KDE 4.0.0!

[Derek Broughton]

D. Michael McIntyre wrote:

> On Monday 14 January 2008, Derek Broughton wrote:
>> It's not "stupid" - how are they going to be able to promise to keep KDE
>> 3.5 maintained for 3 years? (or is it 5?)
> 
> Well, since you've raised this seemingly very reasonable point several
> times,
> I've actually had a bit of a think about it.  Dapper is the current LTS,
> and
> it still has some really old version of KDE.  How have they managed to
> maintain *that* for so long?
> 
> I'm not a KDE developer, so I don't have insider knowledge, but I
> sincerely doubt Canonical is getting any special upstream help with
> maintaining KDE 3.5.2, so it's just as dead and forgotten as the current
> 3.5 variant will be soon.

However, Canonical has to package security fixes to 3.5.2 for another 5
months.  That is generally going to be much easier while upstream is still
packaging those fixes for 3.5.8, than when upstream is packaging them for
4.x.  There's a _huge_ code difference with the major version change.
> 
> It's probably not as valid an argument as it seems on the surface.  More
> likely, they are worried that KDE 4.x will become usable in the interim,
> and users will start making a lot of noise like the noises we've heard
> here
> about "Why can't I install the new Firefox on Dapper?" and so forth.  A
> support nightmare.

Well, you're right that _that's_ going to happen.
-- 
derek