5 years of support..!!??

[Mark Greenwood]

> On Mar 5, 2012 2:33 AM, "James Cain" <james.cain.25 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On Sun, Mar 4, 2012 at 6:12 PM, Leslie Anne Chatterton <lahc2007 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Bruce,
> 
> Well I guess Kubuntu isn't for everyone and we need to hear
> experiences like yours to bring us back to reality. I think there are
> probably lots of Windows and Mac users who have had similarly
> frustrating experiences but don't want to speak up and appear like
> dummies. Linux will become mainstream only when it offers a
> "foolproof" edition that is unbreakable, as well as the tinkerer's
> versions that most of us now enjoy.
> 
> 
> Good point in pointing out that we need brought back to reality now and again :) 
> However, 3 key points here that we free software users occasionally need reminded of:
> 
> Kubuntu is developed (99%) by volunteers. For those who rant and rave about how nothing works, if you can't donate to the KDE e.V., help the community, or at least report bugs (if not triage them), what gives you the right to complain at all? 
The volunteers point is noted and understood. However I put it this way, using the KMail thing purely as an example because it's a recent one we can all relate to. Although it's all volunteers writing the code, I presume there is someone in charge (also a volunteer no doubt) who is responsible for pulling all the KDE point releases together, some kind of leader who decides when a release is ready. If not, then there's the problem right there - nobody is in charge. Assuming somebody is in charge then that person ought to take it upon themselves to at least do some cursory checks that the thing he's about to release into the world does at least basically work. If it doesn't, he shouldn't release it.

Now yes, you can say that I should volunteer and get involved and try to solve that problem but actually I don't think it necessarily comes from the volunteers. Personally I think, as I believe I've said before, that someone somewhere (Canonical) is obsessed with doing regular planned releases and so this is why things are pulled from developer's hands before the code is ready for release. You simply can't employ a commercial releasing model with a volunteer-generated codebase. You can't enforce release dates on people you're not paying.I think a lot of people understand that on some level and that's why we're having this debate on the Canonical list and not the KDE list, and is also why we feel we have the right to complain. 

KDE PIM is a vast and complex project and it requires more testing. Kubuntu did do something about this - in 11.04 (I thnk) they made a testing repository with a version of Akonadi enabled KDE PIM for testers to try. It didn't work very well but that was OK - it was in a testing repository guarded by a whole bunch of caveats. If they'd followed this model for 11.10 we wouldn't be having this debate now. It was a great idea and I think it's something they should do more of.

> 
> 
> PS - as for the one legit rant on here, KMail, it's coming along nicely in newer versions I'm told. The KDE PIM Team is admittedly under-staffed and could use help, but the newest versions are quite usable, I'm told. But again, the whole KMail argument is lame. Millions of Windows users prefer Thunderbird over MS's free Outlook Express. Does that mean they should not use an entire OS (Windows) because they do not like the built in EMail app that comes with it? That's absurd. But here we have people willing to go pay for an alternate OS because they do not like KMail. A quick Google search found 5 alternatives in the 1st search, all of which are in the wonderful Ubuntu Repositories...
> 

See, I think you've misunderstood the whole reason why people are annoyed. It's not about preferring one thing over another. Outlook Express is and has always been a load of rubbish, even my non-techie friends understand that. However up until very recently KMail worked extremely well and was many people's (mine included) preferred email client on ANY OS. Then suddenly someone decided to rewrite it, for no readily apparent reason, and BROKE the whole thing - forcing people to switch away from something they loved to something worse just to get something that worked. And it's not about people "not liking change" its about people not liking upgrading to something worse than what they had before. I do like KDE4, a lot. I'm just getting fed up of tools I rely on getting broken in the name of "progress". A bit more quality control is what is needed, that's all. I didn't pay for an alternate OS because I didn't like KMail as you put it. I paid for an alternate OS because I needed something I could rely on day to day in every aspect. KDE4 was just becoming too frustrating, too many small but annoying bugs that wouldn't go away no matter how many updates I did. KMail is just the big example that has brought things to the point where we're now debating it.

Canonical are trying very hard to get people to switch away from Windows and Macs and use (K)Ubuntu. If they want to achieve this goal they have to understand that the traditional enthusiast user base of Linux will become a minority and more and more users will be installing it expecting it to work without too much effort. Canonical have done a lot of work in this area and it's why I use Kubuntu over any other distro, but the KMail debacle shows that they still haven't got their eye on the ball. New users won't take it seriously until stuff like this stops happening.

Mark


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