Currently borked but looking ahead…

First off, I’d just like to say that this new WordPress Dashboard looks fantastic and functions really well. Nice work guys. So, what’s up with my Linux box? Well, I switched from SVN to the KDEmod repository in Arch Linux. I managed to fix every problem I had before, including the missing Oxygen icons. Then I saw a few changes in the repo and an update to 4.0.68. I gave into temptation and did a pacman -Syu. That was the last I saw of my speedy, beautiful desktop which had the Slim Glow plasma theme and a few neat widgets.

So its back to Windows for a while. I’m getting a teeny bit bored of Arch. That is, if I find something more exciting I’d go for it. And I have a hunch I may have found it. Before I first used Arch, I had a long chat on the Arch channel and the Gentoo channel on Freenode. I was very satisfied with both distros. However, due to time constraints I went for Arch. But now I think I know my way around and I’m looking for a new, exciting challenge. Even possibly to try 64-bit since my Pentium 4 Processor with EM64T does support it. I will however, put a move to Gentoo on hold as I may go shopping for a graphics card. So I’d prefer to get it set up on Arch first before heading to Gentoo.

I’d really love to post another screenshot of my desktop, but due to severe borkage (is that a word?) I have no choice but to use this Microsoft product as I wait for an update after a few reports of a similar bug with KDM have been made.

Next up: KDE 4.0.66

After reading this article from polishlinux.org, Jayson Rowe’s move to openSUSE’s Factory version and getting a confirmation from a couple of Arch users, I plan to install KDE 4.0.66. The polishlinux review is exhaustive and is a must-read to see whats new since the last revision. The important thing is that what is coming out of the SVN at the moment seems to be reasonably stable.

I’ll be using markc’s repository which generates daily snapshots of KDE 4. I don’t think openSUSE does that so hats off to him really. KOffice, K3b and Amarok2 are also included in his repo so I’ll be installing all three of those as well. I can live with Krita for the occasional little image editing I do for fun, so it will be good to see what’s new. KGet from what I’ve read in an earlier polishlinux review, supports torrent downloads. I hope Kopete has seen some improvements as well. The new Plasma features look fantastic and I’m really looking forward to it. This means all my basic requirements will be fulfilled with six applications and I’ll get a huge bonus with Plasma.

Expect a short review with screenshots in my next blog.

KDE 4.0.2 with Arch Linux

Yeah, its been a while, I know. But I thought I’d kick back by talking a little about my current desktop. Its Arch Linux with KDEmod (unstable) or basically KDE 4.0.2. I was tempted to install KDE 4 from subversion initially. But I did want to keep my existing KDEmod setup and I didn’t have much time on my hands to get dirty. Then I saw that the KDEmod team had finally released 4.0.2 packages after sticking to 4.0.1 for a while. I can’t comment on stability improvements but I can say that the KDE 4.0.2 I’m using is pretty stable.

There are a few minor annoyances, however:

• Plasma rendering needs to be patched up a little. At this moment I’m seeing a few green holes under this Firefox window as I’m typing. This is most noticeable when I turn on desktop effects (which seem a little slow as well).
• I get a crash occasionally while logging out, I haven’t figured out the exact cause yet because it appears for a few seconds and the next moment I’m back to kdm.
• Juk refuses to remember my columns, so its a little annoying there since I don’t have Amarok2 yet.
• Kopete isn’t showing display pictures. Not sure if its a bug or just not implemented in 4.0.2 yet.

I’m not filing bug reports against anything related to the above points because 4.0.3 has been tagged as of March 26, so I’ll wait and see if there is any improvement in 4.0.3 which releases on April 2, 2008.

The latest gtk-qt-engine supports KDE 4, so be sure to grab the source or build from svn if you want your GIMP, Firefox and other GTK+ applications to use the Oxygen theme. There are a few minor glitches here and there though, so don’t expect it to be perfect. At the moment I don’t have Qt3 or any KDE3 application installed (yes, no Amarok or k3b, and I’m already missing them) but that could change soon.

