jaunty the worst ever

[Graham Todd]

On Sun, 17 May 2009 17:00:08 -0700
Pastor JW <pastor_jw at the-inner-circle.org> wrote:

> Perhaps they are pushing updates too fast, but I think it is rather
> they are taking too big of bites.  

As a loyal supporter of Kubuntu of many years standing, I was really
frustrated when KDE4 came along at first, so I switched to Ubuntu and
the Gnome desktop to get some stability.

The major problems revolved around not being able to get my video card
working with Kubuntu, and the general fragility of the system.  I am
used to that since we are all part of a community striving to to make
our systems better.  That was with 8.04.

Gnome was a revelation to me.  In Ubuntu 8.10 it had moved forward and
much of the annoying things I disliked about Gnome seemed not be there.
Yet I missed many of the applications I had used, and even if there was
an alternative it wasn't quite as perfect as Kubuntu apps had been.

So when Jaunty came out, I tried the live cd, and I found KDE 4.2.2. to
be incredibly stable.  I installed it through an update, and I am now
removing duplicated applications from Gnome.  The only application I
couldn't install was KOffice-kde4 but its no biggie: I have OpenOffice
and Gnome-office still (and criawips beats pants off the old
KPresenter....).

So I disagree.  My experience is that Kubuntu 9.04 ("Jaunty") is stable
and now the devs can concentrate on making the apps even better.

>The major problem I see is the trying to become mickeysoft like.  That
>is the thing most of us would
> rather avoid at all costs including dumping a distro that becomes
> that way.  

The problem I think is that KDE is gearing itself up to be an
alternative desktop on the Windows OS.  It is believed, apparently,
that this will bring more users and so a greater possibility of
injection of capital (but this my own view - I could be wrong).  The
desktop will then have to make compromises with proprietary software
use and not be entirely the same beast we know and love.

>This is the thing the developers really need to wake up to
> or find themselves out of work. Users tend to lose patience real fast
> when frustrated.  I have tried to support this distro in several ways
> because it was factory installed on this Dell and that shows some
> promise, but then even my good nature can be stretched too thin.

Since the vast majority of them are unpaid volunteers its unlikely that
they'll lose their job, and its unlikely the KDE project will die.

I am a UK user, and I have had nothing but problems when using (any
flavour of) Linux with Dell computers: I do not like them and will not
even have a secondhand one in the house.  They appear to me to be the
ultimate example of hardware designed for an OS - and Windows at that.
Mind you, if I wanted a cheap (and inexpensive) Windows box, then I
would consider getting a Dell.  

Thats my experience, and my tuppence worth.

-- 

Graham Todd