KDE version in Lenny: KDE 3.5.9 vs KDE 4.1

[Modestas Vainius]

Hi,

Monday 09 June 2008, Miguel Figueiredo rašė:
> It may not be feasible and/or wished for kde but we do have sets of
> packages where versions coexist together, 
You can use almost all KDE3 applications with KDE4 desktop except "the desktop 
core" ones like kicker, konqueror, kdesktop etc.

> like the GNU compiler colection
> (gcc-3.3 and gcc-3.4) on the current 'stable'.
Major gcc releases are done twice a year or so and gcc is part of essential 
toolchain so it's absolutely necessary to support multiple versions. On the 
other hand, KDE major release cycle is 5 or more years with earlier version 
becoming dead very soon after new one is released. So it makes completely no 
sense to support both full desktops in parallel in the long term (neither 
there are resources for this task). It is pretty simple in fact: if you want 
older KDE release, use older distro release.

KDE 4.1 won't be released with lenny due to many reasons which have already 
been expressed:

1) Bad timing.
2) Nobody knows how stable KDE 4.1.0 will be and it can't be tested properly 
in a such short period of time.
3) People still complain about missing features in KDE 4.1 which KDE 3.5.9 
has. Well, some are valid complaints, but most are due to the fact that KDE4 
is quite different experience.
4) Even if official KDE 4.1 backports are going to be available, they won't be 
part of official stable release, hence there won't be guarantees about debian 
stable level of stability and quality. Which leads to the last point:
5) (That's my personal opinion). Frankly, Debian *stable* (by definition) is 
not and has never been a good desktop distribution for people who care about 
newer software. Use other branches of Debian for that (e.g. testing).

-- 
Modestas Vainius <modestas at vainius.eu>

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 197 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part.
Url : http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-kde-talk/attachments/20080610/e378ecf6/attachment-0001.pgp