On Fri, Mar 22, 2013 at 11:29 PM, Duncan <[email protected]> wrote:
> Kevin Krammer posted on Fri, 22 Mar 2013 12:53:01 +0100 as excerpted: > > >> Honestly, why can't KDE SC support seamless update from previous major > >> release? Is it too much work to rewrite config files whose format has > >> changed? > > > > This is of course intended to happen, KDE software has had configuration > > and data modification tools for ages. My personal setup has been with me > > for over a decade now, rarely prompting me to reconfigure things. > > FWIW, that's true here as well. I've been running the same kde config, > with /home copied over to new hardware (which on my workstation unlike my > netbook, I upgrade a piece at a time so there's never a new computer, > just a changed out drive, or max-change, a changed out cpu/mobo/memory/gpu > all at the same time, as all the buses and formats had changed so to > upgrade one I had to upgrade them all, but then it's the old hard drive > installed in the new machine) as appropriate, since kde 2.x in late 2001, > when I switched from MS to Linux. > > Yes, that's the same base kde2 config now running kde4. Every once in > awhile, especially after the 2.x to 3.x upgrade and later the 3.x to 4.x > upgrade, a few months after the upgrade I go thru and check file times, > moving files to a backup location if the mtimes haven't bumped since the > update, to see if they get recreated and/or whether they're I lose any > customizations. > Major releases, (1.x, 2.x, 3.x, 4.x), use different config directories. > > And yes, there's specific files (the infamous plasma-desktop-appletsrc > being one of them) that I keep extra backups of and usually backup before > any major changes, as I've learned the hard way how difficult it can be > to find and edit out the bad bits on the more complex files if something > does go wrong. > And yes, when I hit a problem, I know how to use the bisect method to > narrow it down to a single config file if I have to (tho after doing it a > few times and figuring out the way kde organizes its config, I found I > could often pick the problem file purely by name, or at minimum, reduce > it to a handful of files right away, so the bisect is now often only 3ish > rounds max), and am used to doing just that, in kde config files or using > git to bisect a kernel bug, either way. > > I remember reporting a phonon bug a year ago related to the config and deprecated xine backend; but the devs ignored it possibly cause they were rushing through releases, and creating a new tags every 10 days. > But it really is possible to use the same basic config that long, even > with heavy customizing, and I'm a case in point. > > My problem isn't so much with that, it's with killing support for old > versions before the new versions are sufficiently stable replacements, > ESPECIALLY after promising support "as long as there are users!" That > triggered a drop of a lot of my former kde software choices with the bump > to kde4, when kde was insisting that kde4 was stable and that they > weren't supporting kde3 any longer, at the very SAME time they were > saying on bugs "Oh, that's not ported to kde4 yet." The story repeated > with the akonadification of kdepim; I honestly DID try the akonadified > kmail, but somewhere about the time it lost my 10th mail or so and I was > trying to figure out whether it got caught in akonadi somewhere or was > simply gone (after having to do much of the conversion manually in the > first place because the automated process failed), I asked myself why I > put up with it, why I couldn't just expect, AND HAVE, email that "just > worked", that devs didn't needlessly change something that was working > perfectly fine as it was, breaking it in the process. (Ironically, I > ended up on claws-mail, one of the "short list" of clients I had > evaluated but eventually dropped for kmail, back when I originally > switched from MS and OE. It's still using the same mh-dir mail format it > was back in 2001... and it still works. Only unlike kmail, they didn't > drop a well working solution in a chase for utopia. Had I only chosen it > back then...) > > But, as I said earlier in the thread, that means I'm now running only the > core kde desktop, with nearly all of my "mission critical" apps now non- > kde and to the extent possible, with semantic-desktop not just disabled > at run-time, but without support for it even built at all. Which means I > don't have to worry about a broken kde killing my mail (for instance) any > more. Which means I'm now much freeer to run and /enjoy/ running the kde > pre-releases. =:^) > > And it also means if kde pulls the kde4 stunt again, since it's only the > core kde desktop and a few games I'm running now, it'll be MUCH easier to > drop it entirely, if I have to. > > Fortunately, kde5 aka kde frameworks is supposed to be a much less > disruptive upgrade, and it's going much more modular as well, so it's > much less likely. But THIS time I'm prepared, should it happen. I won't > be caught not viably being able to switch, again. > > Which is even more proof that kde's not going to drop the ball that way > again, because I'm actually prepared for it now, so of course it's not > going to happen. =;^] > > Of course there's the possible upcoming xorg -> wayland switch to worry > about too. That could really upset the Linux desktop environment status > quo in all sorts of interesting ways and I think most of the leading DEs > realize that. But again, I'm much better prepared now, so regardless of > how it turns out or what DE and apps I end up running on wayland and what > kind of promises DEs and their devs make that they ultimately end up > dropping like yesterday's dead fish in a malfunctioning refrigerator, I > expect that switch to be far less personally disruptive than the kde3 -> > kde4 upgrade was. Which means to a certain extent I'll be able to sit > back and enjoy the ride instead of sweating it out so badly this time, > and I really am looking forward to that. =:^) > > -- > 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 > > ___________________________________________________ > This message is from the kde mailing list. > Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. > Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. > More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html. >
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