I’ve already tried the 4.1 development version (4.0.66 at the time) through openSUSE’s livecd and its quite unstable as you’d expect KDE from the trunk to be. Amarok2 refused to start and there were a few other bumps as far as I remember. Plasma however, was a bit more stable than what I’m using. If you would like to install KDE 4, I’d recommend grabbing the livecd and installing it. SUSE’s done a fine job in polishing it up. If you have an openSUSE DVD then you can do a fresh install by noting down the KDE 4 Repositories and entering them as Additional Repositories during the install.

WordPress have really, really surprised me with a 3GB storage capacity. I think I’ll use that right now and then maybe play a little knetwalk.

Update: As of now I’m putting Firefox3 aside and sticking to Konqueror because pages look so much more prettier and load faster with Webkit. I can’t import Firefox’s bookmarks for some reason at the moment, but I think that should be fixed soon.

If Canonical acquired PCLinuxOS…

Today I managed to help a friend in getting his iPod to work with Amarok in PCLinuxOS using this guide. We were successful and he’s happily using Amarok to manage his music as well as his iPod. At the end of all I was left satisfied and suddenly something really random hit me. It just hit me, seriously. What if PCLinuxOS was taken over by Canonical? Now I assume you are ready to skip the rest of the post and start flaming me already. Go on, but what good would it do? What is the fool talking about you’d say, wouldn’t you?

PCLinuxOS is an excellent distribution. What has proved to be the difference in making it my recommended distro for newbies or users coming from other operating systems is the fact that it runs fine on laptops as well. I’ve tried openSUSE, Mandriva and Kubuntu on my friend’s laptop and openSUSE worked but was overwhelming, Mandriva worked but it wasn’t as up to date as I’d have liked it, but more importantly both distros had slow package management. Kubuntu didn’t detect the sound and wi-fi for some reason from what I was told.

Now, PCLinuxOS depends a lot on donations but still manages to do a fantastic job with its wonderful developer team of Texstar and the Ripper Gang. I have had the opportunity to speak to devnet, one of the lead developers, once on IRC and they are indeed a very friendly community. Texstar has stated in the past that he has tried Debian and other distros before but ultimately decided to use Mandriva as a base. While that in my opinion has proved to be great, I want to try and analyze what would happen if Canonical backed this distro.

The first step would be attempting to work under the banner of Ubuntu. If at all that is accomplished then it would be interesting. It would primarily benefit Kubuntu, which at the moment is under Jonathan Riddell who I must say once again as I did in the previous post, is doing a fantastic job with the distro. Kubuntu would be backed by a hard working development team that would be well-suited to the system of long term releases as well as they do a wonderful job in ensuring stability. The new six-month cycle would, the way I’d see it, be a new challenge to take up. There would be the problem of shifting these developers to another base, from Mandriva to Debian. Would it be welcomed? I do not know.

What would it bring to Kubuntu as a distribution in terms of features? A few more thinking caps? Certainly. Quicker implementation of features that are there in Ubuntu and other distros? Yes. I even think Kubuntu’s artwork could be taken to another level and be made a lot more appealing than it already is. Attention to detail is something the PCLOS developers are good at, and we’d see some splash screens for applications somewhere along the lines of openSUSE as well. I’m sure that can always be done but the fact is that it hasn’t been done. Riddell has earlier stated that Kubuntu makes use of KDE software only. Now with the current potential of KDE 4 yet to be utilized since KOffice, Amarok2, the PIM and other applications for KDE 4 aren’t completely updated yet, it will be interesting to see how KDE 4 further improves usability for such applications.

This deal would not benefit PCLinuxOS as an independent brand. That is one thing that needs to be made clear. You don’t bring a big fish out of the water and put it in a small fish bowl. However, you can set a small fish free into the ocean. That means that PCLinuxOS would have to come to Ubuntu and not the other way around. If Canonical wants the future of Kubuntu to be in very strong hands this

This would also be the “easy way out”. If Canonical were to consider this, it would in some peoples’ perspective, make them look a little ‘anxious’ as well. I don’t think they have learned their lesson yet though, have they? PCLinuxOS took Ubuntu by the storm and overtook Ubuntu on Distrowatch (which I believe does hold a decent stand when in deciding who uses what) at one point of time. That ‘period’ involved using the KDE version of PCLinuxOS which thus increased the usage of KDE indirectly as well. KDE was a hit so why does Kubuntu still have one lead developer? I have not written this to merely ask for an increase in the number of Kubuntu developers.

