Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 31st Aug 2007 19:48 UTC, submitted by diegocg
The KDE project has delayed the release of KDE 4.0 by two months. "We, The Release Team, hereby announce that we are extending the KDE 4.0.0 schedule 2 months by inserting an extra 2 Betas, as follows: September 24: Beta3. October 22: Beta4. November 19: Total Release Freeze. November 21: RC1. December 5: RC2. December 20: 4.0.0 tagged. We feel that there are crucial elements of the release that need more development time. The feature freeze (less exemptions) remains in effect."
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RE[7]: Some of you are pathetic zealots
by kaiwai on Sun 2nd Sep 2007 05:33
in reply to "RE[6]: Some of you are pathetic zealots"
Member since:2005-07-06
Most people I know don't customise their systems much beyond changing their desktop wallpaper. Instead, they adapt quite comfortably to the interface as it comes out of the box. On the other hand, some people waste countless hours fiddling with inconsequential details instead of getting actual work done with their computer.
I wouldn't call myself a 'beginner' but I never have customised the desktop - heck, I had 2 Macs in a space of 5 years and and never once changed the default background or avatar, I was happy with the status quo.
For a large number of people, it has nothing to do with whether or not they can do it but the fact that its just a computer, not some sort of extension of ones personal inner being. As long as the default colours aren't revolting, I tend to focus on what I use my computer for rather than admiring 'teh pretty' and 'teh shiney'.
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Member since:
2006-04-20
What features have the Gnome devs "taken a chainsaw to" that you or others would like, and how do you justify the need for those features against the time required to program, test and support them?
Can you site a mainstream usability book to support your claim?
An ordinary users is someone with basic computer literacy (i.e., a non-power user, non-geek, non-programmer, non-sys-admin) who uses their computer to get work done, rather than endlessly change their window decorator (my definition).
Most people I know don't customise their systems much beyond changing their desktop wallpaper. Instead, they adapt quite comfortably to the interface as it comes out of the box. On the other hand, some people waste countless hours fiddling with inconsequential details instead of getting actual work done with their computer.
Featuritis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creeping_featurism) is rampant in KDE*. Adding features imposes a severe cost in terms of development time, testing and support, and the value of any feature has to be balanced against that cost.
You can't just add features willy-nilly because a vocal minority has winged about having them. If the feature in question adds significantly to the usability of the overall system for the majority of users and is not too difficult to implement, then by all means add it. If the feature makes a minor, seldom performed task marginally easier for a small number of users, but adds significantly to the complexity, and testing and support costs, then adding it is not a good idea.
Features that power users find useful but confuse less technically aware users can increase support costs enormously, and must be very carefully considered.
"The cheapest, fastest, and most reliable components are those that aren't there." — Gordon Bell
*Actually, it is more a case of adding to many advanced features in the DE, but leaving their Office Suite utterly bereft of features.