Linked by David Adams on Wed 2nd Jul 2008 16:11 UTC, submitted by elsewhere
"After the recent release KDE 4.1 beta 2 and openSUSE 11 with KDE 4.0.4, some critics have been especially vocal in expressing their displeasure with the KDE 4 user interface paradigms. The debate has grown increasingly caustic as critics and supporters engage in a war of words over the technology. The controversy has escalated to the point where some users are now advocating a fork in order to move forward the old KDE 3.5 UI paradigms. As an observer who has closely studied each new release of KDE 4, I'm convinced that the fork rhetoric is an absurdly unproductive direction for this debate."
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Member since:
2005-07-07
Ohhh God,
KDE certainly doesn't need a fork. Anybody using 4.1 Beta 2 would be hard pressed to muster the desire to go back to the old Kicker, Kdesktop, and Kwin.
4.0.0 was OK, with lots of regressions in the desktop space, where the apps that shipped tended to be better than ever with the exception of (the high profile) Konqueror and KHTML. Oh, and bugs and vendor bugs.
KDE 4.1 'cures' pretty much all of that.
With that being said, I have been (too loudly) critical of 'the Cashew' and it's immutability. But that can changed by changing a hidden setting to switch desktop containment. (Albeit the alternatives are sub optimal ATM, and I'd argue that this will fragment the core desktop experience.) As of 4.2 this will get a GUI. It may be the solution to the wrong problem, but at least it's a solution.
I have some other beefs with meta issues around Plasma. Like the decision to not let users tart up an 'artists vision' by colourizing plasma themes. But there's Aya in KDE Plasmoids for that. It sacrifices user choice, but you don't get everything, and even though I'd rather have a 'tart up the vision' checkbox, I'll survive.
I think as of 4.1 KDE users will be pleasantly surprised. I actually hope that Suse and Fedora push 4.1 as an out of cycle update. That'd shut a lot of people up.
In the past, on this site, I listed criteria for KDE 4 success. I was too optimistic, but 4.1 actually leaves KDE in a really good spot going forward. Hopefully .my criteria for success' will be met for 4.2. With the big 3rd party apps finally getting into shape, and the Plasma API stabilizing, things look good.
Edited 2008-07-02 18:23 UTC