Its strange that I haven’t mentioned that dissolving PCLinuxOS would be something they would have to do in order to clinch the deal. The PCLinuxOS developers would gain experience working with a larger user base and we know Ubuntu is good in providing commercial support as well when needed so I see it as a positive for the PCLOS developers as well. It paints a pretty picture in the minds of the neutrals I must say. The unifying force would have to be open-source and that alone will keep the project together. But what is Linux and the spirit of open-source? One big community working hard together. If the two parties were to by chances see this idea the way I do, then there would probably be something to consider. Trolltech came along one day to pick up KDE, providing complete backing and helping to turn KDE into what it is today. With things looking promising with the Nokia deal and Qt 4.4, lets stand up for a new distribution revolution, shall we?

Disclaimer: I am simply fantasizing about such a takeover and it would indeed be wonderful if it actually worked out. I do not know how Canonical and PCLOS would be able to settle it, but if done, it would be another step in the right direction, to bigger and greater things… in Linux. Sometimes, a takeover isn’t about money, its about sharing a vision.

Update: At this point of time I would like to say that I did not mean to be controversial or anything like at times some bloggers do to attract attention. I merely wished to share an idea (even admitting that I am fantasizing) and gauge your opinion on it. That said, I would like to raise my hat to those who read or commented on this post because I did realize I said “bought” and this could have been interpreted in an inflammatory way, so I wish to just keep it clearer by saying “acquired.” I know that this would indeed lead to one of the distributions losing its identity and I also wish to emphasize again that I have a lot of respect for the PCLinuxOS community and I do not consider it a minority. What I did not mention before is that I do dislike Ubuntu and I do not like that Canonical hasn’t given Kubuntu the support it needs and have hinted it in my previous post as well.

I share the sentiments of the users who have commented when they imply that Canonical needs to take a good look at itself and lend a hand to Kubuntu. I realize that you do not need to have major backing to be successful. PCLinuxOS is doing a wonderful job I must say again. This post simply suggested uniting two parties however it would mean making a sacrifice. It also shows that PCLinuxOS deserves to have the backing of a powerful company to give it a financial advantage that would indeed take it to the next level. It deserves better marketing and so does Mint as has been rightly pointed out in the first comment below.

On the subject of the base of both distributions (Debian or Mandriva) and considering a question of merging them I’d like to say that I would not be able to decide which. Neither would any of you users. That is why I clearly said that for this deal to go through if it was even considered by both parties, it would need to be agreed upon by both parties. Finally to the user who said that Distrowatch numbers aren’t indicative of a distribution’s popularity. It is true to a good extent and I do not wish to take a side about its validity because that isn’t the point of this post. However judging by the response to this post, I would have to point out that there have been more PCLinuxOS users than (K)Ubuntu users who have had a say about this idea.

That said, I would just like to wish both distributions the very best for the future and I hope they manage to satisfy their respective user-bases.

Aaron Seigo criticizes Canonical, Kubuntu developers hit back: the Aftermath

My busy schedule seemed to coincide timely with an interesting but recurring debate that has been put in the limelight once again so it seems I can cover the arguments of both sides. Aaron Seigo, President of the KDE e.V. and KDE’s lead developer said in an interview with Computerworld,

What I find unfortunate is that some companies dig into technologies. Canonical did not communicate well about long-term support and therefore neglected 35 percent of their user base. A user base they routinely neglect, but at KDE we ignore a lot of this.

Now this was met with disappointment from Jono Bacon, Canonical’s Ubuntu Community Manager who countered Aaron’s comments. Kubuntu developer Jonathan Riddell wrote an excellent post, leading from the front and listing out the reasons why he felt that Kubuntu was actually helping the cause of KDE. This was followed by a post on the Planet by Celeste Paul which acts as an extension to Riddell’s arguments.

