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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.'"
The fact that you replied tells us what about you having a life...? ;-)
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
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'.
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!
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.
Why don't you just switch to Konqueror? KDE4 gives you that flexibility.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
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.
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.
Yeah? Well the G in GNOME stands for Goatse!
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.
No, the O in gnome stands for goatse !
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?
No, the O in gnome stands for goatse !
I will never be able to look at the word GNOME again.
Lock the wife and the dog in the boot of the car.
Return one hour later.
Who's happy to see you?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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."
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.