KDE redefines itself

[askrieger]

Re: KDE redefines itself

All I can say is that the version of KDE (4.?) used in the Kubuntu Intrepid release was unusable on my hardware. Accordingly, I felt that, as far as my (not so atypical) system was concerned, KDE4 was not ready. This was not a total disaster. I switched back to Hardy and waited for Jaunty, which worked well. I am a little concerned that the person who (at least, publicly) rationalised the switch to KDE4 before any of the other major Linux distros is now running the show.

[dibl]

Re: KDE redefines itself

IF programmers waited until their programs were "perfect" before they released them the only program you would be running would be "Hello World". ALL programs are unfinished products! GNOME 2.2 is unfinished. KDE 4.4.2 is unfinished. So is KDE 3.5.10

Or, as my programmer colleagues (looking out for their job security) would put it ...

The software is NEVER done!

[GreyGeek]

Re: KDE redefines itself

A few years ago the Scott Adam's cartoon, Dilbert, had one about the Pointy Haired Boss announcing that he was going to start paying for each bug that was found and fixed. Wally, the short guy with bald head and fuzzy hair over his ears, wearing glasses (looks sort of like me!) exclaimed in the last panel that he was gong to code himself an SUV!

The top ten most funny Dilbert cartoons are shown here.

[Adrian]

Re: KDE redefines itself

Look what Aaron Seigo (lead developer) is saying:

link

Seigo does express some concern about another user revolt like the one that happened with KDE 4.0. However, he blames the revolt partly on distribution's efforts to be the first with new software, and partly on inevitability.

"We have a very bad habit in free software in general that, whenever necessary development happens -- something that has to be done -- we're not good at creating new products around that," Seigo says. "We just say, 'Here's a new thing,' and we throw it out and see how it goes. The distributions really need to get better with how they deal with such things, because upstream can't realy stop and ossify our code. We need to do this every so many years, and the distributions have to learn to deal with it. And it's not exclusively a KDE thing; we saw the same thing with PulseAudio"

That's why you label things as "Alpha", "Beta"... but again, what do I know.

[dibl]

Re: KDE redefines itself

It is true -- I think there is a certain price to pay for being a "early adopter", such as all the moaning about KDE 4. But, I don't feel sorry for such whiners -- they have no business with cutting-edge distributions. They should stay with Slax.

[Snowhog]

Re: KDE redefines itself

Waa, waa, waaa.

[kubicle]

Re: KDE redefines itself

I am a little concerned that the person who (at least, publicly) rationalised the switch to KDE4 before any of the other major Linux distros is now running the show.

Err...Fedora9 came with 4.0 as (KDE) default (yes, *that's* a questionable call) nearly six months earlier than kubuntu's intrepid with 4.1, so kubuntu didn't really switch before any other major distro (and other "bleeding edge" distros followed the change in their next releases. If KDE4 had been postponed to jaunty, kubuntu would have likely been the last "bleeding edge" distro to make the switch).

And if Intrepid hadn't come with KDE4, I for one would have switched to another distro on my primary "bleeding edge" laptop.

All I can say is that the version of KDE (4.?) used in the Kubuntu Intrepid release was unusable on my hardware.

Can you remember the details? (video problem? networking? was it specifically a kde problem or a general intrepid problem? driver issue?)

Hardware bugs are often PITA, but if we'd call all software that has bugs beta quality software, we'd have nothing but beta software (which isn't a far fetched notion). The machines I tested KDE 4.1 on had no hardware related issues, and were generally quite usable with it (no show-stoppers).

That's why you label things as "Alpha", "Beta"... but again, what do I know.

The early releases didn't have all the features one could expect, but a feature set is not a qualifying factor between beta-releases and final-releases. Features are locked in long before beta stage, so one really can't say that "this product is still beta because it doesn't have the features I want/need" or "this product is still beta because it doesn't have all the features we've planned for it".

Beta-releases are about bug-fixing, and while 4.1 had it's bugs (like all software), it wasn't IMO "beta-quality-buggy"

I do agree that sometimes distros jump on "new things" somewhat early, but that's really why I use a bleeding edge distro like kubuntu...to get all the "new things" (I use more conservative debian stable on my server, for example).

