walt posted on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:04:44 -0800 as excerpted: > On 03/08/2010 06:14 AM, Leslie Newell wrote: >> Now take my home >> computer running Kubuntu 9.10. A lot of the applications that come with >> it have annoying bugs or in several cases complete show stoppers... > > Is it kde 4.x? The kde devs have been vilified by many users as guilty > of releasing alpha quality software under version numbers that imply a > mature product. I tried it about 4.2 or so and I couldn't wait to go > back to gnome. > > It was a strange decision on their part to do it that way.
No kidding. I'm a KDE user, as I enjoy the power user customization it has. But even so and with KDE itself calling 4.2 ready for normal users, I had a MASSIVELY difficult upgrade when I tried with 4.2.4. That claim of 4.2 readiness might have actually been funny if it wasn't so pitifully out of tune with reality, and with ordinary users. As a normally leading edge user not afraid to run even live repo versions on occasion, I had actually been trying to upgrade kde since before 4.0, but 4.0 was barely extremely early alpha hacked up conference technology preview demo quality. Each version has brought massive improvements, but even still, 4.1 was still raw alpha quality, 4.2 (despite the official claims) late alpha or early beta, still way too many broken or missing features (thus my trouble trying to upgrade to it) to be anything else, and 4.3, finally approaching late beta or very early rc. With 4.4, they're FINALLY approaching something semi-sane for an ordinary .0 release, tho I've yet to decide whether it's fully .0 or still late RC. But regardless, there's simply /no/ /way/ I'd stake my integrity and reputation on recommending anything below 4.4, and in fact, have been known to recommend that people give up and either upgrade or wait for 4.4 on their distribution, when they post to the kde lists with problems with earlier versions. With the upgrade, /as/ a major upgrade, I /did/ expect some problems, but this one was ridiculous. I spent over 100 hours above and beyond what I'd call normal upgrade time, researching and installing third party solutions for stuff still broken in kde 4.2, reconfiguring workaround, or scripting my own solutions and workarounds. Most folks simply won't have that time and tenacity, and if forced, as by their distribution no longer including kde3 (mine was getting ready to kill it, tho I had a few months), they'd try it, see how terribly broken it was, and switch to something else. Which is what a lot of folks did. But being the somewhat stubborn serious customizer and Gentoo power user I am, I saw no viable similarly reasonably customizable alternative, so I stuck with it. And 4.3 was better, to the point I might recommend it for the seriously beta software addicted to try, IF they had the time and energy to fight thru it, and 4.4 is /enough/ better that I can actually recommend it for the merely adventurous (the x.0 folks) to try. I expect 4.5 will finally be something I can recommend to ordinary users, tho I'd recommend waiting until at least 4.5.1, as kde's 4.x.0 releases are a typically buggy .0 releases. -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman _______________________________________________ Pan-users mailing list Pan-users@nongnu.org http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/pan-users
