Project Timelord -- Initial consideration

[Alessandro Ghersi]

On Tuesday 20 October 2009 10:21:09 pm Jonathan Thomas wrote:
> Hello fellow Kubuntu developers,
> 
> Kubuntu, as we know, is a fairly good KDE distribution. (Otherwise we would
> not be here reading this mailing list) However, things are not perfect. In
> fact, things could be much better.
> 
> "But what is Project Timelord?", you may ask, "and how does it relate to
> Kubuntu's problems?" Both are good questions. Project Timelord is the
> brainchild of the Kubuntu developer legend Harald Sitter; the culmination
>  of several weeks of brainstorming by a handful of Kubuntu developers,
>  focused towards identifying problems Kubuntu currently faces and solutions
>  for these problems.
> 
> And now, we wish to bring Project Timelord to the attention of the greater
> Kubuntu development community for input. You can find the internal
>  developer release announcement that outlines the purpose and proposed
>  solutions of Project Timelord at:
>  http://docs.google.com/View?id=dfc7xjfj_18g8k5ztg4
> 
> If it is decided that we would like to adopt Project Timelord as a goal to
> work towards over the next few cycles, we can start towards prioritizing
>  the solutions and work towards forming a roadmap to implementing these
>  solutions. This way we can all stay in the know of what is going on even
>  if we are unable to attend UDS, and those attending UDS will have a
>  unified goal to work towards as they flesh out the implementation details
>  for Kubuntu 10.04, Lucid Lynx.
> 
> The purpose of this email is to generate discussion to determine whether
>  the Kubuntu developer community wishes to adopt this plan or not, as well
>  as to provide input on the brainstormed solutions. Until it is decided, we
>  would politely ask you to not announce the existence of the project to the
>  general public. We would like to hear your thoughts on the initiative
>  here, though. :)
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> Jonathan "JontheEchidna" Thomas.
> 

* About packaging flaw:

We lack in some "small" aspects of packaging.
iirc last merge with Debian was 6 months ago with KDE 4.2.2, I think we should 
merge every major release of KDE, to take our copyright and *.lintian files 
updated, for example.
Maybe Debian has improved the quality in its packages (like *.install files, 
move files from one package to another one).
At least we should see what Debian has done more often.


* About user-developer interaction (my experience about thing that users wants 
see):

Personally, my communication in my loco forum is great :)
We keep a thread where speaking about new versions of KDE and Kubuntu 
development releases.
Many users have helped me to testing the packages from update-staging ppa, and 
I can say they are very happy to help developers. But, they would also see 
what they want. I don't know if it's wish of only Kubuntu Italian users but 
their wish is a Kubuntu ready for use.

Users are tired (after fresh install) to install every time for example 
Synaptic because kpackagekit doesn't manage some packages upgrade or in 
general because it doesn't manage their needs.
They would see kpackagekit on default installation when is ready. And only 
when is ready.
In mean time they would see a replacing of that. 

Users are ready (sorry but not like some Kubuntu dev) for Kubuntu with gtk 
apps with QtCurve integration theme or one like that. "One like that" if it's 
better than QtCurve, obviously.
They want browse their phone and they must install blueman or they want an 
internet connection and they must sometimes (in special cases) install 
Ubuntu's networkmanager. Ah, well, Firefox too. Many Windows users install 
Firefox, after Windows installation. So for Windows users who switch to 
Kubuntu is strange not see Firefox. They say: "I used Firefox on Windows and 
now I'm finally switched to an open source distribution where there is no 
Firefox?
Btw, now they are very happy that there is a "Firefox Installer".
I'm wondering if we put Firefox on the cd what happens...they come 
home to any developer to embrace? :)

For me, the target users of Kubuntu distribution is users (especially novice 
users) and not Kubuntu developer. So we must listen them and not follow 
mysterious qt-only policy.
They see many KDE distributions with GTK apps (like Opensuse, Sabayon, 
Mandriva... ) and they see that there aren't the problems that we have, so are 
encouraged to swith to those distributions...but they want use Kubuntu.

Conclusion, users are tired to see system applications broken on default 
installation just because there is a policy that says "no GTK" on the cd, 
moreover, this policy where is write and who decided?
They don't know and would like to know, so if it is, we should communicate 
them that there is this policy and we can't do anything if some system 
applications are broken, because we ship only qt/kde.....for now ;)

Alessandro "Lex" Ghersi.