And even after all that, getting 3D accel, multimonitor etc. to reliably work has been extremely painful compared to Nvidia binary blobs which pretty much work for common scenarios like fully accel 3d gaming(I remember playing UT2004 a very good FPS on Linux with those drivers). So this means that either AMD/ATI has failed at providing open specs and code or that the community hasn't fully stepped up to convert those specs into "Working(TM)" drivers. Which is it?
Neither. These days (not talking about last decade when you played UT 2004) AMD employs a few developers to write the FOSS drivers in addition to the proprietary Catalyst drivers. The FOSS drivers have 3D acceleration. They may be not the best for gaming but they are more than capable of running modern DEs with compositing and such. The very latest GPUs are not supported because AMD's internal legal department has to review the specs first. I had little problems with AMD's FOSS drivers.
Perhaps *Linux* should create a stable ABI. Then vendors like Nvidia could write a driver and not have to worry about each point release of the kernel breaking it.
Next time check your facts. The main ABI/API breaker currently is Xorg.
I'm not so sure - Firefox has a stable and a beta branch - unless you specifically go looking for the beta (ie know its there) you'll get the stable, so consumers get stable, "power users" can have beta if they prefer.
Same with KDE at that point. No major distribution except Fedora shipped KDE 4.0 as default. Kubuntu only shipped it with a technical preview "remix". openSUSE 11.0 shipped it but warned about instabilities in the desktop selection screen of the installer. Mandriva and Debian didn't even touch it before 4.2.
In a perfect world you are right. But the KDE team consists of lots of volunteers who need to be rewarded from time to time or they leave. And the KDE team openly stated that the 4.0 release was effectively such a reward to keep their own people happy. Sure, they have been doing alpha and beta releases until then, but that might not have been enough. Keeping volunteers motivated is hard.
In addition KDE 3.5.9 was released after 4.0 and KDE 3.5.10 was released after 4.1. They didn't do the 3.5.x releases just for fun. They were done because 3.5.x was better at that time.
KDE (the desktop environment) was ready for release, that's why it was released. The problem is that all the services and applications that come with it weren't.
It was the other way around. Plasma Desktop was still pre-release (or a typical dot-0 release -- however you put it) but the applications included with 4.0 were mostly fine months before the actual release. E.g. openSUSE 10.3 included the entire KDE Games 4.0 bundle -- officially still beta but perfectly stable.
The solution to releasing software that isn't ready for people to use is not to release it.
It wasn't even released to users. From the beginning of the KDE project up to this very day all releases of major KDE software is in source-only form. And to be fair, of all major distributions, only Fedora didn't get the message! Not a single other major distribution defaulted to 4.0.
"KDE is an international free software community" -- Yes, well, when I install Linux it asks me whether I want a Gnome or a KDE desktop. Never thought I was choosing between two "international free software communities";)
I use Linux daily. Fine system except for pulseaudio. Are there any full-featured desktop distros that don't depend on that terrible sound server? Can someone with weak linux fu (me) recompile gnome and all the apps to go back to ALSA?
GNOME and GNOME apps depend on PulseAudio. In KDE land PulseAudio is optional thanks to the Phonon playback stack and multiple possible back-ends. I use Plasma Desktop, Phonon-VLC, and pure ALSA. I have no sound problems at all.
Both KDE and Gnome are hardware-intensive desktops. There is a reason why Canonical switched to Unity. A KDE powered tablet? With KDE on a diet, maybe.
Is Kmail1 still being developed? I loved classic Kmail but I've been limping along for months with the badly broken Akonadi based Kmail I got whacked with in a surprise Kubuntu release, long before it was ready.
No, KMail 1 is dead. The code is obviously still in SVN. As for Kubuntu: You became a victim of Canonical's KDE sabotage. I suggest you switch to openSUSE, enable the KDE Release 4.8 repository and retry KMail 4.8.
Clementine is not a KDE product. It was forked from KDE code (Amarok 1.4) but Clementine is independent. Amarok is a KDE music player, Juk is another, and Bangarang is a multi-purpose media player that also plays and manages music.
Please adopt KDE as the Ubuntu UI. Thanks. Please don't listen to the troll-lets and haters. KDE has a future because KDE doesn't despise its users and their wishes.
