It's lovely to see that osnews is continuing it's wonderful record of low standards of impartial journalism and reporting. I guess that since you didn't report this until after slashdot you did need a way to keep your ad revenue. Truly the level of quality you can see here is tending towards zero.

So, you've not bothered to even mention what's changed. From the look of things you've not even bothered to read the release announcement. Why not just post a link to the slashdot story and spare us the flamebait?

What do you mean the flamebait?

They handled this release way way better than the 4.0 one.

Yes, in experimental - http://pkg-kde.alioth.debian.org/kde4.html
As freeze is more or less going on it won't reach into standard Lenny tree (i.e. the next stable release).

Syllable is open source and needs their attention.

Windows does not want open source

Apple boasts about Carbon.

Why the fs-ck the support Windows/Mac.

Browse most website using Windows or Mac OSX and the presentation is the same, font size and look are similar. Go to the same site using Linux and you're faced with font that don't match, size that are (most of the time) too small. I'm no Font expert, but it's a HUGE problem with Linux and one that put me off of using it.

Ok well then, KDE will always be a sub-standard product. I guess no one at KDE has ever heard of raising funds to pay for things important to a project.

Whooosh. You need to learn to read. It's not about availability of fonts WHAT SO EVER.

PCLinuxOS is probably the best getting-work-done distribution. (which is remarkable for a small understaffed distro. Compare that to the Ubuntu hype train, whose newest vexing version completely fails to do anything. No system, no error message, no nothing and the CD is fine. Bloody buggers =) But the reason I'm back to OpenSuSE instead of PCLinuxOS is the very same KDE 4.1 we're currently talking about. As I said, PCLinuxOS is about getting-work-done and from what I've read it won't switch to KDE4 any time soon.

The post you are quoting was not made by me. Try again smart guy. And if you go up the reply tree here, you'll see that post isn't there.

The paradox is that without the KDE developers setting 4.0 in stone and working off from it, 4.1 would probably not have happened and certainly wouldn't be as good as it has turned out to be.

"The paradox is that without the KDE developers setting 4.0 in stone and working off from it, 4.1 would probably not have happened and certainly wouldn't be as good as it has turned out to be.

I understand very, very well how it works.

That is silly.
...

The only reason they made it a release is because they were already late, and didn't want to look bad by waiting another 7 months to do it right.

That is silly. The only reason that would be the case is if the kde core developers have no communication at all with the developers working on the platform.

The only reason they made it a release is because they were already late, and didn't want to look bad by waiting another 7 months to do it right.

As for hype, I'm not accusing the team of that.

Release early, release often means that instead of trying to implement everything at the same time, they all should have focused on one or two things

a top to bottom overhaul is the exact opposite of release early, release often. You are pretty much arguing my point for me by quoting that.

Can they PLEASE hire a freaking font expert. The fonts still look like ass.

We are arguing at cross purposes. I do not consider "getting your libraries sorted out" at all to be a thing worthy of release. You work bits of that as you need it, letting user stories drive the requirements.

You can see this on OSX releases, Core* overhauls have been spread out over about four releases, each release taking the one or two core libraries implemented in that release, and giving real world value to the users, and never pushing their release cycle over 6 months, or reducing existing functionality.

What KDE did was basically a Vista on a smaller scale, bit off way more then they could chew, being forced to ship something that had drastic changes that noone will care about for awhile till everything else catches up.

In my team, we adhear pretty closely to the Scrum process. If we end a release cycle without anything of business value to show the share holders (our users), we consider that iteration to be a failure, and try to figure out where we went wrong. If we ever blew a deadline by four months and released something that was buggier and less functional, that would be considered a failure of epic proportions, and our project manager would probably lose his job.

No the design of KDE 4 was not driven by 'letting user stories drive the requirements' because we aren't developing business applications. Amongst other things the KDE team is developing a framework that you could develop business applications with. But that is a very different process from developing the business applications themselves.

Apple has beta releases for developers 6 months or more before they have a corresponding release for end users. That is because the developers have to write applications before the users can use them. KDE doesn't have the same system, but the KDE 4.0 release was intended as a release for developers to write applications against the new libraries. Whereas KDE 4.1 is more like a first user release in terms of Apple's release strategy.

Your team sounds like a relatively small group developing business applications, and that is in no way comparable to the KDE project. KDE doesn't have 'deadlines', 'share holders' or 'project managers' who may or may not lose their jobs. Any comparisons are pretty meaningless.

In the case of gnome or the kernel, even versions mean stable, odd mean release.

You mean KDE doesn't choose which font faces and sizes they use? Wow, how odd.

Ok, so why can't they choose better BASE fonts then?

Obviously not, because all the distributions choose pretty crappy, and interestingly, seemingly all the same, settings.

Odd how that seems to work to KDEs disadvantage huh. Just shift the blame.

We are arguing at cross purposes. I do not consider "getting your libraries sorted out" at all to be a thing worthy of release. You work bits of that as you need it, letting user stories drive the requirements.

You can see this on OSX releases, Core* overhauls have been spread out over about four releases, each release taking the one or two core libraries implemented in that release, and giving real world value to the users, and never pushing their release cycle over 6 months, or reducing existing functionality. What KDE did was basically a Vista on a smaller scale, bit off way more then they could chew, being forced to ship something that had drastic changes that noone will care about for awhile till everything else catches up.

In my team, we adhear pretty closely to the Scrum process. If we end a release cycle without anything of business value to show the share holders (our users), we consider that iteration to be a failure, and try to figure out where we went wrong. If we ever blew a deadline by four months and released something that was buggier and less functional, that would be considered a failure of epic proportions, and our project manager would probably lose his job.

Odd how that seems to work to KDEs disadvantage huh. Just shift the blame.

I myself find Ubuntu the best operating system out there today.

Having said that, I would be more likely to listen to your gripe if it made any sense.

You attack a product with no details. This sounds more like a political ad than a comment.

What are the issues. Why do you find it difficult?

What has better and more stable features?