KDE 4.1 is supposed to make everything right with the recently troubled desktop. Everyone agrees now that KDE 4.0 was a mistake. However, what the mistake was — and whose — is a matter of opinion. KDE developers blame distributions for rushing to include a release that was never intended for everyday use, while users blame developers for changing everything. More here. Also, Tectonic published an article titled “Beyond the desktop with KDE4“, while the now well-known for its sarcasm ‘Linux Hater’ blog has something to say too (warning: some profanity).
KDE 4.1 Beta 2: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Linking to a post that begins:
“As a shit-storm chaser, it’s been fun watching the fecal hurricane that has resulted from the KDE4 devs chucking their shit-pile 4.0 into the proverbial fan that is the internets.”
Edited 2008-07-05 22:18 UTC
I very much like and AGREE with most of what Linux Hater says. IMO, his posts are dead on. If you have a problem with profanity, don’t read it. I don’t have such a problem, I only care about the meat of the post.
It’s not a question of profanity, it’s a question of respect. You link to an article which if posted here as a comment would be fair grounds for deletion or even being banned, according to the rules.
Edited 2008-07-05 22:31 UTC
And yet, what he writes is dead on. That’s the message I am trying to pass, not the fact that the guy uses profanity. There is a warning on the post anyway and his post doesn’t get copied here, only linked. For the last time, if you don’t like it, don’t read it.
My own blog is full of profanity too, so I am personally used to it. Just a friendly warning to those who aren’t.
Edited 2008-07-05 22:35 UTC
Bullshit, Eugenia. I’m a fan of a lot of what you do, but your admiration of the Linux Hater is dead wrong.
I’ll admit the excessive use of profanity is a bit off-putting, but I, too, am willing to look past that and get to the meat of the post. Unfortunately, there isn’t any, or at least, precious little.
What the Linux Hater does is use profanity to disguise his vacuous opinions. The rationale is that if he expresses his opinion strongly enough, with such forceful language, that to disagree with him would be inviting idiocy. No-one wants to be associated with ‘shit-eaters’ and ‘jackasses’. And anyone who marginally agrees with his side of the issues finds him or herself nodding along, “yeah, stick it to those f–ktards!”
The Linux Hater’s conclusion is “So what’s the answer? I say f–k ’em all. Go invest your time in something else where the devs aren’t so full of themselves.” Tell me, is that really worthwhile? Has the hater actually said something interesting and insightful? His conclusion: giving up on open-source development because he doesn’t like the community – really the solution?
And the truth is I -would- have a lot more respect for the LH if he could clearly, intelligently and respectfully articulate his opinions. Instead of opting to be a respected voice, he simply ops to be a loud one.
Let us pay him no more heed.
Sorry, but I agree with what LH says. You assumed that I linked to LH’s post out of ignorance. But no, “F–k ’em all” is what I believe too. That’s why I have been missing in action from osnews for years now, and I am only back until Thom gets well from his health problem. Because I really don’t care what these OSS lusers do anymore, I have lost my faith in them. After 17 years out there, they don’t offer me a more usable OS than either Mac OS X or XP. So for me, Linux Hater’s “f–k ’em all”, is a straight ace.
Edited 2008-07-05 22:44 UTC
And please spare me the “oh my god, you are an editor on OS News, how can you write something like this about OSS?”. Well, look, I NEVER lie. Just because I can post stories here doesn’t mean that I don’t have a personal opinion too.
Desktop OSS has been a disappointment and a failure to my experience and to what I need from an OS.
And that’s that and there is nothing more to add in that, neither it makes sense to conceal this opinion under the pretentious “OSNews’ senior editor” title.
This doesn’t mean that I put forward my agenda though on the stories I publish. As you can see, I post both positive and negative articles about all topics. And of course, I will be HAPPY to post your opinion piece, taking on Linux Hater’s opinions and rebutting them.
Which is a legitimate opinion. I even sympathize a little. I’ve always found that while remaining preferable to their inexpressive, proprietary brethren, open source projects often tend to lack that little ‘polish’, that last mile that is needed in a desktop application.
And no, you have been good about not pushing your agenda through your role as staff (at least, until now). In fact, this came as a bit of a surprise to me.
None of this excuses the sort of ignorant, empty, hate-spewing (and really, his name is appropriate – he is full of nothing but hatred) rhetoric that is found on such places as the Linux Hater’s blog.
There is a right way and a wrong way to critize. Proper criticism gives those you critique the opportunity to learn and to grow from what you have to say. The Linux Hater, and others like him, resort to simple belittlement and mockery of those that they disagree with.
That’s the easy way out.
LOL. Judging from your past performance, that’s debatable at best.
Who said it did? Nobody.
However, if your editing of this site consists of nothing but loudly proclaiming your opinion and abusing every story to grind your axe, you are simply a terrible editor.
The point is, simple abusing your own site for your personal trolling and vengance makes you a terrible editor and OSNews a joke.
And you really should have gotten over the fact the the open source guys and gals didn’t want to play with you anymore after you spread lies about them. Oh, wait, you never lie…
But that’s exactly what you do, making you a pathetic troll, even if you call yourself Senior Editor of some hobby site.
The immature manner in which you are currently acting is inexcusable given your position on this site.
If I acted the way you do, using derogatory profanities (even if you do in fact blank them out), I’d be banned from the site. The editors should not only be held to the same, but a higher and less tolerant standard. What keeps a discussion forum intact and following a precedent is the way any users with a higher title act.
I will NOT spare you the “OMG but you’re an OSNews editor”. Now, you also have disgraced the title of the site for which you are indeed the editor. You’re talking as if you’re doing everyone a favor while Thom is away, and that’s not true. If you cannot be subjective, and learn to accept the heat for posting an article with questionable information, then I think I’d speak for everyone when I say we’d be better off without you. I saw the same article on digg, it’s one thing for an article so biased, and so un-tactful and offensive in delivering it’s points to be submitted to a user content site, it’s another thing for it to be submitted by an editor of an editor-controlled submission site.