God, please no. Canonical did enough damage in the time Kubuntu was officially "supported" -- meaning sabotaged to get an inferior experience to openSUSE, Pardus, etc. Kubuntu had its best release with the two developers assigned to other tasks and a handful of community members doing the work. Now with Blue Systems leading Kubuntu there might be a positive change in quality but let's see until 12.10.
January 29 The Spark Tablet was announced (later renamed to Vivaldi). Two months it was supposed to be on the market. Now, it's 2 months after that and it still isn't shipping...
I want the tablet, but hell if I know when I'll be able to buy one.
Nobody really needs the Vivaldi tablet. It is just off-the-shelf hardware with Linux and Plasma Active installed. Plasma Active is *not* vaporware. Two major versions were already released with the third major release planed to coincide with KDE Platform 4.9 to no longer rely on Platform 4.8 + patches. KP 4.9 is set for release in August: http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/KDE-SC-4-9-coming-in-August-1445350.html You can get eg. an Acer Iconia W500 and install a regular Linux distribution with Plasma Active on it right now. Packages exist for openSUSE and AFAIK Kubuntu. Probably also other distributions but I am not aware of them.
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And even after all that, getting 3D accel, multimonitor etc. to reliably work has been extremely painful compared to Nvidia binary blobs which pretty much work for common scenarios like fully accel 3d gaming(I remember playing UT2004 a very good FPS on Linux with those drivers). So this means that either AMD/ATI has failed at providing open specs and code or that the community hasn't fully stepped up to convert those specs into "Working(TM)" drivers. Which is it?
Neither. These days (not talking about last decade when you played UT 2004) AMD employs a few developers to write the FOSS drivers in addition to the proprietary Catalyst drivers.
The FOSS drivers have 3D acceleration. They may be not the best for gaming but they are more than capable of running modern DEs with compositing and such. The very latest GPUs are not supported because AMD's internal legal department has to review the specs first.
I had little problems with AMD's FOSS drivers.
Nvidia just made the damn drivers. Now that is not good enough.
Yes, times change. Deal with it.
Perhaps *Linux* should create a stable ABI. Then vendors like Nvidia could write a driver and not have to worry about each point release of the kernel breaking it.
Next time check your facts. The main ABI/API breaker currently is Xorg.
NVidia's idea of a reference driver was the crap called 'nv' which IMO was even less useful than the plain VESA driver.
Seriously... who uses a GUI on unix?
Every single Mac OS X user out there.
2. Lack of polish
See the latest 4.3 screenshot
4.3 is long deprecated. 4.8 is the latest.
Because I'm a programmer and I just cannot support anything that forces people to use C++.
Next time try a more convincing lie.
http://techbase.kde.org/Development/Languages#Stable_and_Mature
http://techbase.kde.org/Development/Tutorials/Plasma/JavaScript/API
http://techbase.kde.org/Development/Tutorials/Plasma/QML/API
I do run KDE quite a bit, and make it available for family members.
However, it took less than 45 minutes with a window manager-- in my case, i3 (http://i3wm.org/) to totally switch for my
work and daily purposes.
I don't get it. KWin supports all those modes, too. (And more!)
A bloated race to the fattest!
http://www.kde.org/announcements/4.6/platform.php
http://windows.kde.org/
Enjoy
I would add "shiny" to your "weird". KDE has always felt too shiny to me.
And switching themes is too complicated for you?
BTW: What is shiny about KDE? By default most GUI elements are gray.
I'm not so sure - Firefox has a stable and a beta branch - unless you specifically go looking for the beta (ie know its there) you'll get the stable, so consumers get stable, "power users" can have beta if they prefer.
Same with KDE at that point. No major distribution except Fedora shipped KDE 4.0 as default. Kubuntu only shipped it with a technical preview "remix". openSUSE 11.0 shipped it but warned about instabilities in the desktop selection screen of the installer. Mandriva and Debian didn't even touch it before 4.2.
In a perfect world you are right. But the KDE team consists of lots of volunteers who need to be rewarded from time to time or they leave. And the KDE team openly stated that the 4.0 release was effectively such a reward to keep their own people happy. Sure, they have been doing alpha and beta releases until then, but that might not have been enough. Keeping volunteers motivated is hard.
In addition KDE 3.5.9 was released after 4.0 and KDE 3.5.10 was released after 4.1. They didn't do the 3.5.x releases just for fun. They were done because 3.5.x was better at that time.
KDE (the desktop environment) was ready for release, that's why it was released. The problem is that all the services and applications that come with it weren't.
