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Aaron Seigo on KDE 4 progress
(6 votes, average: 4.67 out of 5)
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Thoughtful post from Aaron Seigo on the progress of KDE 4 over the last year, and the news that Linus made the switch to GNOME.
I don’t agree with everything Aaron says, but I think it’s well worth reading and thinking about. In particular, I think what Aaron says here is worth thinking about:
Nobody and no project is perfect. Mistakes will be made, sometimes even in the process of producing success. Punishing each other unreasonably for it is stupid, learning from it is smart. I know we’ve learned a lot from it and made various changes to improve. We’ve worked really hard with downstreams to help improve coordination; we’ve worked really hard on improving external communication; we’ve worked really hard on making the community robust against divisiveness; we’ve been working on how to improve the development process with things like “always Summer in trunk” (which has evolved into “always Autumn in trunk”
such that we can more effectively chase innovation with less risk.
I’ve seen a lot of heat over the KDE discussions, both within openSUSE and outside. It’s not unreasonable to have strong opinions about your desktop — but as Aaron says “punishing each other unreasonably for it is stupid, learning from it is smart.” It’d be a good idea if we embrace this idea going into 2009 and focus more on learning, less on getting angry about decisions that we disagree with.
I’m looking forward to the 4.2 release, and I’m optimistic that it will be worth the wait.
I completely agree with you. Ridiculing others does not make the project any better. Besides, myself, I have never seen any program fully developed coming out the gate. We all learn from mistakes and if not than programs would never become gold. The ones that yell the most are the ones who never lend a hand in helping with anything. Never criticize unless one knows what you are criticizing about. I always say if one knows better than I than why are you not here helping me.
As many others I’ve been around the block a few times with various Desktop Environments and ALL of them have pros and cons. This is also the case with KDE 4.2. In my book, the statements made by Mr. Linus Torvalds are rather pragmatic, fair and straigth forward. Just the way it is. The only problem with Mr. Torvalds’ statement is that his position makes another round of bashing legit for others who are less pragmatic.
I must admit, my tolerance decreases when reviews or blog entries are based upon “me like, me no like” and even more so when renown writers publishes articles that clearly demonstrates their lack of knowledge and no open mind whatsoever.
In general, the negative articles about KDE 4.X could be defined by:
A: Based upon a VERY strong KDE 3.5 preference.
B: Applying conclusions from previosus versions.
C: Confusing poor implementations with the quality of the DE.
D: Only considering “the surface” – not taking the underlying functionality into account.
E: Disregarding the importance of potential for future evolution.
F: Confusing personal preferences and needs with the needs of the “typical user” (It doesn’t cater for MY needs YET – it MUST be bad).
I’m not convinced that Mr. Aaron Seigo’s “style” is the best suited for rubbing off the rough edges of die hard KDE 3 fans. On the other hand, a huge turnaround like this is extremely demanding. Without persistence, commitment and an enormous drive a project like KDE 4 is impossible. I believe Aaron Seigo deserves a lot of credit for being that force together with many others.
I’m rather relaxed about the KDE 4.2 release. Having used the latest version at any given time since KDE 4.0.65 it’s been a true joy to see the bits an pieces falling into place. It will not be perfect, but it’s as close as you get for now. Until KDE 4.3 that is.
KDE 4.2 has been running for a coupple of hours on my machine and everything is smooth. I experience 3 issues that I book on the “FactoryAccount” and OpenSuse adaption.:
- Powerdevil works fine but the powerdevil package will not install (4.1.3 dependencies I presume)
- In Akgregator settings for columnheading (filtering) are not persistent
- KDE control panel –> Advanced –> Desktop Theme Details (allows combination of Plasma Themes) crashes
The rest appears hunky dory.
Another topic that might be of interest is that Nvidia has released a new driver: 180.25 (beta?). IT seems to solve the problem with X in infinitive loop and suspend to ram / hibernate on Thinkpads (and Toshibas?). A real improvement on my T62 NVS 140 anyhow.
ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/
A perfect day in paradise….
Powerdevil is now part of KDE and as such part of kdebase4-workspace package. So nothing wrong in not having an extra powerdevil package installed with KDE 4.2.
Makes sense – never been a problem – finding something to put the finger on with KDE 4.2 gets harder and harder…