Calling OSS users/developers “lusers” shows an extreme bias. I could understand you saying that OSS has brought you nothing. I can’t fault you for that opinion (although I can rightfully agree), however the way you (just like the author), use derogatory language to describe the people who work for a goal which they follow ideologically is uncalled for.
My theory on why you took to such a bitter turn is you have an issue with admitting fault. I don’t know if you really do feel this strongly for the article, but rather you don’t want to be proven wrong. In which case, that Senior Editor tag you don’t care about really does mean something to you. I’m basing this on two semesters of psychology I had.
The bottom line from all of this is that you acted in a near childish manner, unable to accept the criticism of the site’s users. You were offensive, linked to a questionable article, demeaned the title of Editor (essentially showing you don’t care), demeaning the site as a whole, and overall acted in a site that damages the atmosphere of the community.
My feeling, and I’m sure most will agree with me, is that you should be dismissed from your position. If you don’t like it, I, and I think most can agree with me, we would rather not have you around if you’re going to act like this.
Buy this man a beer!
I find your attitude mildly entertaining, considering your regular opining on the lack of professionalism in the OSS world, meanwhile you’re a journalist, or at least temporarily pretending to be one, and link to a blatant troll whose post would’ve most likely been deleted had it been written here, or talked about any other OS/DE/Whatever.
It doesn’t matter if you agree with him, a piece consisting of 90% adhominem doesn’t belong on a site such a this, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize why.
Edited 2008-07-05 22:55 UTC
>meanwhile you’re a journalist
I am a developer. “Journalism” was nothing but a hobby here, and in fact, no one gets paid at OSNews so spare us the “oooh, get professional” lessons. This never earned me any bread. So as a developer, and an experienced user of software, I find LH’s posts 100% on topic, with profanity or without. I always care about the MEAT of the discussion.
This is the last comment of mine on this topic. I have explained myself perfectly, even if I didn’t have to. I could have done what it’s usually suggested to “never reply to stories and let readers have it their way”, but I usually prefer to have it my way.
Dear Eugenia,
Using profanities is obviously your choice. I never read your blog and never will. You seem more of a regressor than developer (to me). I’m looking forward to the time when you’ll stop posting your biassed opinions at OSNews.
Cheers,
Satan Hell
Few people get paid to work on OSS so spare us the “oooh, get professional lessons”.
There is none.
I actually found that there is meat in LH’s post, he said two things:
1. That Steven Vaughan-Nichol’s call for a fork is naive, as he is underestimating the amount of effort that goes into making and maintaining KDE, and
2. That KDE4 as it is now is not for users. If the main argument for using KDE4 over now is ‘but it has Plasma, man, PLASMA! AND PHONON! How AWESOME is that?’ then KDE4 is not meant for users (that is, not KDE developers), and thus he won’t use it, and he is telling other people not to.
3. KDE devs. don’t care about users because of 2 and some angry blog posts and forum comments.
Those are the ‘points’ that I found in LH’s post.
The first one is quite agreeable, as Vaughan-Nichol basically said ‘KDE devs are doing something new, new is bad. Fork, fork!’.
On the second one I can’t comment much, as I haven’t used KDE that much to make an educated comparison between the two branches.
And on the third… wtf? There had to be a developer release some time, there is no way around it, you can’t say that KDE devs have abandoned their users because of that! Maybe they have said unfortunate/stupid things some times but nobody is above that.
Oh, and even if he has points (even valid ones), he is still a troll. And a rather good one, if you ask me (how often do you see discussions this long and on OSNews?)
I don’t count old and rotten meat.
That you don’t care about OSS and that you prefer to pay for what is for you a better option I can understand. But insulting OSS developers? insulting people giving their time and their work for free? The least you can do is give them respect in return.
To me LH is like a 3 year old crying and whining all the way because he can’t have it his way. What is he really complaining about? Plasma and the disappearance of desktop icons… Gosh this is as ridiculous as not wanting a free car because you don’t like its color.
And yet again he complains about developers not working on things that really matter to him like better hardware support. Of course he completely glosses over the fact that an application developer is usualy not able to do system development, just like a bloger is rarely also a columnist for the NY Times.
I have to admit, I don’t really know what all the fuss is about… If I understand it correctly, you can setup one plasmoid that covers all the desktop and set it to show all files from ~/Desktop + any dynamic ones (CD, flash drives etc). How is that any different from what you have now? The fact that you can do more is, well, just extra?
Ah, so what you mean by “clued in” and “dead on” is just a matter of that you agree with his is opinions. Good thing we got that sorted out. It explains a lot.
He’s not anymore clued in or dead on than what the countless of Windows hating blogs are. They’re all lame beyond belief and don’t really know jack.
This is what I got out of the linux hater post
1) Forking is not the answer
2) Normal people do not want to have to learn all sorts of new paradigms to use their DM
3) If you are going to do something radically different, call it something different. I think the implication was that KDE4 itself should have been a fork
4) To the end user, whether everything is better or not is irrelevant. It being completely different makes it bad.
5) Instead of whiz-bang features like plasmoids, focus on getting stodgy old features like wireless and stand by working really well.
Now, most of the points I don’t agree with, a few I do. But regardless, there is definitely intelligence in the sea of profanity.
I think point 3 makes the most sense. Imagine a KDE-experimental branch where ideas are prototyped, reworked, and then backported into the trunk. Would have side stepped alot of the problems that 4 introduced in both the product and the community.
