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Where KDE is going, part II

KDE 17 Comments

And this is the second part of the future of KDE. We already covered part one.

This is the second half of the ‘where KDE is going’ write-up. Last week, I discussed what is happening with KDE’s technologies: Platform is turning modular in Frameworks, Plasma is moving to new technologies and the Applications change their release schedule. In this post, I will discuss the social and organizational aspects: our governance.

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Thom Holwerda

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17 Comments

  1. 2014-07-02 10:24 pm
    Hiev

    I tried the latest beta (The oficial one) and was crashing all over the place, I feel that we are going to see the KDE4 fiasco all over again.

    • 2014-07-03 2:23 am
      acobar

      May I ask you, with the intention to have a fair interpretation of your comment, what is your Linux desktop preference?

      OBS.: I have many times disclosed that I am a KDE user and really like it.

      • 2014-07-03 2:52 am
        Hiev

        I would say that Fedora with GNOME Shell right now, but I’m often trying and evaluating other options, like Elementary with Panteon, Zorin, XFCE, Cinammont and even, God forbit, Unity.

      • 2014-07-03 6:43 am
        oper

        what is your Linux desktop preference

        Every news site has that kind of people like him. They end up been caught, what he really uses… brings Internet Explorer

        IE is my default browser.

        http://www.osnews.com/thread?588944

        It isn’t the first time.

        to have a fair interpretation of your comment

        There applies what it was said about him in http://www.osnews.com/permalink?569765

        There really isn’t any point in appealing for better behavior. Just look at his history, particularly related to KDE…

        and was modded “Score: 6”.

        “You can send your apologies to hiev_rules@world_king.com”

        http://www.osnews.com/thread?538510

        because, if we didn’t knew it, he’s the king of the world and rules it.

        • 2014-07-03 1:13 pm
          Hiev

          You did all that for me? I feel flattered, but how that change the fact that the latest KDE beta was crashing all over the place?

          • 2014-07-03 4:38 pm
            johntdaly

            Um, it’s a beta! They are allowed to be buggy. Hell .0 releases get to have bugs too!

          • 2014-07-03 5:32 pm
            Hiev

            I know that, but since they are marketing the jump from KDE4 to KDE5 as a very smooth experience, I find intrigued that a beta that is close to the release day gives a very buggy experience.

            Edited 2014-07-03 17:32 UTC

          • 2014-07-03 9:29 pm
            johntdaly

            So you think they won’t push the release date back? I’m a dev, things happen that I didn’t expect, debugging takes longer, in other words shit happens. If shit happens I have to push back the release. So unless they’ve released something already all dates are wishful thinking in my book.

    • 2014-07-03 1:22 pm
      Bill Shooter of Bul Platinum Prime Supporter

      I tried the latest beta (The oficial one) and was crashing all over the place,

      You are aware of the definition of “beta” when applied to software, right?

      Well, for KDE that goes double.

      Ready for testing, not production

      As a Beta release, this pre-release is not suitable for production use. It is meant as a base for testing and gathering feedback to ensure that the initial stable release of Plasma 5 in July will be a smooth ride for everybody involved and lay a stable foundation for future versions. Plasma 5 is intended for end users, but will not provide feature parity with the latest 4.x release, which will come in follow-up version.

      Known issues

      Stability is not yet up to the level where the developers want Plasma 5. With a substantial new toolkit stack below come exciting new crashes and problems that need time to be shaken out.

      Performance of Plasma 5 is heavily dependent on specific hardware and software configurations and usage patterns. While it has great potential, it takes time to wrangle this out of it and the underlying stack is not entirely ready for this either. In some scenarios, Plasma 5 will display the buttery smooth performance it is capable off – while at other times, it will be hampered by various shortcomings. These can and will be addressed, however, much is dependent on components like Qt, Mesa and hardware drivers lower in the stack. Again, this will need time, as fixes made elsewhere in the software stack might be released by the time the first Plasma 5 version becomes available.

      http://www.kde.org/announcements/plasma5.0-beta2/

  2. 2014-07-03 2:37 am
    kwan_e

    “KDE is becoming a meta organization. Perhaps you can call it an Eclipse for GUI or end user software”

    Abandon ship!

    • 2014-07-03 2:52 am
      Hiev

      I agree, that was a bad call.

      • 2014-07-03 8:33 am
        Carewolf

        Well, bad simili anyway. The direction is good enough, but no one wants to become Eclipse.

    • 2014-07-03 9:00 am
      torp

      “KDE is becoming a meta organization. Perhaps you can call it an Eclipse for GUI or end user software”

      Abandon ship!

      So KDE wants to become synonymous with unusable bloat? I still had some hope… not any more.

    • 2014-07-06 6:39 pm
      richarson

      Eclipse is an organization (the Eclipse Foundation), that’s the simil Jos Pootvliet was impling.

  3. 2014-07-03 1:45 pm
    Hiev

    But when the beta has bugs that it is obvious that can’t be fixed in a short time period then you know that the release is in trouble, so they better pospone it to have more time to fix them or they reléase it with the bugs.

    My guest is that they are going to do the second.

    Edited 2014-07-03 13:49 UTC

    • 2014-07-03 9:53 pm
      Bill Shooter of Bul Platinum Prime Supporter

      I’m not sure what they will do with the release. The last Beta was put out June 10th so its almost been a month.

      In any case, they are releasing it before it reaches feature parity with 4. So for that reason alone, I’d agree that most casual users would be better off waiting.

      Now users that enjoy bug hunts to improve software? Those should install when released, if not sooner.

      It would be nice to say that this was an open source only issue, but with Microsoft, Apple, and Google providing early access to operating systems its becoming much more common for users to decide when software is ready for them.

  4. 2014-07-05 12:01 am
    hussam

    KDE 4.14 will get a few more bug fix releases thna usual and will be supported a bit longer till KF5 is stable enough for everyone to migrate. It won’t be a KDE3 to KDE4 situation.

    I wouldn’t be surprised if we get supported kde4 releases for another two years.

    By then KF5 should be good enough.

    No need to worry about current state of KF5 stability ;)

    Edited 2014-07-05 00:01 UTC