Having given you the situation as it is, I would like to emphasize on certain points from these posts and put forward my opinion on them. I’ll begin in sequence with then, with what Aaron said. I do believe that there is no need to make an actual long-term support version but I do believe that it would help certain small sections of the Kubuntu community, to extend the support of the KDE 3 version of Kubuntu for this particular release from the presently assigned six months to a year. This would give KDE 4 enough time to become a desktop environment which could be reliable enough to provide long-term support for even a year on.

I mean, if Kubuntu 8.04 has a year’s support, then users who opt for long-term stability can work for a year on what will probably be a stable KDE 3.5.9 release and then make the move to KDE 4 which will have been more than a year into its release. If you have seen the rate at which bugs are being fixed in KDE 4, there is no doubt that with this speed coupled with the quality of existing framework, you will have a stable version of KDE 4 following your final usage of KDE 3. All it takes for Canonical is thinking a little outside the box but it would mean making a bold decision.

Their current decision according to me could send one of these signals: a). they simply want to move forward and put their entire focus on KDE 4, b). they are conceding that Ubuntu’s LTS (not Kubuntu’s) is ideal for servers and users looking for a stable option for this particular release, hence ignoring the 35% base they have. I personally think it is a). and I do not think Canonical are cynical enough to concede that they are not giving Kubuntu (coupled with KDE) the developers, attention and focus it needs. Having said all this, I would like to add that judging by Jono Bacon’s post, the decision to not have a Kubuntu LTS this time around was, I am certain, well thought out by them and I respect their decision and I think we should just get on with it.

Now I’d like to touch on the second point of Riddell’s post in which he said that Kubuntu is a pure KDE distro. In my opinion, this is probably the strongest point in his post. He is spot on about Kubuntu actually helping the cause of KDE by being purely KDE-based and not including any GNOME applications in its default setup. PCLinuxOS and Mepis for example, use Synaptic as their package manager, which is GTK+ based. Kubuntu have gone out of their way to create Adept which in my opinion, might lack a small feature or two (like total estimated time remaining) but it is still a fine package manager. Another little known fact he points out is that it was he who worked with Amarok to get the first automatic codec installer working and the fact that Ubuntu got to it first is not true.

He also reminds us of Kubuntu Tutorials Day, when he held sessions of IRC to introduce users to PyKDE and Qt. I remember him mentioning on his blog a little after the event that openSUSE people too turned up and paid notice. I guess that highlights the reason why I visit the Ubuntu Forums every now and then - the wonderful community. I don’t spend time on the #ubuntu channel enough to say that there aren’t a few kinks there and though there has been trolling like with the famous sudo rm command incident, I do think that they are a helpful lot.

The last time the matter of Canonical neglecting Kubuntu came up when there was an open letter to Mark Shuttleworth written by a blogger who wished to emphasize the need to get rid of the current naming system of ‘buntus and stick to something along the lines of Ubuntu KDE Edition. Now while I did comment that I supported this idea, I realize now that this will not change the fact that Canonical had decided to base Ubuntu on GNOME and that Kubuntu came later. What Kubuntu really needs is a few more quality developers to help Riddell, who I think is doing a fine job on his own, but they could probably do with all the support they can get.

Nokia to acquire Trolltech

I couldn’t help mentioning this here and I do not intend to hype up anything. Trolltech have made a press release about the same and issued an open letter to the KDE community. According to some sources, holders of approximately 66.43 percent of Trolltech’s issued shares and votes have approved the offer. As always I won’t repeat what’s already been explained so far unless I have an opinion about this, so I’ll quote Havaard Nord, CEO and co-founder of Trolltech, just so you know that the deal has been made carefully.

We will continue to actively develop Qt and Qtopia. We also want to underline that we will continue to support the open source community by continuing to release these technologies under the GPL.

