Muon Discover broken in many aspects

[Goddard]

I've noticed discover is broken in a lot of ways. If it loses focus it takes you back to the home page...Not sure why some one would explicitly put this feature into it. The text runs off the carousel at the top. The stars run off the right side of its box if it is a smaller size. I don't mean to be super harsh, but what happened? In 14.04 it worked perfectly without error. Search is horribly broken as well.

How did this get released as an LTS?

[TWPonKubuntu]

I suspect (my opinion) it was case of trying to meet a deadline for release.

There are, in 16.04, other features which have similar types of glitches and they will be addressed as time goes on (the squeaky wheel will get the most grease...).

I'm testing 16.04 on a separate drive, but I'll continue to use 14.04 for some time (a year?) to come...
No way am I going to move my development code onto 16.04 at this point.

There is also something to be said for the post-beta testing by actual users... But that can't be used as reason to encourage general usage.

[Goddard]

I understand.

Also isn't Discover an upstream package? What changes would Kubuntu maintainers need to change for that? Just curious...I'd love to learn more about what is involved.

Maybe the release cycle for LTS should be put out further so that when an actual LTS release is put out it is actually good software?

Excuse my wild questions, I am just getting involved in KDE.

[TWPonKubuntu]

Re changing the release cycle, it is a case of "herding cats". Not gonna happen

I'd rather have a fixed release period, with the understanding that new releases will be "buggy"... Don't give in to the urge to be on the "bleeding edge"... there is a reason it is bloody.

I think it is common sense to do some serious testing before committing to an upgrade of your working system, hence the need to have at least a spare hard drive, if not a full VM environment, in which to test.

It helps too, that I've been reading this forum for some time and can follow the reports of other users. There are some very knowledgeable and helpful people here...

[Goddard]

If distro maintainers aren't putting stable working software into a release I really don't understand their job. Otherwise isn't that just an unstable development branch of the app developers code?

[TWPonKubuntu]

Shhhhh! You'll give away the secret.

In a sense, no software is EVER completely free of bugs and NEVER goes out of development until the developers die. And then, Open Source can be picked up by others and carried to the next stage of development. At some point, the developers see that a new version is easier than Kludging the existing code.

Windoze is a case in point.

I'm sorry if your expectations of a completely stable release do not match what we have, but one of your other choices is to join the development team (salary is... wait, you want me to pay you for doing this?).

That really is not a joke. What we get in return is Open Source software, which you are free to modify. Again Windoze is the other side of this coin. I know which one I choose, every time.

[GreyGeek]

Shhhhh! You'll give away the secret.

In a sense, no software is EVER completely free of bugs and NEVER goes out of development until the developers die. And then, Open Source can be picked up by others and carried to the next stage of development. At some point, the developers see that a new version is easier than Kludging the existing code.

....

Exactly. The only code that is frozen is that of projects that have been dropped. The kernel, KDE and the apps are all undergoing constant change because the computer landscape is constantly changing, otherwise we'd still be running Apple ][+'s and COCO's.

I began using the Qt API at the tail end of 3.x. It was such a kludge that I almost dropped it. Kludge because the suggested mode of development was writing everything through the Qt Designer's textboxes, comboboxes and radio buttons. Troll Tech had a problem. They wanted to modularize the Qt API to make changes easier by adopting the full power of C++ and objects. Should they add to Qt3 to carry along prior users works or start fresh? Fortunately, they chose fresh from the ground up development. That spelled the end of the KDE3 desktop because Troll Tech could not develop and support BOTH Qt3 and Qt4, so they set a timeline to give other developers a chance to switch over, and a somewhat useful tool to help them switch Qt3 apps to Qt4. (Because not all object in the Qt3 API were carried over into the Qt4 API). This meant that any distro maker who wanted to continue with the KDE3 desktop had to take on the support of both their desktop AND the Qt3 API, in addition to supporting the KDE4 DE. No distros had the money or manpower to do that. So, a few developers began the Trinity Desktop Environment project and still continue to support it to this day. Several distros offer it as a DE option.

Fortunately, Qt 4 came out at that time and it switched to the sane mode of development where the Designer was just that, a GUI design tool. A normal editor, compiler and C++ coding paradigm took over, making things a lot easier and more flexible, at least from my POV.

[Goddard]

Awesome bit of history.

I thought the point of an LTS was to freeze things so you had time to make it stable before release?

[TWPonKubuntu]

Not so much "freeze" but to continue to make changes (Long Term Support) to keep the version running while the tools and utilities continue to change.

For instance, 14.04 (the previous LTS version) has had a LOT of Linux Kernel updates in its lifetime. The various utilities and applications have had multiple updates as, for instance, security vulnerabilities have been patched.

An LTS release is a living entity which the developers have promised to keep working as changes occur.

It's the opposite of a freeze, which is what happens to the intermediate releases (xx.10 etc.) at the end of their short lifetime. They give the users a chance to play with the newest (still bleeding) toys, at the risk of breaking their work.

And still, the LTS releases have glitches at the formal release date. I will give the developers an "out" here, because there is no way they can test every possible platform for every possible combination of circumstances. I'm sure they develop (write their code) for the more current hardware and work backwards, later, to support older equipment.

It is a major plus that most Linux distros continue to work on older systems.