything but the general user population. Saying it's "the beginning of the KDE4 era" implies nothing about the quality of the 4.0 release; it only indicates there are more features in the pipeline.
If KDE wanted to send a clear message that 4.0 was not ready for anyone but early-adopters, the press release was the definitive place to do it. But they didn't, and all this angst is the result.
PR mistakes aside, I still think that KDE is, and has been, a great desktop. I've been using trunk as my main desktop for several weeks now, and now that 4.1 has been branched, I'm really looking forward to what 4.2 has to offer.
"I haven't lost my mind -- it's just backed up on tape somewhere."
So, since it's "not 4.0", just call it "4.-1.0"! :)
I'm a developer on a major Linux distribution. I can tell that everytime more people shows up on the official IRC channels with the "Feature X is b0rken, you suck!" attitude.
That's the price one pays for taking Linux mainstream.
Mainstream users do not care about opensourseness - they just want their system work and do what they want to do it. And with KDE4 at moment nothing works as people expect - if it works at all.
In Windows land it is different: there is nobody you can complain. Normally you have to call support or local technician or friend hoping that they can fix it for you. Linux at moment lacks such "local technician or friend" option. Also, people do not want to pay for support (which comes bundled with Windows).
Add here the overall mess PC hardware market is and you have recipe for huge long-term problems.
And KDE4 shows clearly the conceptual divide between what mainstream expects and how F/LOSS function. On one side they published raw unfinished environment as they had to as open source project ("talk is cheap. show me the code." thing). On another side many distros to get on a bleeding edge rushed to include it as KDE3 replacement. This is dead-end for normal PC users - and Ubuntu already has bunch of them. It would take some serious explaining that they can go back to KDE3, because for them what is installed is what they get.
The only solution I can see (and it was suggested many times already) is for Ubuntu (and other Linux vendors) start selling PCs/laptops under their own brand. I could never understand what held Red Hat in past - nor do I understand now why Novell/Ubuntu (while keeping desktop on their roadmaps) do not want to go vertical. After all their primary focus (and Linux focus at large) remains server space where it is not critical. For desktop to know precisely whom you can report your problem is crucial: end-users do know little about IRC, forums and mail lists - nor do they want to get involved. They just want it to work.
After all, vertical integration worked (and works) for YDL (from TerraSoft) and YDL is older than Ubuntu and has many users. And hey - it really works well.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
KDE 4.0.x does NOT crash "constantly" - make sure you use the distribution that cares about the desktop and their users, or packages that are stable. I have been running KDE 4.0.x since it came out on OpenSUSE 10.3 with 16 virtual desktops with at least 20 applications ( don't like to close apps and tend to leave them open for reuse) open at a time, and handful of plasmoids - the desktop is on for weeks sometimes (until I restart it for a patch) with everyday work load and hasn't crashed on me ONCE. And, this is with compositing and certain effects turned on too.
It does NOT have any "architectural deficiencies" - do you even know what you are talking about? KDE4, plasma, the new compositing window manager, Qt4, Akonadi provide vast architectural foundation for future application development. It is the best open source (if not all of software) effort for desktop architecture.
What I didn't hear in any of the above is " KDE 4 is too ^&$% slow," which is my major reason for dumping it. I thought I had an 8088 machine when I loaded Ubuntu with KDE 4.0. At first I thought it was a problem with Ubuntu, but at the advice of other Ubuntu users, I went with Gnome and have not looked back. The truth behind the comments about KDE 4 not having enough functionality is one thing, but if it doesn't work well AND it doesn't work quickly, stick a fork in it.
People who go to kde.org are mainly developers and distro maintainers. Few end-users (i think none) are getting their KDE off kde.org.
From that point of view, moving kde3 into legacy is right choice for kde.org.
P.S. That reminds me constantly the discussions about new KDE start menu. Many people complained that it sucks. But then on devel on blog asked: "how many pro/advanced users are using the menu?" The point was that new menu was optimized for end-users. For pro/advanced camp, KDE has a lot of better ways to start programs - starting from Alt-F2 dialog to Katapult. And in fact, comments to the blog post confirmed: yes, pro users use KDE start menu rarely. But end-users use it constantly. That's why the change was put in the default setup. More or less direct analogy to the kde.org and KDE3 and KDE4 - they optimize for frequent visitors, not ultra vocal whiners/bloggers.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
âoeSupport for icons on the background has been removedâ
Liar. Just tried it, and sure enough, you can have icons on the background.
This is the funniest moderation I've seen in a week.
It's too bad this creative use of mod points will probably fail in meta.
Fedora 9 is a bit of a mess with both KDE 4 and a version of gdm (log in manager) that can not have it's configuration changed by the GUI tools that come with it. Init is broken for changing run levels and the default fonts are not enough for many applications so I really do not know why it was released in that state.