I’ve found many of Linux Hater’s posts bang on as well (some quite amusing), and he actually has a go at people like SJVN and all the loser journo’s who like to stir up storms:
This is one thing we can agree on. There are a few clueful journalists, but for the most part the tech journalist crowd is neither technically savvy nor journalistically sound.
“meat of the post”
What meat? I like funny posts like this one like the next guy/girl, but I don’t see much meet.
Maybe when he talks about how innovation should be incremental, but that’s a rather misguided notion anyway. Incremental doesn’t get you very far.
Besides that comment, he just repeats what has been said over and over again everywhere. Been there, done that, got the sucky t-shirt.
Earth to KDE devs: we don’t need plasmoids! we want boring, old wireless networking to work.
Of course, it’s a fun post. But I can’t take any of it seriously – I suppose he’s actually a lot like Steven JVN. Writes controversial crap to get hits on his blog. Maybe OSNews shouldn’t support him.
Maybe when he talks about how innovation should be incremental, but that’s a rather misguided notion anyway. Incremental doesn’t get you very far.
I agree!
We saw how far “incremental” can bring you: To KDE 3.5.x. Pretty far, but probably not far enough.
I can still remember when the 2.x Series began, and switching over from 1.x was labeled as “painful” and “unintuitive” by some journalists.
My experience 3 months later was: It is a smooth and nice transition, some features were missing, others were there, but nothing happend that made me seriously look back to KDE 1.
The switch to KDE4 will not be as painful as some of the journalists seem to think, because it is ONLY A DESKTOP. And we usually don’t work with the desktop, we work with applications. If people can find their way through an office suite, a game or an editor, they can find their way through KDE4. And if they can’t find their way through KDE4, they need someone to help them with EVERYTHING a computer does, and this helpful person will make KDE4 behave the same as KDE3 does. I too have a mother who will at some point in the future switch to KDE4, and I don’t see a reason to panic (or complain).
Unfortunately LinuxHater is neither dead on nor funny. Unless you find the rantings of an apparent 12-year old who’s watched too much South Park funny.
Yes, the lame-ass excessive profanity DOES take away from the message and if you cant express yourself in other ways chances are that what you have to say isn’t all that important.
I have to agree with you. Words are just words and I don’t really understand why people get upset about them.
I agree with the part of the article that asks what would be wrong about using QT4 without radically changing everything from the ground up?
KDE4.0 should have been KDE3.5 with whatever changes it needed to be built against QT4. When you change everything you should call it something else, like KDE X, or KDE Vista, or QDE or something else. It does make the people using KDE3.5 feel like they’ll be left and no more effort will be put into it since everyone will be working on KDE4.
But on the other side, I feel that it is kind of silly complaining about numbers. They wanted to change everything so they chose a new number, that number was 4. Before having a complete working system they need some milestones with targets, those milestones are 4.0, 4.1, 4.2 etc. So those numbers gave the illusion that it is a complete system? Shame on the distros that try luring in new users by saying “we got the new shiny kde…switch to our distro”. They knew better…and it probably worked against them. They probably got new users for about 2 days before they switched to a distro that used a working KDE.
BTW, I use XFCE but have tried out KDE4 every once in a while.
No, KDE 4.0 should be what KDE 4.0 is. A new major release, introducing major new frameworks. Just like KDE 3.0 was, and KDE 2.0, and KDE 1.0. I don’t see any reason to start doing things differently all of the sudden.
If we would’ve ported KDE 3.5 to Qt 4 first and then did a release we wouldn’t have been able to keep KDE binary stable during a major release cycle – believe me, that’s major shitty.
the kde devs did the right thing with 4.0, even tho it was “incomplete” compared to 3.5.x…
dont we all recall when linux 2.5.x went on and on without finalizing into 2.6.x? this because while they where trying to feature freeze and debug, someone would come along with some new subsystem version and stuff it in there…
basically, if they where to wait with 4.x until it was inline with 3.5.x, it could take years…
this is basically inertia, similar to what microsoft have bumped head first into with vista.
Agreed… very much agreed….
Ok, I hate to mention the G-word, but – does *anyone remember what Gnome was like from around 2.2 to 2.8 or so? It was *awful*, and it took *years* to fix.
Gnome has a six-monthly release cycle, remember.
( Note to flamers – I use both Gnome and KDE )
Yet, here the world is, seeming to expect KDE 4.1 – in a mere *six months* from KDE 4.0s launch – to do everything from solving global warming to curing cancer.
If everyone is now in love with Gnome, it would behoove them to remember the history of Gnome (and how long it took to get it right), and to extend the same tolerance and respect to the KDE devs.
Edited 2008-07-06 02:59 UTC
good bye, not gonna miss any of you…
why? because the only time i see my desktop is at boot. after that there is firefox, konversation (irc), kmail, konqueror, akregator and other windows covering it…
if i want my desktop icons, i can aim a konqueror tab at ~/Desktop…
put the deskview plasmoid have basically taken the konqueror ability to split a tap into multiple areas, and brought it to the desktop. potentially making the desktop useful again (or maybe turning the kde desktop into the equivalent of the osx widget “popup”). as you can now say that a defined area of the desktop will be taken up by icons, you can stuff other interesting things into other parts of it.
you dont risk having a overload of icons that end up hiding behind some other plasmoid or whatever else you have on there.
and when you get nepomuk and kio support in there, it really takes of. want to have a edit time sorted view of /etc maybe, to see what settings file have recently been changed? or have local and remote storage side by side? home dir sorted by file types? documents in one plasmoid, spreadsheets in another?
but then, they also had to stop refering to the new “menu” as a menu before people really started thinking up new ways of launching apps from it…
yet again, mental inertia…
Makes me wonder yet again why you dig this up, the only thing thats going to “dig it’s own grave” is bloggs like this, people will look back and think how stupid they looked.
