KDE: It’s time for a fork
Submitted by srlinuxx on Sat, 06/28/2008 - 22:42.
OK, I’ve now tried KDE 4.1. I’d been assured that it would be better than KDE 4.0x. It is. That’s the good news. The bad news is that I still find KDE 4.1 to be inferior to KDE 3.5x. KDE’s developers believe that KDE 4.1 “can fully replace KDE 3 for end users.” I don’t see it.
My real problems with KDE 4.1 is far more fundamental. The developers believe that they have a better way of handling the desktop. For them, I’m sure they do. For users, this user anyway, the new desktop fails at a desktop’s main job: enabling the user to get their work done as easily as possible.
Take, for example, that in the new Dolphin file manager, the developers claim, and I quote, “Selecting files is made easier by a small + button in the top left corner that selects the file, rather than opens it. This change makes using the file-manager in single-click mode much easier and prevent accidentally opening files, while being intuitive and easy to use.”
SJVN will fork?
It's easy to ask for a fork; making it happen is harder. 'Good luck', Steven.
stop it!
tuxmachine people, stop linkig such vomiting stuff.
He is demoralizing developers, avoiding people from trying KDE4 and he does not even make a valid point. Fork KDE because of being configurable!, Comm'on!. He can always move to OTHER DESKTOP and stop complaining. He can even move to Vista if it's better headed than KDE4.
He doesn't see that KDE now is platform independent, has build phonon, decible and nepomuk and as a consecuence it will use different engines in a blizz, share PIM information all across the desktop and be a real semantik desktop, for example. No, he only sees Dolphin adding a button and that for him is a regression.He doesn't see he is burnig developers, developers who has for more than four years now decided that they will rebuild KDE, imagined a new KDE and actually build it. He doesn't even think in those people who work for no money but made huge efforts ad he takes all for granted. And then, fork it! fork KDE!, he's telling them, stop being part of what you create and became a traitor to the people you have beeing working with. Julius Cesar said once 'Divide and Conquer'. Vomiting!.
Well, I don't agree with him
Well, I don't agree with him on everything, but your rebuttal isn't working well. He never said he preferred vista to linux - if he did in another blog post, I missed it, and I apologise. He just doesn't like the way KDE 4.1 is heading. And he might have a good point.
In my experience, KDE 4.whatever-version-I-had was buggy, unstable, unusable, and detrimental to my productivity. It's not so much that everything is different, but things seem needlessly complicated or made visually pleasing while sacrificing effectiveness. Do I understand that behind the scenes, KDE 4.x is (theoretically) superior to KDE 3.x? Yes, I can see that. Do I prefer the presentation in 4.x to 3.x? No, I don't.
And in regards to the developers: I understand they sacrificed their time. But the effect I get from your comment is "how dare he complain!" Well, isn't this opensource, where people can voice an opinion and give a different perspecitve on things? We claim Windows is horrible for locking everything, but your comment hardly seems any different. Going by your statement, we have no right to complain that windows developers lock things up, because they put effort in their product.
It ain't 4.1 yet . . .
Sjvn is certainly entitled to his opinion.
Calling for a fork, before the release, when you don't like a couple of (minor) interface changes in the GUI strikes me as ludicrous.
Meanwhile, sjvn better get to programming . . . getting forked is so hard to do.
re: 4.1
I've heard if you get the code drunk first, it's easier.
re: 4.1
As far as I know, Svjn is
As far as I know, Svjn is not a KDE developer (check here http://practical-tech.com/about-2/) (correct me if I'm wrong!) . If you look through out his last posts you can notice that KDE4 has been a recurrent theme. He's never spoken good about it and he is free to do so, obviously, I profoundly belive in democracy and OSS ways, don't take me wrong. But I'm tired of so much lies, and complains and so on about KDE4. I know that such reviews are having a real impact on developers inside the project. I myself am an active translator of the KDE desktop so I form part of KDE in some way so I know what Im talking about. Take Aaron as an example of what I say, a key piece of the actual project, he is burnt and has recently privatize its blog and reduced his participation in IRCs... to avoid PERSONAL INSULTS and alike. He is a prominent developer for KDE, the week of the 25th he had writen 200 lines of code and made 116 commits in one week (take a look here http://commit-digest.org/issues/latest/)
I would have not answered this way if I hadn't percived Svnj words as constructive or innocent, but their are destrutive. If he is capable of forking KDE, go on!, but I doubt he is and thats the real problem. It's something like what it has been called FUD, or even bulling. He is like trying to force a change in direction to a project he is not involve in. If he is not happy with (+) button in Dolphin, write a bug beging to get it removed, if he is not happy with[x feature] complain in bug.That's the way OSS goes, developer do, users report and give feedback. If you're a developer, you can fork,if you are an user, you can move to another software.
PD: I said if he does not like KDE4 at all he can always move to another Desktop, like GNOME, XFCE... or even to a private solution, like M$ Vista. He is not forced to use KDE4, that's my point. He hasn't said anything about Vista. I did.