Because Fedora is the alpha test version for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, just like Red Hat always claims it is not.
I gave up on Red Hat when they announced that free-as-in-beer users would be second-class citizens. If I wanted to test betas for free, I'd run Windows.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
> Wow, 7 minutes after the article was posted, and STILL no postings! Could this be my first FP? COULD IT???
No. Apparently not.
Not all of these are myths. Some are quite subjective. For example, "KDE should just have ported KDE 3.5 to Qt 4...". The FAQ answer states quite clearly that it was discussed as a serious option. It's a very subjective opinion, and NEITHER side is wrong. It's not a myth, it's a valid opinion on the history of the project.
A few others are equally subjective. The article isn't debunking myths, it's promoting orthodox opinion.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
[...] software that hasn't been out for even a few months and you're complaining it has shortcomings and some things missing? Stop press, news at 11.
This was a .0 release. Feature complete, ready to run, that's what 4.0 means! They tried to pull some weird-ass marketing thing to get "the community" to adopt early and accelerate development.
If I wanted marketing crap I'd buy Vista. All this does is paint KDE in teh same light as MS Windows, you can't use a release, wait for teh service pack (.1), except here we have to wait for the .2 release to have a usable "desktop".
Now I applaud the KDE guys for their work.
My first go was something like this: how to add apps to the kicker? how to add anything to the desktop? how to use the app-menu without wanting to smash the computer in? perhaps I can use the run-dialog, no? why's it crashing so often? how do I view the desktop? how to get the admin version of systemsettings? ... oh well maybe they got plasmoids working, oh maybe not? download some more, no? Erm, ...
Then I retried Gnome for the first time in 6 years or so, then I reverted back to KDE3 and got worried that KDE no longer had a future.
4.0 was pre-alpha, to dress it as anything else was IMHO a disservice to the team. On this basis, it's great, shows a lot of promise. KDE-4.1 is maybe a beta, but probably still alpha as some things are pushed to 4.2 (beta). So it looks like 4.3 will be an actual release a user can use. WTF!
I'm sticking with it, I like it for my internet terminal, just a user relations nightmare - but then KDE probably don't really care (should they?) same as no-one cares to allow you to create a HTML email template in KMail. "Do it yourself if you're that bothered". Fork off!
My first use of KDE4 I simply thought "this is not KDE". It was easier picking up Vista having used KDE3 than it was picking up KDE4. I think I still go with that: no kicker, no desktop, a less functional file manager ... it's something, it will be great I'm sure. It's not KDE, perhaps "OS K"?
Well duh! When KDE marketing says "4.0" and "release", users and distros expect software of release quality! They didn't say "technology preview", they didn't say "beta", they didn't even say "release candidate". Instead they said "release".
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Fuck your monospace font. That is all.
1. "KDE4 is finished"
That is a myth, yes. However, it is your own fault that this misconception exists.
2. "Releasing KDE 4.0 was a mistake"
Entirely subjective. I believe it was truly a PR disaster -- will anyone ever trust a KDE release again, after this? I'll go so far as to say it reflects badly on the FOSS community as a whole -- once upon a time, we were like Gmail in our versioning; alphas were as usable as others' betas, betas were as usable as others' releases, and releases were rock solid.
In particular:
The big question that should come up is: couldn't we have released what will now be KDE 4.1 as KDE 4.0? If that would have been possible, it would surely have been the right choice.
Glad we agree on that.
But it was not possible, because of several reasons.... Release early, release often.
I call bullshit. "Release early and often" refers to any release -- that is why most open source projects provide a public mirror of the latest code in version control.
There were many opportunities to name this properly. It could have been called "KDElibs 4.0", for example, to reflect the maturity of the underlying tech -- the reason most often cited for releasing now is to put it in the hands of developers, who are apparently too stupid to start developing before a dot-oh release.
Or it could have been called "KDE 3.9", or "KDE 4.0 Alpha". Or any number of other things.
Nobody has ever promised that KDE 4.0 would be functionally equivalent to KDE 3.5.
However, it is common convention in every piece of software I have ever used, or heard of, for successive stable releases to be at least as feature-complete as the previous stable release. This is not always done, but when it is not done, it is universally seen as a bad thing.
A less common convention is for even numbers to be stable, and odd numbers to be unstable -- for example, the 2.5 kernel was the development version, and 2.6 is stable. Sometimes, it's the minor verisions. But this was KDE 4 (even) dot 0 (even) -- with no "beta" or "rc" tacked on.
If the version number does not convey information about relative stability and featureset, what is it good for? You may as well release by git revision tags.