As I remember the 3.x was crashy as well, 3.0-3.3 was not that good, konqueror, kicker crashed alot but 3.4 was a real step forward. I’ve been using Konqueror with 4.1 trunk and its very stable, not crashed since beta1. I’ve posted bug reports and they a have been fixed as well, I’ve reported some regression and bugs directly to devs in the IRC and they have been fixed promptly.
I think the KDE4 haters better get a grip and when 4.1 hits final you’ll see the fruits of KDE4 paying off(Yes you can move widgets and icons in the panel now).
My own view is I’m enjoying doing stuff for KDE4, it’s easy to work with, I can drop my SVG artwork right into the games and it works and very nice to work with.
Edited 2008-07-05 22:55 UTC
I’m an openSUSE user and I began downloading and testing 11.0 back in the alpha stage. For every install I chose the KDE4 option for the DE. Now that I’m using the final release of 11.0, I’m also using the beta 2 of KDE4.
During the install, at the step where you choose which DE to use, it clearly states that 3.5 is the stable version and KDE4 is new and still in development.
KDE4 does have it’s problems, but it is usable and doesn’t crash on me at all. I can see why some people might not have the patience for these quirks, like some features visible but inop, or not being able to print from Okular (pdf reader).
I agree with the author from ArsTechnica mentioned in the LinuxHaters article. Keep an open mind and wait for the version that is described as “most problems are now fixed.”
I’m also a MacOS X user.
openSUSE is the only distro that does its job. The job of a user-targetted Linux distribution is to make a pleasant experience for its users.
The KDE guys at openSUSE did an awesome job making KDE 4.0.4 a really nice release and they are still maintaining KDE 3.5.
The issues mentioned in the first article are solely Fedora’s fault. First, Fedora 9 kicked KDE 3.5 in the butt — propably because the maintainers are too lazy to work on two versions and thus leaving Fedora users of either using the old Fedora 8 release or move to KDE 4.0 entirely. Second, openSUSE produced lots of patches to polish KDE 4.0. Most of those patches were ignored entirely by other distributors. My guess is that it’s because of lazyness, too.
I use openSUSE 11.0 with KDE 4.0.4 and while there are a few glitches (most notably to me is the non-working Akregator, but I just installed Liferea to compensate), the overall experience is a pleasant one.
It’s not a question of lazyness. It’s just that upstream does not support it at all and there is no clean way to do it.
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/KDE/KDE4/FAQ
That should have been
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/KDE/KDE4FAQ
The openSUSE Build Service (also compatible with Fedora) happily spits out packages with other prefixes. Fedora could just have used openSUSE’s KDE sources, select Fedora as build target in OBS, and be done with it. However, this involves overcoming the “Not Invented Here” syndrome…
Again, upstream does not support parallel installations of different versions of KDE and the opensuse packages do not follow Fedora packaging guidelines and hence does not integrate with Fedora as well as native distribution packages do. Besides, unlike “open”suse, Fedora allows volunteer contributors to directly maintain packages within Fedora official repository and many of the KDE maintainers in Fedora are volunteers.
Well, then either Fedora 9 shouldn’t force KDE 4.0 upon its users or Fedora should change its guidelines.
Yeah right…. the openSUSE Build Service supports Fedora natively.
So what? That hasn’t improved the KDE packaes compared to other distributions.
Nobody was forced to choose Fedora 9. Fedora 8 is still supported. The only distribution that supports Fedora with proper guidelines that matches Fedora is the Fedora build system naturally. It makes a big difference if your allegedly open distribution allows non employees to participate.
I do not agree or disagree with the profanity… actually, I don’t care… the guy has a character to post his “articles”… It’s, basically, the same as Angry Nintendo Nerd from Gametrailers… not that distant from what Fake Steve Jobs meant too… Why does this character express so much anger and uses so much profanity? If the object is to draw attention, well, he get it right.
Besides the controversy, this blog does something actually not very common in FOSS community, that is looking at thinks from the point of view of the ‘user’, The one who uses the system, that see not reason at all to be forced to use command line to do all the stuff he want to customize his operation system and programs just after installation of when trying to install new things… This point of view is, unfortunately, very rare in FOSS community.. and even if you don’t have to agree with his points (some are very dumb, others are just follow-ups to go-no-where flame-wars, and others are probably just a reason to avoid therapy…), the way he feels/express is the same way many users feel too. So developers should really take a look from time to time and try to fix complains and develop a better understanding of their users… if it’s painful because of all this profanity, well… there’s several greasemonkey userscripts to remove some of the profanity and help the digest his complains…
Ignoring a problem won’t make it fix itself.
That said… the link is clearly advised as “some profanity”, no need to follow.
LH might be funny at times but this rant is just plain stupid.
I mean, forcing his imaginary granny to use KDE4 on her deathbed?
Come on! It’s not like she desperately needs the new features of KDE4 or the most bleeding edge release of any distro.
Nobody’s being forced to use KDE4 – or KDE3.5 for that matter!
The quality of LH’s blog is quickly declining – if that’s possible…
Everyone agrees now that KDE 4.0 was a mistake.
Oh really? And then I stopped reading.
Exactly. Who is these everyone? Since I don’t agree that it was a mistake, I’m clearly not in the group of everyone.
I usually don’t take people serious when they claim to speak for everyone.
I guess it’s the same everyone to whom the LinuxHater blog is “well-known”.
In other words, absolutely no one.
Because this one you posted Eugine is just pure TRASH.
Nice way to start flushing the quality of OSNews down the shitter.
Linux Hater hits the nail with the article, KDE fans didn’t like it? what a surprise but like it or not is what most of the people I know think about it.
I can tolerated the crashes and the incompletness, but I won’t tolerate the arroganse of some developers, cough * aseigo * cough.
