[kubuntu-devel] Re: UDS Considerations for Kubuntu

[txwikinger]

On 11-10-13 07:03 PM, Jonathan Riddell wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 03:43:27PM -0400, txwikinger wrote:
>> KDE5? Wouldn't it be better to create a good stable product before
>> always running to new, instable versions?
> Fear not, KDE Frameworks 5 isn't a rewrite a la KDE 4, it's a
> reorganisation to make the libraries more modular but only small
> ABI/API changes.  Applications will be largely unchanged.
>
>> I think we have to rethink some things anyway. I believe we should have
>> stable versions as default, and bleeding edge in PPAs in order to be
>> able to choose what to use. FLOSS is to a big extend really about
>> choice. The non-technical user wants a stable solution, the technical
>> user is usually expert enough to work with PPAs.
> Generally we do have stable versions by default.  Kontact is a problem
> in this release.  Do you have anything else in mind?
>
> Jonathan
>
Well, I do not want to sound like everything is bad. However, over the 
last year I feel the general quality has started to
suffer again. While I used to have stable systems, since maverick I 
started to have system freezes that got more
frequent when time went along. And often bugs take a long time to fix. I 
first raised the kded4 daemon spawning defunct child processes almost a 
year ago and it got finally fixed a couple of weeks ago (ending up being 
the kubuntu notification system)

I really believe we somehow should get more into TDD and have far more 
automatic testing. However, that is probably another discussion.

Somehow I have to say I only use KDE partially now because of the 
problems. I still use the desktop, but I use FF for my web development I 
do (which I get paid for) and mutt/thunderbird for e-mail. I am not very 
happy with those apps either. FF is becoming more instable every new 
release and I find both apps far too bloaded. However, on the other 
hand, I am waiting and waiting for apps in KDE that I can use instead 
and somehow either they do not have the necessary feature set 
(non-compliant rendering/js-engine) or are just a continuous disaster 
like kmail.

I do not think I did not have one installation for 2 years for which I 
got all the background daemons working all without errors and not 
dragging down the performance of the machine. I continuously disable 
nepomuk because of performance and akonadi always stops because of 
errors (not that I am really using it anyway without kmail/kontact).

Since I have more to do in my business and hence far less time to tweak 
my computers I started to understand the normal user who is frustrated 
when the system does not work out of the box.

I guess this is what I mean with stable system. Maybe a lot of these 
issues are not such a big deal when most of the community is technically 
very literate and can fix a lot of issues on their own computers. 
However, this does not allow mainstream users really to enjoy the systems.

And yes.. FLOSS means I should do something about it. And I really would 
like to. Since I am restructuring how I currently work my paid stuff, 
hopefully I will be able to contribute more in the future again.

Maybe we can have some of this in mind during UDS. Since we will have an 
LTS, quality should be our highest priority.

Ralph (txwikinger)