Even providing useful feedback is something you can do
Just because they don't come in the form of detailed bug reports does not being that these complaints aren't useful feedback. Even though the software is free, they are STILL your users! They may not know how to best express their frustrations, but you should try to hear what they are saying.
I'm not disagreeing, that's why I explicitly mentioned useful feedback as something which is valued. I didn't say "detailed bug report" but I do explicitly mean to disallow the kind of user who slings vitriol at random developers for reasons no more detailed than "KDE 4 sucks!!!1" or "the new file manager sucks, I liked Konqueror" when Konqueror is still there in KDE 4... (not to mention 'Dolphin sucks' does not help us fix it)
How is it possible that open source developers have been working on KDE for a decade now and they still can't come up with something remotely polished as Win2k was years ago?
I could be wrong, but I do believe that most (if not all) of the people working on KDE/qt itself are working for Trolltech, and do get paid for it.
You're wrong.;)
Trolltech (now Nokia) does sponsor some developers to work on KDE, including at least one full-time dev that I know of. But KDE does not have a large paid developer base, and a lot of the paid developers work at jobs that are not KDE-specific (i.e. many work for Novell on OpenSUSE but their responsibilities are more far reaching than KDE). There are a few Nokia employees who got jobs at Trolltech to work on Qt (and they continue to contribute). But overall the involvement in Trolltech/Nokia to KDE development is really not that high.
But hey, if anyone wants to sponsor my work on KDE I'll be available around 2011 or so.;)
I've written enough software to realise that an x.0 release comes with new technology that will contain some regressions, but it's really a bad sign when the x.0 is announced as "this is really just a preview" and then the x.1 still isn't meant to be mature.
Well I suppose this is better than when people were saying that KDE claimed that 4.0 would solve world hunger but KDE did not claim that 4.0 was really just a preview: The KDE 4.0 Announcement, although I do believe that at some point KDE released a KDE 4 tech preview.
I'm sure that posters on Planet KDE tried to warn people not to get *too* excited about KDE 4 but that would have been true of any n+1.0 release I think.
In retrospect I suppose the KDE Marketing Group could have done a better job at expressing clearly about where KDE 4.0 was going to differ from KDE 3.5 though, which probably would have stopped a lot of the confusion early.
As far as KDE 4.1 I'm obviously biased but it's mature enough for me, it feels worlds better than 4.0 (even 4.0.4). There's still KDE 3.5 features I miss and I need to get JuK to crash less still =D. But I never have time...:-/. Either way I would not claim that 4.1 is immature by any means at least.
Keep in mind that there were (and are) a lot of feature regressions which get fixed up over time. But they were not due to us designing them out, it was due to the fact that they did not get ported over in time.
That's actually what makes it so bad: the regressions aren't unintentional bugs, but anticipated shortcomings.
True. But you gotta release sometime.:-/ KDE 4 is at least sufficient for a large enough set of users that it would be unfair to have held it back until it had enough features for the larger set of users.
Oooo, I have an idea. If I am not happy with my Jeep, I'll just go make my own! Yea! I am not happy with my current medication, I'll just go make my own!
How much did you pay for that Jeep? How much did you pay (in time, money, whatever) for a desktop environment provided to you for Free (both in source and monetary compensation) including all the millions of lines of C++, the free art included, etc. etc?
Now I know this sounds snide but really the expectation are worlds different. So yes, if you are dissatisfied with KDE 4 you have many options, including KDE 3.5, GNOME, etc. etc. But don't be surprised when someone makes the great recommendation to help out yourself. Even providing useful feedback is something you can do, but pissing and moaning about software you got for absolutely nothing and then wondering why people suggest you help seems weird to me.:-/
But they were not due to us designing them out, it was due to the fact that they did not get ported over in time.
So, would it be fair to say that you haven't removed any features, you just haven't gotten them all working yet? If so, that would give KDE users something to look forward to, instead of something to complain about.
Well this is my personal feeling about features/configurability:
Adding an option to do something that the program should be able to figure out is a bad idea. So in that regard we should be trying to minimize option dialog clutter by making programs smarter.
