5 years of support..!!??

[Mark Greenwood]

On 2 Mar 2012, at 09:26, Alex Gabriel wrote:
> 
> 
> Indicating that quality has decreased is a subjective statement. 

Well yes and no. Let's compare where I am with Kubuntu today to where I was when I had Kubuntu with KDE 3.5 on it, which must be 3 years ago now.

Back then, the laptop power management options worked. Today the 'shut down after x minutes of inactivity' is broken, the 'sleep when I close the lid' is broken, and even if it does sleep I have no networking when it wakes.

Back then I had an email client that worked. Today I have one that, with a great amount of annoying fiddling, will retrieve my email but not without using 75% of my CPU for about two hours. (Honestly, I'm not making that up, that is really what happens when I start KMail, every time. And I know I'm not alone.)

I could go on but it would turn into a rant and that's not the point. The point is that Kubutnu - or rather KDE - today is less functional than it was 3 years ago. That's not a subjective statement - it's a fact.

The developers will no doubt say that "Oh you only need to do x and y and z and spin round 3 times while chanting 'i hate windows'". That is not the point. Back then, I didn't have to do those things. This is not progress however pretty and shiny you make it look.

Which brings me back to my original point. While I am glad that we have a long term support commitment from Canonical, it would be a real shame if the 5 year supported release of Kubuntu was stuck with KDE 4.8 for 5 years - you'd hope that KDE would eventually start working properly again at some point before 2017 and what I want to know is will the LTS be upgraded to new versions of KDE as they come out or will it remain stuck with the unfinished, malfunctional KDE 4.8?

Mark
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