Stories (RSS)
KDE in openSUSE 11.1 and beyond
(10 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
Loading ...
KDE is hugely important to the openSUSE project, and openSUSE’s users. According to our most recent survey, a total of 68.3% of respondents are using KDE, so when it’s time to decide how to support KDE as it moves through its transition period, it’s not something that is taken lightly.
It’s been a major topic of debate over the past few weeks on the factory list and in other arenas. I’m sorry to say that not all of the discussion has been productive or positive — but we have gotten a huge amount of feedback, and the KDE team has decided on a course of action.
The long and short of it is that KDE 3.5x and KDE 4.1x will both be available on openSUSE media for openSUSE 11.1 — meaning the DVD images and DVDs produced for shows and so forth — but KDE 3.5 will be listed as one of the “extra” desktop environments, rather than as a primary DE in the installer.
There’s been a great deal of grumbling about the state of KDE and whether or not KDE 4.x is a suitable replacement for KDE 3.x. Some of it has been constructive and valid, some of it has been less so — but I’d like to remind people that the openSUSE developers are working with what the upstream project is producing. If you’re unhappy with KDE 4 and want to use KDE 3 indefinitely, then that’s possible — but community members are going to have to step up and start maintaining those packages.
That is the beauty of open source, of course — the source is available, and the licensing gives you every right to maintain any project like KDE as long as you want to keep using it.
From a downstream standpoint, the transition has been a bit of a challenge, to put it mildly, and I think our KDE team deserves major kudos for the work they’ve put in polishing KDE 4 while also maintaining the 3.x branch.
The KDE team may in fact get more kudos than they are aware of. In general users who are pleased and happy probably tend to be rather noiseless than users negative (or 100% committed) to a concept. The feedback I get from KDE 4.1 users is pleasant and positive. The tolerance for the freshness of KDE 4.1 is fair and sensible. Whenever OpenSuse 11 KDE 4.1 is recommended by someone in the “general” Linuxforums I spend time, the feedback is hardly ever negative from those actually following the recommendation.
Whenever there is an article/feature about KDE 4.1 on international Linuxsites the temperature is quite different. It is not uncommon that KDE 4.1.1 is judged on basis of 4.0 or 4.04/5, and when attempting to get the hang of which specific issues causing the dissatisfaction those are hard to get. I my book this is a indication of a rather skinny foundation for critisism. No doubt there are issues that needs to be addressed, but if we leave out applications and features that are in progress it appears to me that the issues are rather few compared to the noise generated.
No OS or Desktop Environment is mature the first year of it’s lifecycle. That period is for developers, bugfixing and early adaptors. Quite a few users should probably give KDE 4 that year before making the transition. I do believe it’s a mistake for happy users of KDE 4.1.1 like myself to conclude that KDE 4.1.1 is performing well enough for any user and that there’s nothing to pick upon. Likewise it’s a mistake when very experienced users conclude that KDE 4.1 is unuseable and branding it a Alpha or Beta. That is arrogant and unjust towards hardworking developers and users with different needs. Different does not mean less sophisticated or more ignorant - the usage is just different.
Even now there are some pretty basic things that KDE 4 still cannot do, but they are already putting KDE 3.5 in the extras were nobody will see it (maybe only those who had read this post). Please look at the polls about KDE 4 and 3.5 and you will see that now it is the right moment for treating both versions as equal.
Given that 68.3% of opensuse users choose KDE as their desktop it would be nice to see opensuse release planning take kde releases more into account.
KDE 4.1 was schedules for July for donkeys years, why did opensuse 11.0 come out in June?
KDE 4.2 is due in january, so why is opensuse 11.1 due out in december - before it can even pick up the first KDE4 releases of major KDE apps like amarok, k3b, digikam etc.
I hear rumours that the next enterprise desktop will be fully KDE4 rather than a mix of three and four, which is a great idea, but i only hope it is set for sometime in March 09 and thus giving it time (just) to pick up KDE 4.2 and the KDE4 versions of big apps.
On a similar vein; KDE 4.3 is set for the end of June due to Akademy 09, it would be lovely to see another six month release for opensuse 11.2 in order to pick (just) this up…………..?
Kind regards
I agree, the release schedule isn’t very optimal. Delaying 2 months would definitely benefit the users and the project a lot…
Unfortunately, the release schedule is something that’s not terribly flexible. It was already on the roadmap before the KDE project settled on their release schedule. (I’m not sure how the KDE team settled on their schedule…)
I strongly disagree. I want a polished OpenSuse and shipping a brand new KDE always sucks stability wise. It is better to ship with 4.1.4 than with 4.2.0.
Looking at it I would like to propose a new law:
Udos law of open source stability:
For 2dot-projects (like X.Y.Z) ship max(X+Y+Z)
( Example 4.1.4 vs 4.2.0 = 9 vs 6 => ship 4.1.4 )
I BUY OpenSuse for serious work, not for playing around with new buggy software.
So KDE 4.0.4 is better than KDE 4.1.0? Yeah, riiiiight…..
I would normally be inclined to agree with your assessment. However, my own experience and my observation of reviews lead me to disagree instead.
I noticed that KDE 4.0 got many bad reviews across the board. These bad reviews seemed to decrease in percentage for each OS that came out with 4.0. openSUSE 11.0 with KDE 4.0 actually received many favorable reviews. IMO, this was largely due to openSUSE developers having more time to polish 4.0.
Add to this my experience in transitioning to 11.0. KDE 4.0 did feel very restrictive to me. I am able to (with openSUSE’s excellent packages) easily upgrade my default install from 4.0 to 4.1.x. I did have some issues when I upgraded to the UNSTABLE repository. However, my experiences with upgrading to the KDE4:Factory:Desktop repo have been superb.
Also keeping in mind how quickly updated packages are added to openSUSE, I anticipate another smooth, quick transition from 4.1.x to 4.2 in openSUSE 11.1.
What recent survery? Have you just asked the KDE folks
It would be nice to see a link.
This one.