Sorry for the rant but I have to get this off of my chest.
I started using Kubuntu back in the days of the beta versions of dapper. I quickly and easily was able to configure my desktop in ways that I had wished that I could do for years and I was in heaven. I have tried to contribute back to the Ubuntu/Kubuntu community as much as possible. I am heavily involved with my local LUG and actually helped to resurrect it. I almost always test alpha and beta and pre-release repos and contribute bug reports. I have written several how-to's in the ubuntu forums.
I am very upset now though. The decision to move to kde4 was a good one. The decision to remove kde 3.5 from the repos was one of the worst ones ever! I fear that it may even kill Kubuntu! There are several members of my local lug that have moved to other distros as a result, and if you look anywhere on the net you will find many kubuntu users abandoning ship. It is fact, not opinions that Kubuntu has lost many previous, and potential users due to this decision. This is due to one simple fact:
KDE 4.X IS SIMPLY NOT USABLE FOR MANY OF US! At least not for a daily desktop that must be depended on.
The list of problems and bugs is enormus. All of the configurability, powerfullness, and stable out of the box usability that drew me to the distro when I started out in linux is gone.
Many of the problems that I experience on a daily basis are not simply because of my setup or hardware. They are known bugs and missing features that are well known and have been triaged and will be dealt with in kde 4.2, or 4.3, or when the kde team can get to them. I did as much testing of kde4 as possible in gutsy in order to try to help move things along. I contributed to testing during intrepid alpha and beta. I expect things to break and have bugs when testing pre releases but not in a final release. To have a stable desktop for daily use I need to either use gnome, xfce, or boot to gutsy with kde 3.5.
At this point my desktop is not productive for me under intrepid and is unstable. I don't use compositing, I don't care about eye candy, I just want to get work done. KDE4 has a great potential for increasing my productivity, but definitely not at this time. I am even one of the lucky ones as I have many fewer unsolvable issues than many other users whom I have tried to help.
I and many others have had to make a choice since the release of intrepid:
1. switch distros
2. move to gnome, xfce, etc. for our desktop
3. enable unsupported personal repos to get kde 3.5
4. compile and build our own kde 3.5 packages
5. remain on gutsy, which is not an option for those needing the improved networking, or graphics driver support of intrepid
Here are my complaints:
1. There are two many applications that I used to use on a daily basis that are now missing
2. I can't sync my phone without going through 3 different hacked up work-arounds that I myself helped to contribute, and calendar sync is still hit or miss.
3. plasmoids are not stable at this point
4. forget using compositing on a good deal of hardware at this time (it was working at one point now it's slooow.)
5. I am missing valuable desktop space due to lack of configurability and applications
6. Applications crash due to broken bits of KDE4
7. the repos are broken, many packages that can not satisfy dependencies yet (i.e. kitchensync) this is due to upstream issues but the packages that can't have their dependencies met should not be in the repos.
And the list goes on.
The Kubuntu team has in my opinion refused to listen to the many daily users of the distro who have pleaded for kde 3.5 packages. Many of us have contributed significantly to improving the distro over the years and now we are being ignored. That is perhaps the most upsetting point.
Give us back kde 3.5 in the repos and we will continue to help with the development of kde4 packages. By not giving us the choice it has driven many of us away and the distro then looses testers and contributers. This is exactly the opposite of what the reasoning was when the decision to include kde4 was made.
What do you think?
I started using Kubuntu back in the days of the beta versions of dapper. I quickly and easily was able to configure my desktop in ways that I had wished that I could do for years and I was in heaven. I have tried to contribute back to the Ubuntu/Kubuntu community as much as possible. I am heavily involved with my local LUG and actually helped to resurrect it. I almost always test alpha and beta and pre-release repos and contribute bug reports. I have written several how-to's in the ubuntu forums.
I am very upset now though. The decision to move to kde4 was a good one. The decision to remove kde 3.5 from the repos was one of the worst ones ever! I fear that it may even kill Kubuntu! There are several members of my local lug that have moved to other distros as a result, and if you look anywhere on the net you will find many kubuntu users abandoning ship. It is fact, not opinions that Kubuntu has lost many previous, and potential users due to this decision. This is due to one simple fact:
KDE 4.X IS SIMPLY NOT USABLE FOR MANY OF US! At least not for a daily desktop that must be depended on.
The list of problems and bugs is enormus. All of the configurability, powerfullness, and stable out of the box usability that drew me to the distro when I started out in linux is gone.
Many of the problems that I experience on a daily basis are not simply because of my setup or hardware. They are known bugs and missing features that are well known and have been triaged and will be dealt with in kde 4.2, or 4.3, or when the kde team can get to them. I did as much testing of kde4 as possible in gutsy in order to try to help move things along. I contributed to testing during intrepid alpha and beta. I expect things to break and have bugs when testing pre releases but not in a final release. To have a stable desktop for daily use I need to either use gnome, xfce, or boot to gutsy with kde 3.5.
At this point my desktop is not productive for me under intrepid and is unstable. I don't use compositing, I don't care about eye candy, I just want to get work done. KDE4 has a great potential for increasing my productivity, but definitely not at this time. I am even one of the lucky ones as I have many fewer unsolvable issues than many other users whom I have tried to help.
I and many others have had to make a choice since the release of intrepid:
1. switch distros
2. move to gnome, xfce, etc. for our desktop
3. enable unsupported personal repos to get kde 3.5
4. compile and build our own kde 3.5 packages
5. remain on gutsy, which is not an option for those needing the improved networking, or graphics driver support of intrepid
Here are my complaints:
1. There are two many applications that I used to use on a daily basis that are now missing
2. I can't sync my phone without going through 3 different hacked up work-arounds that I myself helped to contribute, and calendar sync is still hit or miss.
3. plasmoids are not stable at this point
4. forget using compositing on a good deal of hardware at this time (it was working at one point now it's slooow.)
5. I am missing valuable desktop space due to lack of configurability and applications
6. Applications crash due to broken bits of KDE4
7. the repos are broken, many packages that can not satisfy dependencies yet (i.e. kitchensync) this is due to upstream issues but the packages that can't have their dependencies met should not be in the repos.
And the list goes on.
The Kubuntu team has in my opinion refused to listen to the many daily users of the distro who have pleaded for kde 3.5 packages. Many of us have contributed significantly to improving the distro over the years and now we are being ignored. That is perhaps the most upsetting point.
Give us back kde 3.5 in the repos and we will continue to help with the development of kde4 packages. By not giving us the choice it has driven many of us away and the distro then looses testers and contributers. This is exactly the opposite of what the reasoning was when the decision to include kde4 was made.
What do you think?
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