If I have my history straight, KDE is actually about six months older than Gnome. Gnome started because it's founders were horrified that KDE was at least partially built on proprietary code.
What made things so difficult for 4.0, if I have my history straight, is that they moved completely away from proprietary code, either because the code that they were using became open source, or they rewrote things in open source code. I think that there still are a lot less applets and things in KDE, possibly because the writers of those never cared enough to rewrite. I also understand that there were some morale problems at KDE. I am guessing that they reached out to Mark Shuttleworth, giving him some special status within KDE because they needed his help to keep in the game. I understand that there was a meeting during which Mark had a heart to heart with the KDE people about stability. Because I don't program, my understanding of all of this might be imperfect. This is what I saw on the Internet Mark. On April 9, 2011 03:35:06 pm Chris Knadle wrote: > On Saturday, April 09, 2011 09:44:14 Mark Wallace wrote: > > I temporarily switched over to KDE. I was using it until 4.0 came > > along and then learned the hard way when to duck for cover.. > > > > But the nice thing about Ubuntu is that they are slow to get on a > > bandwagon. There is a Firefox 4.0 out but they are still giving > > people 3.6.16. I put 4.0 in a Windows system last night and none > > of my son's favorite add ons had upgraded, yet. > > > > Open office 3.0 was out for over six months before Ubuntu put it > > in their distro. Let the slackware and Debian people polish it > > on their weekends. The Ubuntu people want something that is ready > > to go, now. > > > > KDE 4.6 is still kind of buggy. Things don't crash in it like > > they used to but i had to put Synaptic in it to see if I had a > > full install. The package manager is not user friendly and you > > can't quickly see what options you have available with it. It took > > three tries to get Microsoft core fonts installed because you have > > to accept an agreement and I don't think that the package manager > > in KDE can handle that. It just fails to install. > > > > Mark > > Ubuntu being "slow to get on the bandwagon"; actually I think of Ubuntu as > an early adopter. However their parent, Debian, tend to be more > conservative, so Ubuntu ends up with an interesting mixture. For example, > when KDE4 was first released, Ubuntu was one of the distributions that > quickly picked it up and released a beta version containing it, which is > how I got to try it and see just how awful the very first version was at > the time. [At first it was quite unstable, but at the same time showed > promise.] It's since gotten tremendously better by comparison. > > Today I'm using KDE 4.4.5 because that's what Debian is using in their > repository, so I haven't seen KDE 4.6 yet. At least the version of KDE > 4.4.5 in Debian is quite stable, although does show bugs occasionally. > Best I can suggest is to file detailed bug reports if possible, in order > to help the maintainers know of them so that they can help fix them and > report them upstream. I still think KDE 4.4.5 isn't the "well oiled > machine" that KDE 3.5 was at its peak, and I'm still not using all of the > capabilities that KDE4 offers, either. > > When it comes to OpenOffice 3, Debian Stable has it -- but the other > branches have moved on to LibreOffice. I'm not sure where Ubuntu stands > on this -- last I remember I think their plan was to migrate to > LibreOffice as well. Here again I consider Ubuntu to actaully be an early > adopter. In this case I think it's simply a matter of being the best > decision because OpenOffice is going to stagnate under Oracle due to most > of the development team working on LibreOffice, and Oracle demanding > developers to choose to work on one or the other, but not both, which has > accelerated their departure from OpenOffice. > > Concerning the KDE4 package manager, I'm assuming you're speaking of > 'Adept'. I've used it under Ubuntu in the past, but because I do so much > package management via ssh I tend to use the command line tools like > 'aptitude' instead. The problem you're mentioning concerning questions > not showing up during an upgrade may have to do with the 'debconf' > package, which is what dictates what method to use to ask a question. If > you try running this at the command line: > > sudo dpkg-reconfigure debconf > > and try using the "KDE" option. That should allow Adept to ask you package > related questions via a KDE GUI rather than sending those queries to a > text- based dialog box that you won't see. > > > Concerning Firefox 4; this is interesting, as originally Debian Unstable > had Iceweasel 3.5 and Experimental had 3.6 -- but recently after some > discussion Debian has made a difficult joint decision to stick with 3.5 > for Unstable and have upgraded to 4.0 in Experimental, skipping over 3.6. > From the user perspective I feel that 3.6 is better than 3.5 as well as > 4.0, but from the developer standpoint there are a plethora of library > dependencies that have to be standardized on for other packages, and going > with 4.0 makes much more sense in that regard. Sticking with 3.6 would > have put off migration pain until later but also made migration more > difficult, especially being that Mozilla is planning on releasing Firefox > 5 sometime this year. > > > -- Chris > > -- > > Chris Knadle > [email protected] > _______________________________________________ > Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org > http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug > > Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium > May 4 - Inkscape > Jun 1 - Zimbra > Jul 6 - Jul 2011 _______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium May 4 - Inkscape Jun 1 - Zimbra Jul 6 - Jul 2011