It must suck being forced to use KDE4 as opposed to KDE3 while the KDE devs finish the work on top of the foundation they’ve laid. Oh, wait a second, nobody is forced to use KDE4… The summary here as well as on /. is sensationalistic and not representative of the article as a whole.
KDE4 is the makeover that had to happen at one point or another, and an extremely vocal minority is raising such a fuss over a collection of software that the developers even tell people is not ready for mass consumption yet. You don’t like that it crashes and you don’t want to help hunt and quash bugs? Fine, don’t use it and stay with KDE3. The rest of us are actually interested in assisting with the development effort.
The comment about Seigo is pretty funny though, you seriously boycott software because of a single (or at least you only refer to one) developer? What did he do, come into your sandbox and kick down your castle?
Edited 2008-07-06 02:39 UTC
The comment about Seigo is pretty funny though, you seriously boycott software because of a single (or at least you only refer to one) developer?
Not always, but this time I do.
The “Nobody is forcing you”, is so wasted.
Alright, I give, it’s obviously unimportant that you can choose what version of what piece of software you want to run on your desktop computer. What are you smoking? You complain about KDE4 and when presented with the option of sticking with a fully functional KDE3 (There are no QT4/KDE4-only applications that I am currently aware of. Even Amarok is still QT3) you show bottomless maturity by childishly proclaiming “Not good enough!”
I’m someone who isn’t really a big fan of Eugenia, and I don’t really think she should be left in charge of this site with the opinions she has – surely there’s someone else who could take over, isn’t there?
That said, I didn’t think the Linux Hater blog was nearly as bad as I was expecting after reading the comments here. Sure there’s this part:
But then just a couple days ago there was a big series of posts by KDE bloggers about how they didn’t need any users at all, and they should just go f*** themselves if they didn’t like KDE4. So maybe he has a good point, in that people should stop expecting developers of open source projects to treat them like gods. The devs are the ones in charge of the project and can do whatever they want.
The problem is that’s about his only point – the rest of it is just a rant. Eugenia, for future reference this kind of thing probably belongs on your personal blog and not the front of OSNews. I hope you can see why there should be a difference in the content between the two.
Edited 2008-07-06 04:57 UTC
Well since there never where such blogs, it’s how people making a feather grow into a hen. So pleas stop inventing things that was newer said.
The core of what the KDE bloggers said was simply, the users that do not contribute in one way or another does not have any effect on the project. And it’s rather obvious and logical to most people that something not having any effect are not needed. The total effect of one or 10 million users without any contribution one way or another, are exact the same, zero.
I’m sorry, but it was said. From http://troy-at-kde.livejournal.com/17753.html
Edit: To be fair, he mentioned at the top that it was a rant and later apologized for it. But the post spawned a great deal of discussion among other KDE developers, with many agreeing with the position at least to some degree. (And others disagreeing whole heartedly.)
Edited 2008-07-06 08:44 UTC
No it was not and, the quote you provided does underscore the fact.
As you clearly specify users harming the project, thats users having negative contribution. Those are clearly not wanted anywhere. KDE are no exception to that.
So nowhere are users asked to go f–k yourself, only people out to harm the project. Thats a huge and obvious difference.
I don’t care how they try to explain it, releasing something with a full version is saying it’s finished. It clearly wasn’t even close. KDE 4.0 and 4.1 should have just stayed beta until it both reached feature parity and all the apps were ported. Only then, should it have received the designation KDE 4.0.
Why should they blame the distros for including it? Releasing it as a non-beta release says it’s ready for use. Otherwise, call it a beta release. They need to just admit they screwed up and it was a mistake. Hopefully, they won’t repeat this nightmare with KDE 5! KDE 3 launch was nothing like this.
The KDE guys NEVER said it’s finished. It was a dot-0 release like KDE 2.0, GNOME 2.0, Apache 2.0, Mac OS X 10.0, …
KDE 4.0 was a good release for what had realistically to be expected from it.
what about 4.1?
Judging from the betas, it’s probably going to be a fine release.
It’s going to be a good release judging from what I’ve seen. As per usual though you’ll see new features getting added in successive versions.
Edited 2008-07-07 14:39 UTC
Then it should have been KDE 3.9.99 or 4.0 Beta or something, but not released as 4.0. I was around when KDE 3.0 was released, and it was far more complete, and so were those other products who were released with full version numbers.
Fact is, this is in Alpha, not Beta, and should have never been released. If KDE thinks that distros were too quick to release it, then they shouldn’t have released it. What were they thinking?
KDE 3.0 was mostly a plain port of KDE 2 technologies to Qt 3.x. KDE 2.0 was more comperable to KDE 4.0 and KDE 2.0 laid out the foundation until 3.5.x. GNOME 2.0 was a similar release.
Shut up. It’s neither a fact nor can you change the past.
I use KDE 4.0.4 on openSUSE 11.0 and it’s stable and usable.
They laid out the motivations months before KDE 4.0.0 was even released on blogs (kdedevelopers.org, planetkde.org), KDE Dot News, etc.
Let’s stop throwing in OS X 10.0.
That’s an entire Operating System whilst KDE is a Desktop Environment, on top of an operating system. All device drivers, kernel, security and filesystems are the responsibility of the respective operating systems it sits atop.
So what? It was still a rough dot-0 release.
It’s still a very good example of a .0 release. OS X was pretty damn terrible for a couple of revisions, but you could see where it was headed.
That’s an absurd comment to make. Distro maintainers are supposed to be smart and have their own quality assurance for their distribution before releasing software.
If you want software on the bleeding edge, there’s no sense in complaining. If you don’t, then maybe you should consider reading a review or two before you jump in. Discussing the version number is stupid. All software is always in development, the only thing that matters is whether it provides the functionality you need (or, in the case of upgrades, improves your situation).
