The KDE team has released KDE 4.3. This release comes packed with improvements and bug fixes - in fact, over the last six months, 10000 bugs were squashed, 2000 feature requests handled, and 63000 changes were checked in by 700 people. We've already talked about this new release in quite some detail last week, but let's take a look at the most important new features anyway.
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Member since:2005-07-07
True, you make a few good points.
The infrastructure stuff I was talking about was about software. Yast is years ahead of many competing tools, esp for enterprise stuff. The availability of the opensuse build service and suse studio tells you something about what their underlying infrastructure can do. Novell and the other big boys also have much more resources to make a difference, Mandriva is much less capable of employing a bunch of people or sponsoring a lot of money to get something done. And Mandriva, while their desktop is KDE based, is more of a 'best of breed' distro than a pure KDE distro.
Still, as you said, it could be a more flexible company and very friendly towards us. I would however have no idea how to push it more - there aren't many KDE mandriva developers, and to change that things like like good and very up-to-date KDE (development) packages would be needed. A page like this: http://en.opensuse.org/KDE would make a big difference. Latest trunk snapshots, development packages, a simple 2-click installation for all -dev packages for all software on your system, such things make a big difference for developers.
Member since:2005-09-10
Yeah, I forgot about Suse Studio and their build service - in that regard, they are really outstanding when it comes to enterprise solutions. My perspective is more from the point of view of your run-of-the-mill user. I understand, however, that KDE needs to target both, and in fact for at least now, it needs to focus more on the enterprise, since that's where it seems to be lagging behind a little bit.
Would be nice though if there were some talks about how to improve cooperation between the KDE project and supportive distroes. You mentioned Mandriva's tools being GTK for instance... I don't know much about programming, but I was wondering how much it would take to port it to QT, or if there was a willingness with some help on the part of Mandriva's developers to do so. Not that I have a problem with their present UI - it doesn't look too GTKish to really bother me, but it would still be a nice touch. Same goes for their notification system. I'd start with contacting them about future tighter cooperation, and see what parts of the desktop you can work together to improve...
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Member since:
2005-09-10
But I wouldn't be against it - it would just take some ppl to push it forward.
I don't know what you mean by the infrastructure. As a user of both for some time (11.1 & 2009 spring) respectively in my experience Mandriva's infrastructure seemed to be better. I had constant timeouts with OpenSuse's mirrors (and I tried a dozen in the area - SE Asia btw), and urpmi seemed far more snappier than zypper.
Also, I think with the past few releases they are getting their focus back. It's true they have been unstable in the past as a company, but if you believe in KDE, if you believe that it can deliver on its promises - isn't Mandriva the best choice? Their size works in your favour, just think about it. If you want to get SuSE doing something, you have to deal with Novell plus all the internal politics of the project. Mandriva still has a good name in the linux market, and recently it had some really positive review. All it needs is a little nag in the right direction (and being smaller than the big three probably means that it could be more responsive).
Assuming you are a KDE developer, why try nudging the big ones, when it's far easier to get things done when you have to deal with fewer people, and with a project that seems to be already focusing on KDE with a recognizable brand name.