KDE version in Lenny: KDE 3.5.9 vs KDE 4.1

Fri Jun 6 03:07:42 UTC 2008

Hello everybody, I'm the new guy in the neighborhood (tm) :-) . As such, I'll 
_try_ not to take a position here (I already did in IRC, but being the newbie 
here, I think thatwasn't a wise decision).

First of all, Sune forget me for replying to your mail, I have been suscribed 
to debian-qt-kde for ~ more than a month, but found this list to be the 
"talkative one" just before Ana's mail.

El Thursday 05 June 2008 19:47:54 Sune Vuorela escribió:
> On Thursday 05 June 2008, Ana Guerrero wrote:
> > Hi folks,
> >
> > We have been delaying taking a decision about this for too much time now,
> > the freeze is coming up [0], and we need to have it clear, for our users,
> > the release team and the rest of Debian.
>
> True.  We need to have it clear.

And to make it public too.

> > Basically we can ship either KDE 3.5.9 or KDE 4.1. For some people in the
> > team it seems clear we should ship KDE 4.1, for some other it is clear we
> > should ship KDE 3.5.9. The latter is my opinion, so here you have a mail
> > explaining why we should release with 3.5.9. Feel free to reply with a
> > nice mail of why we should ship with KDE 4.1, detailing as well how much
> > time *you* are planning to invest in this goal.
> > By the way, my proposal is shipping KDE 3.5.9 with the KDE 4.1
> > development platform: kde4libs, kdepimlibs and kdebase-runtime.

As a newbie, I do not have the least idea. I an currently running KDE 4.1 Beta 
1, but I have KDE 3.5.9 in a virtual machine. So, I may be able to help both 
parties. Let's hope so :-)

>  - Huge advantage with kde4
> Active upstream development, bugfixings and general work. Kde3 is dead.
> Nothing in e.g. khtml will be fixed if it doesn't work (I encountered many
> sites where javascripts were to advanced) (Well - except if it is something
> really major like google front page)

This is enterly true AFAIK.

> Kde4 shows new ways of thingking the desktop which I feel is really
> interesting and worth to be spreading out as soon as possible.

But, beeing using KDE 4 since Ana's blog post (and not knowing what is 
expected to be completed for 4.1), I don't find it enough polished nor with a 
set of options that a _common_ user will expect of KDE. A simple example of a 
stupid thing: I can't put my wallpapers even as a mosaic (let's not talk about 
centered maxpect). 

[snip]

> > -Some widely used apps of the KDE desktop are not ready
> > Even if they are not shipped with the core packages, some apps belong to
> > the KDE desktop and to the KDE project. We have here Koffice, kdevelop or
> > amarok. I have not idea of the exact status of amarok, but I think it
> > won't be ready. Amarok is one of a lot of widely used apps in the KDE
> > desktop that won't have a substitute in KDE 4. There is a myriad of small
> > apps in this situation.
>
> Amarok, true.  kdevelop, true, but we have the kde3 versions.

Both work perfectly fine from KDE 4.1, at least in the beta and the far I used 
them :-D

I have been developing Qt 4 programs with Kdevelop 3 without any problems. 
Amarok is as good as always.

> And koffice - to be blunt and honest - kde3 koffice actually sucks.

Tell me if I am wrong, but we can't ship Lenny without a KOffice. 

> > Koffice 2 won't be ready so we are shipping with koffice 1 that needs
> > some parts of KDE 3 to work properly (like kcontrol), so it will need
> > some hacking because it is not currently fully installable in KDE 4...
> > and it won't be properly integrated anyway. I'm not sure how well works
> > kdevelop with KDE 4, but newer kdevelop (that needs now kdevplatform
> > package) won't be ready. Quanta needs as well kdevplatform, but quanta is
> > shipped inside kdewebdev and it is one of the modules we have not
> > packaged yet (together with accessibility and bindings).

I used Quanta but not very much. Seems to work perfectly, but again, I have 
not tested it too much.

> We can keep kdevelop and webdev from kde3 no big issue. And the kcontrol
> issue I already have on my radar.
> There is also other kde3 apps we need to keep around:
>  - kdetv
>  - bibletime
>  - kxstitch
>  - basket

¿Konversation? If we had a newer version for kde 4, great. If no, I have 
encountered a problem today. The urls were opened by Quanta. I had to manually 
edit ~/.kde/share/config/profilerc to correct this. Except this can be solved by 
using ~/.kde instead of ~/.kde4, it's an issue that may happen in other apps 
too.

[snip]

> > -No positive feedback about shipping it
> > My blog post about how to install KDE 4.1 beta 1 had some feedback of
> > other developers in planet and specially from users in several blogs and
> > forums that linked my post. Most of the people seem to like it as in "it
> > will be cool", but everybody seems to agree that it is not still a
> > replacement for KDE 3 in their daily tasks.
> > Basically, I see 3 kinds of users: developers, power users and average
> > users. KDE 4.1 could be ready for developers who are able to cope with
> > the lack of some apps, mixing kde3 and kde4 without risks etc, and
> > the same goes to power users. But I do not see it ready for final users,
> > they won't like this (imposed) change.
> > We would be shipping the KDE 4.1 desktop just released, and usually in
> > the community, average users wait until more advanced users are used to
> > this new software then it is when they adopt it, because then, they have
> > support and help from forum and mailing lists from this more advanced
> > users. With the current beta power users and developers still do not see
> > it ready for daily use, so what you can expect for our average users.
>
> eh ?  People won't adopt it before it is very easy available - and we
> shouldn't push it until it is adopted. It is a kind of chicken-egg issue
> described here - and we need to bring the chickens.
>
> And people can't tell if it will be usable for their daily tasks when only
> have tried it for a hour. It is new and different and people needs to adapt
> to something being different.

Sorry Sune but, once again, it is not usable for the common user. I have been 
asking question on different mailing list (on spanish, but if you want the 
links of the threads, I'll gladly post them), and people _are_ complaining for 
lot _small_ things. As an example, there was one that couldn't configure the 
net without knetworkmanager. As far as beta 1, he would have to use the 
console. If that keeps true for the release of 4.1, then it is not good 
marketing for us.

[snip]

> > -You can have everybody happy
> > My proposal is release with "old" reliable KDE 3.5.9 not forcing anyone
> > to update to KDE 4.1, and just provide 4.1.x "official" backports. So
> > whose who want to use KDE 4.1 will just use the backports and besides,
> > these users will have these backports updated through the KDE 4.1.x
> > (x=1,2,3..) updates. I am willing to work on these backports.
> > By the way, Backports infrastructure is only for stuff in testing, but
> > I'm sure we can find a nice solution here.

I don't know the technical details of this, or if we ("you" fits better here, I 
guess) must put KDE 4 in lenny. All I know is that, as Beta 1, it is 
_not_ready_ for the common user.

Regards, Lisandro.

-- 
4: Que es un icono
    * Un caballono
    Damian Nadales
    http://mx.grulic.org.ar/lurker/message/20080307.141449.a70fb2fc.es.html

Lisandro Damián Nicanor Pérez Meyer
http://perezmeyer.com.ar/

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