I think the Linux desktop environments need a ton of work, and I’m absolutely happy that KDE devs decided to try something new out. And, yeah, I think that they should spend their time doing what benefits them, whether it’s enjoyable programming, progressing the goals of the company that employs them, or making a desktop they like to use.
I fail to understand all this bitching and moaning about KDE 4. From what I have observed, most of it has been coming from users and not developers.
Articles critical of the design and implementation of KDE 4 and it’s API are far and few between. Everybody gripes about “It doesn’t read my mind and act accordingly” or “I don’t like learning new paradigms of the user desktop model”.
It’s bleeding edge new, and it has bugs. Why is everybody so surprised? When no attempts are being made to fix bugs, I can understand people getting grouchy. But as I have observed, the KDE devs are busting ass, and the resulting design offers lots of potential.
Quit raising hell over your personal eccentricities and try looking at what is important. And trust me, if there are others who share your eccentricities, that itch will eventually get scratched.
I seem to have come acroos quite a lot of “criticism” of KDE 4 that comes from people who haven’t actually used it.
For example, from this quoted article:
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3757241/KDE+4.1+B…
the statement “Nor can you drag and drop between the panel and the desktop” is not actually true … you can in fact drag icons from one to the other. All that you need to do is click on the area of the transparent border that appears around the icon when you hover the mouse pointer near it, rather than clicking on the icon itself. Having clicked on that border area, you can then drag the icon wherever you would like it to be placed.
Since the loud and vocal “criticism” is apparently not coming form KDE users, and it is certainly not coming from KDE developers … one is left to wonder exactly where it actually is coming from.
KDE detractors perhaps?
Who might have an interest to spread misinformation about KDE in order to disparage it, do you think?
Edited 2008-07-06 09:00 UTC
It’s the Internet, people like to bitch. Especially people who never contributes a single minute or penny to the applications they bitch about.
some would argue it to be alpha
stuff just simply isnt there yet, some stuff still lacks the functionality and it pretty much has feel of a tech demo than anything that would deserve “4.0 final” release
Using the logic being applied here. Gnome didn’t come out of beta until at least 2.12, OS X until at least 10.3, etc., etc.
The word is entirely meaningless outside of meaning “limited release”.
Stop flaming and start using KDE 4.0.4 on openSUSE 11.0.
If you call yourselves linux hater. You should leave Linux alone and stay on your beloved windows which does not have any problems at all *** cough ***.
Ontrack again KDE 4.1 is 2 steps forward no steps backward. Our office uses B2 on a daily base and itÅ› rockstable.
You could consider Linux Hater as a sort of “reality check”. He is probably an above average Linux user tired of some aspects of Linux/OSS development. And…
” If you call yourselves linux hater. You should leave Linux alone and stay on your beloved windows which does not have any problems at all *** cough ***.”
this reply is childish.
Ignore the profanities, and you’ll find some pretty solid ideas around there.
Edited 2008-07-06 14:01 UTC
In the longer term, its not as much of a critical issue as it would be with closed source, because we are not forced to go along. If people really end up not liking it and not using it, there is always KDE 3 to go back to, and that’s what will happen. The code is out there, it will be used.
However, KDE is an amazing achievement, either 3 or 4. As compared to Gnome, it seems to have a much more expansive and innovative approach. Many of us prefer Gnome for this reason, preferring the DTE to get out of the way and stay out of the way, but KDE’s approach is needed and worthy of respect. Because of this approach, you have to recognize that the creativity which went into KDE 3 was at some point going to want to try out a radical new departure, and that time is now.
We just have to wait and see how a large user population reacts to 4, and see how the team modifies it in the light of those reactions. Meanwhile, everyone should calm down, stop posting excitable material on various boards, and reflect that its to the KDE team’s great credit that they have been prepared to take the risk of trying something new. They could just have done a series of refinements, but they chose to be radical. Whether it works or not, and however it works, its admirable. We should all try it, and give thoughtful feedback to the developers. Including those who are not KDE users for everyday work. Maybe especially them.
We need the developers, but they need us too, and as a community its letting them down not to properly test something as significant as this. Even more letting them down to substitute carping for considered evaluation and use.
KDE4 isn’t a finished product but a journey. We are at the very begin of it. I certainly do not know where it will lead us.
I like journeys especially those with destination not known yet.
Linux hater seems to think that users only want incremental updates and that sexy doesn’t sell. I remember many Mac users hating the dock and other parts of OSX. The level of unhappiness was maybe not as widespread as with KDE4 but remember Steve Jobs was seen as some kind of messiah by the Mac community especially when OS X was released as their userbase was much smaller. In time the radical changes worked well for Mac even though 10.0 was a beta. It was so painfully slow you could not even work with it.
All Apple does is sell sexy. Its worked for them and in KDE4 as radical as it is will work for KDE. Being a leader is about communicating the vision and keeping the developers on track developing the vision and ignoring all the naysayers. I really hope KDE have such leaders.
Everyone agrees now that KDE 4.0 was a mistake. …
Rather it should have been “I agree…
“… with myself …”
😉
Yeah, I don’t get the respect esp E seems to have for this guy – it’s mostly cheap stabbing intermingled with moderately funny cursewords. Nothing special…
Oh well, if someone has a problem with OSS software and OSNews, probably better just to say so. It’s hardly a big deal. Really no need to wave two fingers and a troll or three before leaving, though.
Phew, at least Tectonic has something worth saying:
Geddit? Beginning … journey … not yet a finished product. If you want a perfectly finished product, do not use KDE 4 at the moment. Simple really.
Yes, there are some good points in all this, points about whether the KDE devs have made the right calls, about the way in which OSS software is released and about whether the OSS model, which is totally dev-centric, is really any good at listening to and adapting to the wants of users. Plenty to say on either side, imho.