5. "Plasma lacks functionality"
Calling this a myth implies that the missing functionality exists somewhere. As I understand it, that functionality is merely scheduled to be implemented at some point in the future.
So the statement "Plasma lacks functionality" is, indeed, accurate. No one is implying that it will always lack functionality.
10. "KDE 4 vs 4.0 is confusing"
I'm sorry, this is confusing. Explaining what they mean doesn't make it any less confusing, any more than loudly proclaiming that 4.0 isn't complete will help the fact that you have ignored the meaning of a dot-oh release.
I love KDE. I love some of the stuff I'm seeing with KDE4, and I can't wait for it to be done. But enough of this charade -- the fact that 99% of your users are confused by "kde4 vs 4.0" should be some indication that you fucked up. Admit you made a mistake, then shut up and get back to work.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
None did that I'm aware of.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
openSUSE 11.0 has an installation screen that displays options for DE. They even included a really nice description of the options and have no option selected by default. You can see the screen on this page under 'Step 5: Desktop Selection'.
Yes, however the earlier Fedora releases have been far better managed.
Ok, yeah... I was dinking around in my account settings at the same time I was making this post...
It was one of those "What does this button do?" situations...
I hate it when that happens.
Of course its now its more like: "How the %$@#%$ do I turn it back?"
We have to. If not, what do you think will happen to the /.-effect, you insensitive clod?
Here be signatures
IÂm an end user and have always got my KDE from kde.org.
kde.org attempts to introduce people to KDE in the manner of talking to end users, not developers. Presumably this is the reason for having a different site for KDE developers. If your statement was correct, presumably kde.org would just link to distribution download sites.
To your second point. It is probably true that "power" users of KDE use the start menu infrequently but use it they do never the less. If you forget what the binary is called for frozen bubble, youÂll look for it in the start menu.
My mother, who is a grandmother too, is a great example of an end user of KDE. She has no clue about how everything works. She hates Windows but only because she has only ever used Linux. She can not bear the new KDE start menu or, indeed, much of the new interface at all.
Your last sentence is an indication of where KDE development has got lost.
Since when has anyone expected anything named ".0" to be a stable useful object?
".1" is your friend.
You probably have an outdated build.
> I didn't get XP until it had been out for years
Me, too.
As soon as Vista came out, I knew I should buy XP...
I know M$ is working hard right ATM to make Vista a better product. You just wait the next Windows version -- mark my words!
All brands belong to their respective owners, not to me. Yay! (this is a joke BTW)
Right, especially the ones that lost data and destroyed hardware.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Isn't this just the case of having higher than usual expectations for KDE than other closed source programs... I am typing this on my Macbook Pro and when 10.5.0 came out it also lacked some of the basic features.... Even the menu couldn't be solid like previous time but was only in opaque style.... Except for the best of fanboys, people were hesitant to upgrade to 10.5 and only after couple of point releases did it improve on the things... Same goes for Vista
Now isnt this the same case with KDE 4.... with the first release buggy and maybe missing couple of usual features.... Ofcourse I didnt like the (in)stability of KDE 4 and thus switched backed to 3.5 but the same thing happened with other OS'es and people are sut over reacting to it.
Dude, what distro are you using where you get your KDE by going to KDE.org, clicking download and finding the source packages and compiling them by hand in order? Linux From Scratch? And that's cool that your mother can't stand the new KDE menu, because guess what, you can replace it with the old one. Imagine that!
"We invented personal computing." - Bill Gates
Well, that's just it, and the entire point of this interview: It was feature-complete according to the development team's plans for what features should be included in that release. That plan didn't jive with end-users' expectations.
I personally can't speak to the bugs; I tried 4.0 on a live CD for a bit when it was released, and the fact that it didn't have the things I was expecting meant I didn't spend a lot of time with it. I just booted back to my hard drive and continued merrily using 3.5.whateverIhave. I'm sure there ARE bugs, and probably some nasty ones; changes of the magnitude that the KDE team were making are nearly impossible without them. I don't, however, know how common they are.
Honestly, I think it was bad communication. If what was released was what the dev team wanted released for 4.0, I don't blame them for what was released. They just didn't manage user expectations very well.
On a side note, I do remember near the end of when 4.0 was supposed to be released hearing that a number of things I was interested in wouldn't be released until 4.1, which is a major reason why I dropped into a live CD to see what 4.0 was all about. So, it wasn't like there was NO communication about it--but perhaps dot.kde.org wasn't the best place for it, or prominent enough.
It's unlikely that KDE4 will stay up long enough to allow you to say goatse 3x.
I'm exaggerating, my uptime experience with it in OpenSUSE11/Kubuntu has been hours, not minutes. WTF is something that crashes every few hours doing as a window manager in major distros?
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