----- Original Message ---- > From: Neil Bothwick <n...@digimed.co.uk> > On Thu, 12 May 2011 16:44:21 -0500, Dale wrote: > > Your questions don't disprove what me and others have posted. As I > > have said on the KDE mailing list, KDE made a serious mistake dropping > > KDE3 before KDE4 was ready. > How exactly did they "drop" it? It's still available from > ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/3.5.10 even now and some distros still > have packages for it. It never went away, you can still use it if you > wish. >
Ok, so personally I very much like KDE4 - been using it since 4.3 was stabilized on Gentoo and love it. That said... KDE did seem to drop the ball a bit with their management of the transition from KDE3 to KDE4. To start with, look at the reason why Gentoo dropped KDE3 from Portage - KDE stopped maintaining it and the builds started breaking as underlying library dependencies changed. So, sure you may be able to pull a binary build from KDE and use it; or (more likely) you'll spend hours and hours getting everything setup right - with all the correct versions of the dependencies, etc - to get it up and running. In other words, when KDE decided to move on to KDE4 full time they left the release as it was and it has since gotten harder to use by those that want to use it. Okay - that's not entirely KDE's problem; though it would have helped a long way with the KDE4 transition if they kept a few people working on those issues. The big issue is that in moving to sole development of KDE4, distros started to drop KDE3 and replace it with KDE4. For example, Kubuntu 8.04 TLS dropped KDE3 and used KDE4 long before KDE4 was really user worthy - long before KDE was calling it user worthy. But KDEs actions of moving sole development to KDE4 prompted most distributions to do likewise. As a result, KDE got a lot of flack for KDE4 not being ready for users b/c it wasn't - which KDE readily recognized and admitted. Had they kept a small team working on at least the build issues until KDE4 reached 4.3 then the transition would have likely gone a lot smoother. The userbase for KDE4 would have been smaller, so it may have taken a little longer to get some of the user feedback; but it would have greatly helped with aiding distributions and users making the transition instead of feeling like they were dumped from KDE 3.5.10 into KDE 4.0.1. > > So install a distro that still supports KDE3 if that's what you want or > need. KDE 3.5.10 is still there, it hasn't been withdrawn from the > shelves. You're hardly likely to use Gentoo for such users, so lack of > core support for 3.5 in Gentoo is not an issue either. > While I am not personally interested in it, please name one. Gentoo doesn't support KDE3 any more. You have to go to Trinity to get the newer, forked KDE3 series. Last I heard they were equivalent to a 3.5.12 or so; but I haven't seen anything on the Desktop list for a while about Trinity. Needless to say, you may be very hard pressed to find a modern, up-to-date distribution that offers KDE3 support. Ben