Waste of time debating this in an arena designed for ten-year-olds, though, which is about where Linux-Hater is at. Shut the nursery door so you don’t have to listen to the racket and get on with something worthwhile. The racket is solipsistic and all about clever me, me, me. With luck, they’ll grow out of it.
By the way, did I mention that KDE 4 is an unfinished product? If you want a perfectly finished product, do not use KDE 4 at the moment.
I can see a thumbs up, to recommend this flamebait, which I won’t do, but where’s the “thumbs down” so I can warn others to stay away as well?
I like kde4 to me this version menu seems more organized. if kde4 is making many people unhappy then kde should rename kde4 to something else and continue to develop kde3 for people who wants that design and have this design for people like myself who prefers it over kde3 and that probably will make everybody happy.
I don’t really think that’s the answer. KDE4 is here to stay and so far I think its for the better in certain areas. What I don’t agree with is changes like the plasmoid desktop view. Yes, its all well and good for me as a well versed user to create a large plasmoid that emulates the functionality of the old paradigm but a new user will most likely wonder why his desktop doesn’t have any icons. They will get confused, just like I got confused when I deleted all my desktop icons in gnome but the desktop was still packed when I would login into KDE4.0. If the abilitty is there to follow the convention then it should be the default, don’t confuse people more than you have to just to be different. If a user wants separate plasmoid folder views then the ability is there and they can change things as they please. The real reason why this isn’t the default is again because the implementation is horribly incomplete at the moment. Hopefully by KDe4.2 things will start to come together.
It is called a fork, and it would be extremely bad for KDE. Forking would separate develper in 2 (ok, let say 99% with kde4 and 1% (corporate devs) with kde3).
KDE3 is also based on old libs like qt3 witch have just, well, no future. Qt4 is just better, even if 4.4 need some speed optimization and got some redraw issue (4.5 will focus on fixing that).
Anyway, the fork would be kde3 and not kde4. After let say, a years, the kde3 fork will die, because kde3 will just be obsolete, even if they took the KDE4 “krash2” or alpha1 build (qt4 port, but kicker/kdesktop/konqueror/kwin “intact”).
KDE4 is the way to go that’s all. Computer are evolving, desktop have to evolve too. Web is taking more and more space, file are getting bigger, we got much more of them, DPI/PPI is getting higher, the range from lower resolution to bigger resolution is getting bigger (thanks to UMPC/PDA and widescreen LCD), average Linux user become less “elistic”/Geek and start to become less or more everyone with the new generation of UMPC, the average power of device are getting higher (ok, well, i would prefer if this was reserved to application, but why not few eye-candies).
All that will continue. KDE4 come with solution to these problem, KDE3 does not, that’s all. Things are changing so the desktop is changing. A message to all trolls, the war between conservative Windows XP user (i am not talking about those who wanted a less memory hungry OS, only those that just didn’t wanted to see things moving around) was fun to watch for a Linux user, and Linux user were trolling for XP too just for fun, but in reality, that war was useless, windows has to evolve too, maybe they didn’t made good choice every were, but a least they did something. I think that KDE4 is in better position. Yes things are moving around, but they have a plan, a guideline. If they follow it, it will provide a smooth and excellent user experiences. Aaron try to keep this vision intact, so it can actually happen. In open source, it is hard to follow a guideline, it is one of the big advantages of the proprietary model, but this time more than even, it is necessary. Stop complaining, wait and see, as a KDE4 user since march and a developer, I am well placed to confirm that this vision is the right path to follow and that the technology under KDE4 are there and ready to provide what is promised since 3 years.
I never said fork the same KDE project would be developing both desktops and that would probably suit everybody.
at least i offer an idea and did not whine like many bloggers,reportes are
While I am not a fan of the current state of KDE4, this it not really a practical suggestion. Beyond the jump in QT there are a number of problems in the KDE3 code base that make the progression of that branch impractical.
Starting fresh and rebuilding based on the lessons learned in the KDE3 branch was a good decision. I strongly disagree with some of the ‘logistical decisions” but it does not matter.
KDE has some talented developers working on it. In about 12-18 months it should cross the line where most complaints from 3.5.X users are silenced. OSS users can be quite loud when they do not like something. By the same token though if given a product they can use, even if it is not what they expect, users adapt and eventually quiet down.
I think most would agree that KDE4 had a rough beginning. Whether the roughness was one of perception or programming is not important though. KDE4 is here to stay and is trying very hard to be the spiritual successor of its progenitors. We can give it a few years to see if it manages to live up to its ambitious promise.
why such a radical break was required. They should have ported 3.5.X to QT 4, added a native compositing window manager and called it 4.0. The rest of the stuff could have been rolled out incrementally.
But, the devs were bored and, as another poster pointed out, were not interested in things that matter to users, like suspend and resume that actually works, they wanted to work on the whizbang stuff.
With regard to the Desktop metaphor and its utility — there are probably better ways to control a car than the combination of steering wheel, brake and accelerator given the changes in technology since its original invention. In fact you might argue there are lots of things about cars that could change for the better given current technology. But just try and get people to use cars that don’t have a steering wheel, four wheels and two headlights. The market’s perception of what a car is will trump innovative ideas every time.
Er, porting 3.5.x to Qt4 is what caused most of the breakage. It was unfortunate, but necessary and unavoidable. They did add a native compositing window manager, and they did call it 4.0. The rest of the stuff will be rolled out incrementally.
As has been mentioned previously, the Gnome 2.x release is an interesting metaphor, given the popularity it has currently attained.
A User’s First Look At GNOME 2.0 : http://www4.osnews.com/comments/1280
GNOME 2.0 and 2.x: The Plan:
http://www4.osnews.com/comments/1317
Take a look at the items and the comments.