So this move should help Nokia to take advantage of Trolltech’s creativity and strengthen their mobile application platform. Open source, open source… I wonder if the Android had any reason to inspire this. So Havaard Nord’s dream of seeing ‘Qt Everywhere’ should soon become a reality. What started as a framework for making graphical user interfaces in C++, it has evolved to becoming the foundation of the K Desktop Environment. I wonder how the GNOME fans will react, but one thing is for sure, I definitely did not see this coming!

PlayOnLinux and Wine 0.9.54 with Adobe Photoshop CS/CS2 support

This is more of a quick news flash than anything else. The Wine developers have just announced the release of the 0.9.54 version which features Adobe Photoshop CS/CS2 support. They have said that it should work now though I’ll wait a bit before I can link you to some feedback. I also just noticed that Photoshop CS2 has jumped to #1 in the list of Platinum applications in Wine. The reviews in AppDB suggest that the earlier 0.9.5x version allowed CS2 to run with performance issues and minor crashes but most features seemed to work. Now hopefully all that is fixed and we’ll get closer to a version 1 of Wine with 91 bugs left to be fixed. The Digg page currently features some humorous comments and I particularly like this one:

< classic > I can’t use linux desktop as I need photoshop < /classic >
You are running out of arguments Johnny boy!

Apparently you can also get Microsoft Office 2007 running in Wine with a little work and that is a great achievement as well.

There is also PlayOnLinux which is a Python-based frontend to install Windows programs in Wine. They have a repository of scripts for different games which should basically make it simpler to install games which is useful. With more support they can expand the repo for better game support and simple installation of games. It even lets you install DirectX for a certain game and it should thus save me some time and I could give Wine another shot with my FIFA 08 DVD. You can assign specific wine versions to run your installed windows program from and this means that Battle.Net in Warcraft III could work with an older version of Wine, allowing you to run other games with later versions at the same time. Simulated reboot and addition of desktop shortcuts are also useful features.

I checked a couple of topics on their forums and it seems to make games work real smoothly. All it needs now is more contributors who know how to configure Wine and the scripts don’t look that long either so if you have some experience do contribute or learn how to because it isn’t that hard from the looks of it.

Arch quickie, stable KDE 3.5 distro and Plasma

After toying around with KDE 4.0.0 I would have to say that openSUSE’s LiveCD is superior to Kubuntu’s though in the long-run Kubuntu will certainly give openSUSE competition. YaST rocks but Kubuntu isn’t bad with its simple Ubuntu philosophy. Adept could seriously do with some work though but if you are like me, you’ll contend with zypper in openSUSE and apt-get in Ubuntu. I’d like to see Adept include an estimate of time remaining when downloading packages like Synaptic and YaST do just to fill that tiny void of uncertainty. When I do updates I often have to leave the PC on for a while and it helps to know how long its all going to take, especially on slower connections.

Then I attempted to reinstall Arch. Unfortunately I chose the wrong time with Pacman 3.1.0 being a little buggy and 3.1.1 in the works to fix the bugs. I experienced a bug with dependencies and I cannot decide the what the bug finally was because when I downgraded to Pacman 3.0 using Don’t Panic, I received another error. You can wait a little and install KDEmod4 if you use Arch and don’t have it already. I did install KDEmod (i.e. the KDE 3.5.8 version) for a couple of days. Speaking of Arch, they’ve also released their monthly newsletter of 2008 which features an interview with Judd Vinet, which is a great read if you’re an Arch fan like me.

I had decided a while back, to arm myself with a stable KDE 3.5.x distribution for my own stability as well as to recommend to others. Now, PCLinuxOS takes the best of Fedora and openSUSE through its rpm package system and Ubuntu through apt-get and Synaptic. It then provides a really fast K Desktop Environment with a quick boot speed, great hardware detection and easy setup. With the MiniMe 2008 version out, I decided to download it and install only the applications I use or may need to use regularly. At the moment, all that’s left is to make the LiveCD after having downloaded the packages.