If one does not want a "bleeding edge" distro, one should choose a more conservative distribution or use only the LTS releases of kubuntu.

[GreyGeek]

Re: KDE redefines itself

......
And if Intrepid hadn't come with KDE4, I for one would have switched to another distro on my primary "bleeding edge" laptop.
.....

And I would NOT have switched to Kubuntu!

[askrieger]

Re: KDE redefines itself

Personally, I don't regard Kubuntu as a "bleeding edge" distro. Debian Sid is a bleeding edge distro. Kubuntu was explicitly designed to be more user friendly than Sid without being as "stodgy" as Debian-Stable. I used Sid for a while until I decided that I'd rather get my work done than spend my time filing bug reports. I decided that using Kubuntu (I started with Breezy.) and contributing to this web site provided a better way of "giving back" while using Linux.

[MoonRise]

Re: KDE redefines itself

Personally, I don't regard Kubuntu as a "bleeding edge" distro. Debian Sid is a bleeding edge distro. Kubuntu was explicitly designed to be more user friendly than Sid without being as "stodgy" as Debian-Stable. I used Sid for a while until I decided that I'd rather get my work done than spend my time filing bug reports. I decided that using Kubuntu (I started with Breezy.) and contributing to this web site provided a better way of "giving back" while using Linux.

Same here except I never got as far as loading in Debian @ the time. As dumb as it sounds their downloads confused me somewhat. So I went with Ubuntu and fast migrated over to Kubuntu. The rest is history.

[GreyGeek]

Re: KDE redefines itself

When I first tried Debian I had to download 15 isos and save them on floppies. On a dialup that took a LONG time and I could never get all of them to pass the md5sum test. Later, I tried their net install but ran into a catch-22 problem because the installer couldn't configure NIC I was using to connect because I was using it to connect! (IIRC). After that I tried their CDROMs. I downloaded all of them and burned them, but ran into a similar problem with them that I encountered with the net installer. Recently I downloaded their LiveCD, got a good burn but it failed to boot due to a kernel crash.

[kubicle]

Re: KDE redefines itself

Personally, I don't regard Kubuntu as a "bleeding edge" distro. Debian Sid is a bleeding edge distro.

You're comparing apples and oranges. If you look at the development version of one distribution (debian sid) and compare it to a release version of another (kubuntu karmic), it isn't surprising that the devel version is more "bleeding edge".

Debian sid and the *devel* version of kubuntu are usually pretty close to one another when it comes to being on the edge. Lucid (as a future LTS release) is a bit of an exception, since it derives from debian testing (for some added stability).

Kubuntu is not a "rolling-release bleeding edge" distribution, but it's still bleeding edge...last I checked Debian sid didn't have KDE4.4 in their repos, which has been in lucid for 2 months.

[MoonRise]

Re: KDE redefines itself

When I first tried Debian I had to download 15 isos and save them on floppies. On a dialup that took a LONG time and I could never get all of them to pass the md5sum test. Later, I tried their net install but ran into a catch-22 problem because the installer couldn't configure NIC I was using to connect because I was using it to connect! (IIRC). After that I tried their CDROMs. I downloaded all of them and burned them, but ran into a similar problem with them that I encountered with the net installer. Recently I downloaded their LiveCD, got a good burn but it failed to boot due to a kernel crash.

Glad I'm not the only one then.

[dibl]

Re: KDE redefines itself

...last I checked Debian sid didn't have KDE4.4 in their repos, which has been in lucid for 2 months.

That's a fact. I must say the "rolling" character of sidux makes it attractive, in my opinion. There's no "new version trauma", you just have to run the updates once a week or so to keep from getting too far behind. The sidux installation on my EeePC is 18 months old, and shows no sign of any problems. However, when ia32-libs when bonkers last summer, it cost me my whole 64-bit desktop sidux installation, so it is possible to fall over the "cutting edge" and get cut real bad.

By the time a Kubuntu version makes it to release, it's pretty stable and drama-free, in my experience. I guess I'd call it "leading edge" more than "cutting edge" -- at least I hope so.

[Snowhog]

Re: KDE redefines itself

I guess I'd call it "leading edge" more than "cutting edge" -- at least I hope so.

"Trail Blazing" is how I might describe Kubuntu.