Programs need to be useful however, including meeting the expectation of users of previous KDE 3 versions of the program. So yes, the idea is to get everything that was working in KDE 3 to work in KDE 4.
In the case of Plasma, it is a replacement, not a port, of kicker, kdesktop, etc. The Plasma devs are not trying to force people into using one specific desktop metaphor or anything like that. Even the much maligned KDE 4.0 release had support for desktop icons (which was a feature regression in my case since I disable them.;) KDE 4.1 will have a type of applet called a folder view that will show a file view for any folder, not just the ~/Desktop. So you can use it full-desktop if you'd like (although IIRC the desktop background will be obscured) but you can also have more than 1 (i.e. a coding directory or a web site directory). Or in other words, in cases where a KDE application is replaced outright we'd like to implement the useful features of older version but it may not necessarily be a 1:1 correspondence if we feel there is a better way to implement the feature.
So yes, the idea is to make things that worked before work again if it doesn't work now. Of course the usual disclaimers apply, full refund if it doesn't work, patches always accepted, help always appreciated, etc.
I've tried the first beta of 4.1 and while its much more functional than 4.0, its still not there and probably won't be for a few more releases. On the other hand, I remember that KDE 3.0 was, while more functional than 4.0, also much rougher than 3.5, so I can't complain too much.
Also the initial KDE 2.0 release met with much the same reaction back in the day as a lot of KDE 1.x features were changed, Qt changed a lot to modernize and adapt Unicode, etc. However the metaphors at least were the same, not to mention the open source press wasn't nearly as large back then.
is the incredibly slow-ass file previews. What happened? I can now open up a folder of digital camera images and have Dolphin or Konqueror preview them, and 45 minutes later it will still be working to get all the thumbnails done.
The code itself is actually much unchanged (at least insofar as it still uses KIO). Perhaps the problem is related to Strigi slowdowns for Dolphin in KDE 4.0? In addition Dolphin in KDE 4.0 would try to show previews for all items in a directory. IN KDE 4.1 many optimizations were done such that thumbnails are only generated for visible items. Hopefully this should help.
You know, I thought that the idea of Beta software was so that people could report
unexplained crashes back to the developers...
And it certainly works for that. A released version always gets more widespread testing though, and KDE is not the only project that experiences this effect. After all, how often do you see the advice to not use a.0 release because it's buggy? That's because people don't test alpha, beta, or RC releases.
We delayed the release of KDE 4.0 for two months because it wasn't ready for release, and then debated internally (you can check our public mailing lists) before the release as to whether it should be called 4.0 or another release candidate. In the end it was judged that the known bugs were not serious enough to block release. Keep in mind that there were (and are) a lot of feature regressions which get fixed up over time. But they were not due to us designing them out, it was due to the fact that they did not get ported over in time.
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Just because they don't come in the form of detailed bug reports does not being that these complaints aren't useful feedback. Even though the software is free, they are STILL your users! They may not know how to best express their frustrations, but you should try to hear what they are saying.
I'm not disagreeing, that's why I explicitly mentioned useful feedback as something which is valued. I didn't say "detailed bug report" but I do explicitly mean to disallow the kind of user who slings vitriol at random developers for reasons no more detailed than "KDE 4 sucks!!!1" or "the new file manager sucks, I liked Konqueror" when Konqueror is still there in KDE 4... (not to mention 'Dolphin sucks' does not help us fix it)
I could be wrong, but I do believe that most (if not all) of the people working on KDE/qt itself are working for Trolltech, and do get paid for it.
You're wrong. ;)
Trolltech (now Nokia) does sponsor some developers to work on KDE, including at least one full-time dev that I know of. But KDE does not have a large paid developer base, and a lot of the paid developers work at jobs that are not KDE-specific (i.e. many work for Novell on OpenSUSE but their responsibilities are more far reaching than KDE). There are a few Nokia employees who got jobs at Trolltech to work on Qt (and they continue to contribute). But overall the involvement in Trolltech/Nokia to KDE development is really not that high.
But hey, if anyone wants to sponsor my work on KDE I'll be available around 2011 or so. ;)
I've written enough software to realise that an x.0 release comes with new technology that will contain some regressions, but it's really a bad sign when the x.0 is announced as "this is really just a preview" and then the x.1 still isn't meant to be mature.
