KDE4.3 beta issues

[Mark Greenwood]

On Wednesday 27 May 2009 17:50:50 Terrell Prude' Jr. wrote:
> 
> Derek Broughton wrote:
> > Terrell Prude' Jr. wrote:
> >
> >   
> >> Dotan Cohen wrote:
> >>     
> >
> >   
> >>> KDE 4.0 was the release of the stable APIs, not a stable desktop. KDE
> >>> is _not_ a desktop, it is an umbrella name for a lot of technologies.
> >>>       
> >> yes, KDE *is* a desktop environment.  That's why it's called the K
> >> Desktop Environment (KDE).
> >>
> >>     
> >
> > I believe the keyword there is "environment".  No, KDE is not a "desktop" - 
> > it's much more.  As Dotan said, an "umbrella".
> >   
> 
> Yeah, that's what Rowan Atkinson said in the movie "Love Actually", too 
> ("oh, this is so much more than a bag...!").
> 
> So you actually believe it was OK to release that turd that got called 
> KDE 4.0 as "KDE 4.0" and not "KDE 4.0 Alpha"?  Is this really your belief?
> 

My personal belief is that KDE4 is a victim of that scourge of corporate rubbishness - the release deadline. In my industry we have stable releases - released to quality standards, and we have "Fugee releases" - 'ready or not, here I come' - released to specific dates. KDE 4 is a Fugee. I'm sure I remember reading somewhere that they promised KDE4.0 for a specific date and they simply released it on that date. How you can work to deadlines with community-contributed open source I will never know. I agree with the others, it was never ready for release. Perhaps the developers see it differently, but a developer who can't see that way his users think will quickly run out of users. 4.2.3 is just about out of beta as far as I'm concerned, in that it's the first version I can run as a steady desktop.

Arguing that KDE is not a desktop environment is extreme pedantry. Without KDE on my machine I have a command line. When I put KDE on it I have a desktop environment. KDE is therefore a desktop environment - I neither understand nor care about the esoteric developer arguments about why it's an 'umbrella'. See it from your user's point of view and you will understand.

Mark

> --TP
>