Its a long six-months to go before we can witness the true power of KDE 4 with the 4.1 branch. During that time, the developers will really be at it and you can follow their experience at the Planet. Amidst all the posts in the blogosphere on KDE 4.0.0 not being ready and Plasma being unstable, I found this one which provided a very simple, clear explanation of Plasma for you to understand and realize why we can only use a fraction of its true potential at the moment. Its even going to have support for OS X Dashboard widgets in the future so we can take advantage of a plethora of widgets already available. It seems I just missed a useful update to Plasma by a day when I removed openSUSE to install and configure PCLinuxOS. The multiple lines of buttons feature from Kicker in KDE 3.5 can now be used with Plasma’s panel. Aaron Seigo said:

the multiple lines of buttons works automatically, of course, with no configuration needed. new lines appear as space becomes over used. it works nicer than what we had in kicker, really, and it’s all still animated and what not. yummy goodness. you may also notice the “only show tasks on the current desktop” option is back …. i’m sure it’s only a matter of time before we end up with task grouping and what not.

Yes, it looks like they’re really accelerating development and it can only be good, right? Finally, I’d just like to randomly add that I’ve found a solution to my friend’s problem of not having an IM client in Linux with MSN Messenger’s features like offline messaging and custom emoticons. KMess does that and I even included it in my customized PCLinuxOS setup which needs to be made into an ISO now that I’ve finished downloading the packages.

KDE 4.0 Release Event and its back to Arch

As you know by now, KDE 4.0.0 has been released and met with mixed feedback all around. The KDE 4.0.0 events have been taking place all over the world with the main one from January 17-19, 2008 at Google’s Campus in Mountain View, California. You can find coverage of the first and second day at Dot. The release event keynote has also been made available online on Google video and can be found here.

I’m working on fixing up my Arch installation with KDEmod4, which is actually in the KDEmod testing repository since we do not have a complete KDE 4.0.0 desktop yet. I imagine there will be wide scale adoption of KDE 4.1 in all distributions, which is due in July, 2008 according to liquidat. From what I’ve read, Aaron Seigo, President of the KDE e.V. has a real way with words, but I’ll provide more on that in a follow up to this post.

Remember I said that my distro hop was over? Well, I better not say that again until I’ve used a distribution for atleast a year, which I haven’t. So far, I’ve been disappointed with Kubuntu’s KDE4 LiveCD because of the missing icons and use of old ones, which really spoiled the ‘Oxygen effect’ for me. Also, the installation refused to detect my partitions and setup my internet. openSUSE fixed all that and I must say that YaST provides a great foundation for making spins and so does Fedora’s Anaconda installer.

Since I have no time to compile my packages from source and go with Gentoo, I’m going back to Arch which happens to be the distribution I’ve used the most. Now I’ve had to download packages intermittently, so it could take another day to get my full desktop up and running so I can provide an actual review and an article on why I’m going back to Arch.

Just remember that if you’re keen on using KDE4 as soon as possible with a long-term approach, then make sure you’ve decided the distribution that’s best for you and wait for your (six months maximum I would say) distro to release the packages in its repositories. It also depends on how adventurous you wish to be.

Give KDE 4.0.0 love, time and bug reports only

There have been a host of articles and comments around the blogosphere, written after the launch of KDE 4.0.0 criticizing it for being released at the time it has and being just “oh-so-buggy”. Let me begin with this OSNews article on KDE 4.0.0. The review is fine when it comes to reporting a few kinks here and there even groaning about the fonts which might not be visibly appealing to everyone (I mean, opinion varies). And of course, its again the situation when users review three or four exciting features of KDE 4 without reminding or telling readers that there is more hidden treasure underneath in the form of the excellent new framework and technical backend.

Amidst the reactions to this article were a few comments that caught my attention, beginning with this one by dagw:

The KDE team obviously shot themselves in the foot with calling it 4.0. I’m sure they had a reason for not calling it Beta or Developer release, but whatever the reason it was a bad one. Especially since every complaint is met with a response of “well what did you expect, it’s a Beta software”. No matter which way I look at it, the KDE team screwed up this release, and it would probably be in their best interest to admit it and just flat out say, we jumped the gun.