It was the other way around. Plasma Desktop was still pre-release (or a typical dot-0 release -- however you put it) but the applications included with 4.0 were mostly fine months before the actual release. E.g. openSUSE 10.3 included the entire KDE Games 4.0 bundle -- officially still beta but perfectly stable.
The solution to releasing software that isn't ready for people to use is not to release it.
It wasn't even released to users. From the beginning of the KDE project up to this very day all releases of major KDE software is in source-only form.
And to be fair, of all major distributions, only Fedora didn't get the message! Not a single other major distribution defaulted to 4.0.
"KDE is an international free software community" -- Yes, well, when I install Linux it asks me whether I want a Gnome or a KDE desktop. Never thought I was choosing between two "international free software communities" ;)
WTF? Obviously Plasma Desktop is a KDE desktop because it is a desktop by KDE.
If your distribution calls the desktop simply "KDE" then your distribution is simply wrong: http://kde.org/community/whatiskde/
http://kde.org/workspaces/plasmadesktop/
I use Linux daily. Fine system except for pulseaudio. Are there any full-featured desktop distros that don't depend on that terrible sound server? Can someone with weak linux fu (me) recompile gnome and all the apps to go back to ALSA?
GNOME and GNOME apps depend on PulseAudio.
In KDE land PulseAudio is optional thanks to the Phonon playback stack and multiple possible back-ends. I use Plasma Desktop, Phonon-VLC, and pure ALSA. I have no sound problems at all.
Both KDE and Gnome are hardware-intensive desktops. There is a reason why Canonical switched to Unity. A KDE powered tablet? With KDE on a diet, maybe.
As others already explained, KDE is not a desktop or even the name of software: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDE
As for your diet remark: http://www.kde.org/announcements/4.6/platform.php (from 1.5 years ago)
Is Kmail1 still being developed? I loved classic Kmail but I've been limping along for months with the badly broken Akonadi based Kmail I got whacked with in a surprise Kubuntu release, long before it was ready.
No, KMail 1 is dead.
The code is obviously still in SVN. As for Kubuntu: You became a victim of Canonical's KDE sabotage. I suggest you switch to openSUSE, enable the KDE Release 4.8 repository and retry KMail 4.8.
Hopefully it won't have kmail2...
No, it won't. KMail2 was actually never released. Only an alpha version shipped along K Desktop Environment 1.1 ever saw the light of day: http://kde.org/announcements/changelogs/changelog1_0to1_1.php
After that the KDE community continued to develop KMail 1.x until they eventually shipped KMail 4.6 -- the current release is KMail 4.8.
Amarok or Clementine?
Clementine is not a KDE product. It was forked from KDE code (Amarok 1.4) but Clementine is independent.
Amarok is a KDE music player, Juk is another, and Bangarang is a multi-purpose media player that also plays and manages music.
Please adopt KDE as the Ubuntu UI. Thanks. Please don't listen to the troll-lets and haters. KDE has a future because KDE doesn't despise its users and their wishes.
God, please no. Canonical did enough damage in the time Kubuntu was officially "supported" -- meaning sabotaged to get an inferior experience to openSUSE, Pardus, etc.
Kubuntu had its best release with the two developers assigned to other tasks and a handful of community members doing the work. Now with Blue Systems leading Kubuntu there might be a positive change in quality but let's see until 12.10.
January 29 The Spark Tablet was announced (later renamed to Vivaldi). Two months it was supposed to be on the market. Now, it's 2 months after that and it still isn't shipping...
I want the tablet, but hell if I know when I'll be able to buy one.
Nobody really needs the Vivaldi tablet. It is just off-the-shelf hardware with Linux and Plasma Active installed. Plasma Active is *not* vaporware. Two major versions were already released with the third major release planed to coincide with KDE Platform 4.9 to no longer rely on Platform 4.8 + patches. KP 4.9 is set for release in August: http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/KDE-SC-4-9-coming-in-August-1445350.html
You can get eg. an Acer Iconia W500 and install a regular Linux distribution with Plasma Active on it right now. Packages exist for openSUSE and AFAIK Kubuntu. Probably also other distributions but I am not aware of them.
Excepting the Flash player and PDF reader inclusion, reader what is the difference between the two browsers?
How can we know? As Chrome is not FOSS, it's pretty hard to do a diff between Chrome and Chromium.
what on earth does lightweight mean ?
It means that Calligra can run on smartphones while LO cannot.