Well I suppose this is better than when people were saying that KDE claimed that 4.0 would solve world hunger but KDE did not claim that 4.0 was really just a preview: The KDE 4.0 Announcement, although I do believe that at some point KDE released a KDE 4 tech preview.
I'm sure that posters on Planet KDE tried to warn people not to get *too* excited about KDE 4 but that would have been true of any n+1.0 release I think.
In retrospect I suppose the KDE Marketing Group could have done a better job at expressing clearly about where KDE 4.0 was going to differ from KDE 3.5 though, which probably would have stopped a lot of the confusion early.
As far as KDE 4.1 I'm obviously biased but it's mature enough for me, it feels worlds better than 4.0 (even 4.0.4). There's still KDE 3.5 features I miss and I need to get JuK to crash less still =D. But I never have time... :-/. Either way I would not claim that 4.1 is immature by any means at least.
Keep in mind that there were (and are) a lot of feature regressions which get fixed up over time. But they were not due to us designing them out, it was due to the fact that they did not get ported over in time.
That's actually what makes it so bad: the regressions aren't unintentional bugs, but anticipated shortcomings.
True. But you gotta release sometime. :-/ KDE 4 is at least sufficient for a large enough set of users that it would be unfair to have held it back until it had enough features for the larger set of users.
Oooo, I have an idea. If I am not happy with my Jeep, I'll just go make my own! Yea! I am not happy with my current medication, I'll just go make my own!
How much did you pay for that Jeep? How much did you pay (in time, money, whatever) for a desktop environment provided to you for Free (both in source and monetary compensation) including all the millions of lines of C++, the free art included, etc. etc?
Now I know this sounds snide but really the expectation are worlds different. So yes, if you are dissatisfied with KDE 4 you have many options, including KDE 3.5, GNOME, etc. etc. But don't be surprised when someone makes the great recommendation to help out yourself. Even providing useful feedback is something you can do, but pissing and moaning about software you got for absolutely nothing and then wondering why people suggest you help seems weird to me. :-/
But they were not due to us designing them out, it was due to the fact that they did not get ported over in time.
So, would it be fair to say that you haven't removed any features, you just haven't gotten them all working yet? If so, that would give KDE users something to look forward to, instead of something to complain about.
Well this is my personal feeling about features/configurability:
So yes, the idea is to make things that worked before work again if it doesn't work now. Of course the usual disclaimers apply, full refund if it doesn't work, patches always accepted, help always appreciated, etc.
I've tried the first beta of 4.1 and while its much more functional than 4.0, its still not there and probably won't be for a few more releases. On the other hand, I remember that KDE 3.0 was, while more functional than 4.0, also much rougher than 3.5, so I can't complain too much.
Also the initial KDE 2.0 release met with much the same reaction back in the day as a lot of KDE 1.x features were changed, Qt changed a lot to modernize and adapt Unicode, etc. However the metaphors at least were the same, not to mention the open source press wasn't nearly as large back then.
is the incredibly slow-ass file previews. What happened? I can now open up a folder of digital camera images and have Dolphin or Konqueror preview them, and 45 minutes later it will still be working to get all the thumbnails done.
The code itself is actually much unchanged (at least insofar as it still uses KIO). Perhaps the problem is related to Strigi slowdowns for Dolphin in KDE 4.0? In addition Dolphin in KDE 4.0 would try to show previews for all items in a directory. IN KDE 4.1 many optimizations were done such that thumbnails are only generated for visible items. Hopefully this should help.
And it certainly works for that. A released version always gets more widespread testing though, and KDE is not the only project that experiences this effect. After all, how often do you see the advice to not use a .0 release because it's buggy? That's because people don't test alpha, beta, or RC releases.
We delayed the release of KDE 4.0 for two months because it wasn't ready for release, and then debated internally (you can check our public mailing lists) before the release as to whether it should be called 4.0 or another release candidate. In the end it was judged that the known bugs were not serious enough to block release. Keep in mind that there were (and are) a lot of feature regressions which get fixed up over time. But they were not due to us designing them out, it was due to the fact that they did not get ported over in time.