What’s weird is how it is self-contradictory when he goes on to add, “That being said I’m in no way criticising the underlying technology. I’ve looked at the new framework and libraries, and they look pretty damn amazing.” Now in case any of you are planning to review the KDE 4.0.0 release or try it out, then keep these KDE 4.0 Review Reminders in mind.

To address the release timing point, I would say that if KDE 4.0.0 had not been released now and had been put off for a 4.1 release with those very features then it could result in a delay for other KDE applications as well. Once the KDE 4.0.0 team has presented a basic desktop with the developer framework in place, it serves to help developers of Amarok, Kopete and other KDE applications, if not in a large way considering that they would have to focus on their own features and stability, but to atleast help them finish the applications. It would also mean that people can take up new and current projects early on and eventually converge to a point when we have one amazing, complete desktop. One of the readers of the OSNews article gave the right details to describe what I’m talking about:

Amarok was ported in 2 days to OSX and could have been ported faster, according to developers. Phonon allows a media player to use GStreamer or Xine on Linux/BSD, Quicktime on OSX and DirectShow on Windows without changing code. Same goes for Solid, which will allow use of removable devices, Bluetooth, WiFi, ACPI on all supported OSes. And have a look at the impressive Decibel framework.

There’s much to be said about KDE4 besides Plasma and SVG rendering, but reviewers aren’t looking in the right place.

The Road to KDE 4: Phonon Makes Multimedia Easier
The Road to KDE 4: Solid Brings Hardware
Configuration and Control to KDE
The Pillars of KDE 4: Decibel
The Pillars of KDE 4: Decibel Definitions and Benefits

Jos Poortvliet, a KDE volunteer points out in his response to the article that packaging is also a tricky issue with there being a time period required to adapt to the release, which eventually we have to do. He also shares the point that other applications would be affected, primarily the ones in the main KDE desktop right from basic applications like Kate or Juk to the KDE-Edu project.

The community would suffer the most with a later release date - this is what most users do not realize. The community consists of contributors broadly of two types - users and developers. Users submit their feedback and the bugs they moan about on the blogs but sometimes don’t bother to officially report thinking its already done (yes, it tends to be a common perspective). They are also the ones who are mainly waiting for the finished product. The developers are the ones behind the project and receive the users’ feedback, adding new features and fixes and responding to the user community. So simply put, a later release would mean a longer time to review, which in term would mean a longer time required to fix bugs and keep rolling in the features.

KDE 4.0.0 is in a state where it can be used. After all the warnings you must have received or received here, it is probably clear KDE 4.0.0 is not ready for full-time usage but it will certainly crash less and let developers carry out their work and probably allow you to contribute. If 4.0.0 for some reason just refuses to run on your computer then wait a bit longer for 4.0.1 or 4.0.2 (which I cannot say will be officially announced, but you can always ask on IRC or check the repositories of your distribution that has KDE 4.0.0). This release will ultimately attract more users even if it does happen to temporarily put them off with features being unstable or “not ready” according to them, because watching the efficiency with which things get fixed and new stuff appears will keep make them stick around.

You might have also realized that there are just a handful of distributions that are offering KDE 4.0.0 in their repositories or development releases. I’ve seen a couple of requests on the Arch Linux Forums for putting KDE 4.0.0 in testing but I do not think that it would make sense. The big guns like openSUSE, Ubuntu and Fedora have a good number of developers to test and package this release and true stability would be witnessed in KDE 4 when the majority of the distributions start adopting it as their main or secondary KDE version.

Calling KDE 4.0.0 a step backwards is a little too strong for a couple of complaints about the theme so I do hope this pretty lame situation improves. If you want to hear it from the boss himself, Aaron Seigo’s post on why KDE 4.0 should be release now is a great read. Till then just give this sparkling new desktop environment a little time and patience even if you cannot love it (how you cannot love it is beyond me but then again we’re all different!). Stand up and be counted by getting involved in the process. Learn a programming language like C++ or Python or brush up your existing skills (as in my case), try to see if you can find bugs and learn how to report them here.

While you do all this just remember to leave the reality for once, and live the dream!