[Pan-users] OT: kde4 Was:: OT: freedomware vs... Was: Building Pan on Windows?

[Duncan]

walt posted on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:04:44 -0800 as excerpted:

> On 03/08/2010 06:14 AM, Leslie Newell wrote:
>> Now take my home
>> computer running Kubuntu 9.10. A lot of the applications that come with
>> it have annoying bugs or in several cases complete show stoppers...
> 
> Is it kde 4.x?  The kde devs have been vilified by many users as guilty
> of releasing alpha quality software under version numbers that imply a
> mature product.  I tried it about 4.2 or so and I couldn't wait to go
> back to gnome.
> 
> It was a strange decision on their part to do it that way.

No kidding.  I'm a KDE user, as I enjoy the power user customization it 
has.  But even so and with KDE itself calling 4.2 ready for normal users, 
I had a MASSIVELY difficult upgrade when I tried with 4.2.4.  That claim 
of 4.2 readiness might have actually been funny if it wasn't so pitifully 
out of tune with reality, and with ordinary users.

As a normally leading edge user not afraid to run even live repo versions 
on occasion, I had actually been trying to upgrade kde since before 4.0, 
but 4.0 was barely extremely early alpha hacked up conference technology 
preview demo quality.  Each version has brought massive improvements, but 
even still, 4.1 was still raw alpha quality, 4.2 (despite the official 
claims) late alpha or early beta, still way too many broken or missing 
features (thus my trouble trying to upgrade to it) to be anything else, 
and 4.3, finally approaching late beta or very early rc.

With 4.4, they're FINALLY approaching something semi-sane for an 
ordinary .0 release, tho I've yet to decide whether it's fully .0 or still 
late RC.  But regardless, there's simply /no/ /way/ I'd stake my integrity 
and reputation on recommending anything below 4.4, and in fact, have been 
known to recommend that people give up and either upgrade or wait for 4.4 
on their distribution, when they post to the kde lists with problems with 
earlier versions.

With the upgrade, /as/ a major upgrade, I /did/ expect some problems, but 
this one was ridiculous.  I spent over 100 hours above and beyond what I'd 
call normal upgrade time, researching and installing third party solutions 
for stuff still broken in kde 4.2, reconfiguring workaround, or scripting 
my own solutions and workarounds.  Most folks simply won't have that time 
and tenacity, and if forced, as by their distribution no longer including 
kde3 (mine was getting ready to kill it, tho I had a few months), they'd 
try it, see how terribly broken it was, and switch to something else.  
Which is what a lot of folks did.

But being the somewhat stubborn serious customizer and Gentoo power user I 
am, I saw no viable similarly reasonably customizable alternative, so I 
stuck with it.

And 4.3 was better, to the point I might recommend it for the seriously 
beta software addicted to try, IF they had the time and energy to fight 
thru it, and 4.4 is /enough/ better that I can actually recommend it for 
the merely adventurous (the x.0 folks) to try.  I expect 4.5 will finally 
be something I can recommend to ordinary users, tho I'd recommend waiting 
until at least 4.5.1, as kde's 4.x.0 releases are a typically buggy .0 
releases.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman