Martin Herrman posted on Wed, 30 Dec 2009 21:51:23 +0100 as excerpted: > actually, I had already read [the bug] before I wrote the original > posting. I just didn't realise that I could 'safely' unmask the package > (because I already had chosen to run the unstable KDE4.3 release).
Good, you put the "'safely'" in quotation marks. Given that you already chose to run the unstable kde4.3, it's no /additional/ risk, and actually is by far less trouble than otherwise, but you obviously realize the (measured) level of risk you take going with unstable kde4.3 or you'd have not had to use those quotation marks around /safely/. =:^/ > I like the concept of Gentoo, the power it gives to me, the safe > bleeding-edge apps and the ease in which I can run my own custom build > kernel. But on the other hand: I just need a working desktop and in 98% > of the cases I don't want to dive into all the details to get things > working. This seems to be a contradiction, I should have been an Ubuntu > user, but that's not true :-D Now and then I apply some custom > USE-flags, but I stick to the default install as much as I can so I'm > not the one to discover bugs. ... but you didn't quote "safe" there. =:^\ Maybe that's because it's a bother when you already quoted it above, but anyway... Really, truth be known, from my perspective the whole kde thing is screwed up right now -- and not by Gentoo, but upstream kde. Unfortunately there's a kde conundrum. kde4 is still under /very/ heavy development, and still has significant enough bugs that to call it "stable" in /any/ form remains a bit of a stretch. Honestly, despite kde- upstream's claims about kde4.2, even kde4.3 is only now reaching late beta, 4.2 was early beta or late alpha, 4.1 was early alpha, and 4.0 was only a conference level technology preview. By many predictions (including but not limited to my own), 4.4 should finally be release candidate level, no real show-stoppers but still somewhat rough around the edges. Following that trend, 4.5 should finally be more or less ready for normal/ordinary use -- full release. (Well, there's a possible exception for kmail, which will be switching to akonadi with 4.5, but they are said and one hopes it's true, to be taking their time and getting it right, the reason they didn't try for 4.4. Perhaps that's the "less" of "more or less", above.) Given that, in a sane world, kde 3 would remain supported and with us for another year, thru 2010 at least, since 4.4 is scheduled for February, 4.5 for August, and there should be at least a few months of overlap to give people time to sanely make the change before the end of support for the previous stable version. Unfortunately, by that metric, kde no longer belongs to a sane world (which of course implies serious questions about the sanity of those who still use it... like me and obviously you, but be that as it may...), since it dropped kde3 support with the release of 3.5.10 and 4.2.0. And of course the qt3 upon which kde3 is built was EOLed before that (tho I've never checked the specific timing on that end, only taken kde's word for it). Unfortunately, but those are the facts on the ground as distributions and ultimately us users must deal with them. Simplest terms, that leaves us users stuck between a rock and a hard place. We have three choices: (1) Dump kde entirely for something "sane". While this might be the "sane" choice, many users don't find it particularly viable, for whatever reason. (2) Follow kde3/qt3 off into the sunset, at least until kde4 is found suitably stable (for various definitions of "stable"). That's likely another year if we're lucky for traditional "stable" distribution users, including gentoo stable arch users. For those like me who enjoy testing betas, the current 4.3 is about right. (I switched with 4.2.4, but it was **EXTREMELY** difficult, over a hundred hours of /extra/ work, hacking scripts to replace broken functionality, etc, in /addition/ to the usual and expected upgrade hassles. Few have the time even if they had the motivation and skills for such an undertaking.). Obviously, the real bleeding edge folks, or those who are generally content with the default/common functionality, could have (and many did) changed earlier, while those between the beta/unstable tester folks like me and the stable folks, will find a point in the middle to switch. (3) Undertake a "forced" upgrade to kde4, likely before one would have otherwise done so. Actually, I did this, as I had been /trying/ (and failing) to do the 4.x upgrade since before 4.0, and would have definitely waited until at least 4.3, had kde3 not already been marching off into the sunset. (I like to give myself plenty of time, and get the conversion done well before the drop-dead date, which I did, tho at enormous cost in time and hassle.) Meanwhile, and this is the point of the message, for those choosing #3, because kde4 /is/ under such intense continued development, and because it /does/ have such serious bugs remaining, once one is on kde4, the latest stable upstream kde4, thus for Gentoo users, ~arch keyworded kde4, since it takes some time to stabilize on Gentoo, is likely going to be less trouble than stable kde4, because more bugs are fixed upstream, and the major kde4 integration issues are already dealt with at the gentoo/kde level, so what remains is rather minor integration bugs for ~arch, as the measured risk for getting the DEFINITELY more bugfixed latest from kde upstream. Given all that and being the beta tester type I am, I'd probably actually be running the kde-4.3.8x kde-4.4 betas from the kde overlay, except that I have another major project I'm working on ATM -- getting my Acer Aspire One netbook up and running on Gentoo. But that's close, and I may or may not get to the 4.4-rcs before the 4.4.0 general release. (FWIW on the AA1, I have the completed image done on my main machine, copied to USB stick, copied from there to the AA1's drive, and tested booting. But I screwed up the grub install somehow and thus still have to boot from the grub on the USB stick, but to the installation on the hard drive, so I have that to figure out still, and then I still have X and kde to configure/customize, networking to get running, etc. A few hours more work, probably, but it's /almost/ there! I'm hoping to have it running tomorrow, before the new year starts, at LEAST the grub bit worked out, and hopefully xorg, with the syntouch config for the evdev driver and the extra keys. If I'm still running the default kde4.3 as the new year comes in, but have the grub issue traced and resolved, and xorg/keyboard-extra-keys/syntouch configured, I'll be happy. =:^) (But what I'm /really/ looking forward to for the netbook is the plasma-netbook aka plasma-newspaper layout, tho that's kde4.5 material I think.) -- 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
