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On 03/02/2012 03:42 AM, Mark Greenwood wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:EE62824B-B579-43DD-9D87-B41B9168CE6C@gmail.com"
type="cite"><br>
<div>
<div>On 2 Mar 2012, at 09:26, Alex Gabriel wrote:</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#000000"><br>
</font></div>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#000000"><br>
</font>Indicating that quality has decreased is a subjective
statement. </div>
</blockquote>
<br>
</div>
<div>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.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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.)</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>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?</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Mark</div>
</blockquote>
I can really sympathize with you, Mark. I've been very happy with
Linux for over ten years<br>
trying red hat, debian, caldera, Mandrake and several others before
settling on Kubuntu in about <br>
2005. We have four Kubuntu machines. My wife still uses 6.06 and I
have 8.04, 9.04 and<br>
10.04 on the others. <br>
<br>
From the beginning I saw that a bit more skill was required to use
Linux and I thought I <br>
could handle it. And I could until support on 8.04 was running
out. I downloaded a 10.4<br>
disk and tried to install it. It wouldn't install, reporting
thousands of times that<br>
"Serial 8250. too much work for irq17." I did get it to sort of
install once, but the machine <br>
locked up repeatedly. The help I got from the list was that someone
had heard that happens <br>
to Dell Computers.<br>
<br>
So I acquired another computer and successfully installed Kubuntu
10.4. Unfortunately 10.4 <br>
is a mess. <br>
How did it happen that kmail, a perfectly great email client, was
deliberately made totally unusable? <br>
What was wrong with having two panels across the bottom of the
screen to show the active <br>
programs? <br>
Why can't I pick my own icon to represent gedit in the panel on the
left?<br>
Why doesn't Thunderbird have a wordwrap?<br>
How could an LTS release of Kubuntu not work on some Dell computers?<br>
<br>
I have a feeling that 95% of the people on this list could solve
most of my problems easily, <br>
but I'm just a computer user not a developer. I thought I could get
by with an ocasional<br>
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade. I guess I thought
wrong.<br>
<br>
bruce<br>
bruce<br>
<br>
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