Some salient points:
* Gnome 2.0 criticized for being called a “developer release” at release
* Praise for improved API and developer friendliness
* Complaints that Gnome 2.0 didn’t function as their 1.x desktop
* Praise that Gnome 2.0 was much better than their 1.x desktop
* Complaints that Gnome 2.0 was slower and buggier than their 1.x desktop
* Praise that Gnome 2.0 was faster and more stable
* Complaints that Gnome betrayal was forcing users to KDE
* Praise at the perceived benefits over KDE
* Complaints that Gnome ignored it’s users when stripping out features for 2.0
* Praise that Gnome had vision enough to focus on UI
Just want to remind everyone that things worked out pretty well for Gnome2 after some time, so maybe, just maybe, thinks might work out OK for KDE4 and, really, the sky is not falling.
As I said, deja vu all over again…
The comparison with GNOME 2.0 does help put things in perspective and the truth is that most of us will forget about this debacle by the time that KDE 4.3 or 4.4 comes out and finally reaches feature and application parity with the old 3.5.x series.
I do think the comparison with Mac OS X is not completely off and the reason is that KDE 4 has been a major and almost complete refactoring in order to gain the ability to run on non-*Nix and non-X Windows systems. People currently forget this aspect of the KDE4 rewrite because there is very little to play with at the moment because most of the focus is on porting and updating all the old KDE 3 applications over to the new KDE4 hotness for Nix systems. It will likely take a few more years but we will soon be able to run most KDE4 applications on Windows, Mac OS X, or the Nix of our choosing.
The advancement of technology made for the KDE4 series has been huge; the problem has been they released the series with a late alpha/early beta-quality GUI and they are taking hell for it. That Plasma is the worst part of the new DE is not such a bad thing considering that it is also the newest and least mature aspect of the system because it represents the last major piece of what has to be done. People forget that the Devs couldn’t start work on Plasma until all the base libs and APIs were finished and therefore this is necessarily the newest and least mature part of the new KDE4 but is the one that is most visible. Plasma is one of the most ambitious aspects of the new KDE but there is no reason to believe they won’t pull it off as they have successfully completed work on their cross-platform API’s and libs which some doubted they would be able to do.
Also the LinuxHater blog would be much more effective without the useless profanity. I’m fine with profanity if it is useful for communicating an idea as it often was with someone like George Carlin but the Linux Hater blog is just overkill without a point in its use of profanity.
The funny thing is, this guy is probably Linus. Wouldn’t that be a trip?
It would be removed for its profanity. Whilst I usually don’t agree with censorship, in his case, it needs to be done. Idiotic arguments, bad language, and just plain stupidity on his part lead me to this conclusion.
This guy has just went way over the top. His mother should have been washing his mouth out with soap for his bad language. Hell, it isn’t even bad, it’s horrendous.
I’ve criticised Linux in the past few years – it’s not perfect and it does have a long way to go. Part of the problem is that the Linux Lovers tm will mod down anyone who dares criticise Linux – even if it’s valid. I have long listed where I think Linux falls down, and falls down badly, but no one wants to listen. If Linux distros and developers started listening, I guarantee that they’d have an influx of new users.
Dave
“Everyone agrees now that KDE 4.0 was a mistake. ”
The only people that thought it was a mistake, were those that could not read/understand (ie TROLLS). It was marked as a release for developers in order to start getting their apps ported and was advertised for general use.
I’m one KDE3 fan who’s moving to Enlightenment or IceWM with AWN because KDE4 is not what I want in a desktop.
What the hell were you doing using kde3 before? Enlightenment is practically the exact oppposite of what kde is all about. Yet now your’re complaining that kde4 is not what you want when many people judge it to have fewer features than kde3. Hypocrisy…
Anyone complaining about KDE4 that much can just stay with what they are using and shut up. Or code their own DE. It is as though you people forgot that development is just that: DEVELOPMENT! HELLO! Life (and software) is a journey not a destination. If you want to use software whose OS and desktop software are behind the times, use Microsoft VISTA. Software evolves while people do not. If you don’t wish to evolve, just go away and settle your backwater-hermit-hole in your evolutionary dead-end and be happy.
Generallly speaking, I think people using GNU/Linux are a bit more progressive. If you wish to be a curmudgeon and to whine and complain, go spout your rhubarb on your self-gratifying blogs. I think the attempt, no, commitment to a new paradigm is exciting. It is a shot across the bow at those pundits who say Linux is just reinventing/imitating Windows. Here is innovation people. What we(some of us?) wanted when we quit using Windows in the first place.
Personally, I have used KDE seit 2.x and just continued to use what worked for me until the right incremental release came along, then I jumped ship. When 4.x is at feature parity with what I use, I will jump to the new version as well.
So quit whining, light a fatty, and let’s go for a ride…
A site like OSNews shouldn’t have linked to something like LH. Honestly, some of the comments posted can really make me laugh out loud:
“Mmmm.. Yes, I love it, I love the hate, bring more of it! The freetards must at some point see their issues!”
“Yesss…..YEEESSS!!!!
This post took the edge off the shakes I was getting from lack of posts – I was almost going to get some work done yesterday….
f–k!! Bring on the K-Pride Week!!!
A whole WEEK of posts about KDE! Are you mad?? You’ll destroy them!!
You’ll be remembered in the history books as the brutal tyrant that single handedly eviscerated and DISEMBOWELED the open source movement!! All the open source programmers will be weeping in the streets!!
They’ll all go and join microsoft in shame, or they’ll go and work at a cattle ranch. Cows aren’t open source!! Cows just work! You feed ’em, then you eat them. f–king idiots will probably genetically engineer a new kind of animal with less features and more bugs than a cow.
In conclusion: More posts!!! Verdammt!”
All I can say is: I look forward to see the open source movement destroyed