Oh gee, and I forgot my asbestos (non-fryable) underwear.
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| dinotrac Apr 02, 2012 10:56 AM EDT |
I have no intention of moving to Windows and can't afford the Mac, but... I can't fundamentally argue with the author, certainly not for serious business use. There is a reason why I see so many Macs when I go to technical meetups, hack nights, etc. Sigh. Can we say Unity, GNOME3, and KDE 4.X? |
| Fettoosh Apr 02, 2012 1:05 PM EDT |
Quoting:I can't fundamentally argue with the author, certainly not for serious business use. @Dino, Of course you can't. No one can, it would be a wasted effort to argue with such useless case. :-) |
| jacog Apr 03, 2012 6:51 AM EDT |
"KDE 4.X" It's not trendy to complain about that anymore. |
| dinotrac Apr 03, 2012 8:54 AM EDT |
@jacog - Truth needs never bow before trendiness. |
| Khamul Apr 03, 2012 1:17 PM EDT |
It's not trendy to complain about that anymore. Depends on what you're complaining about. If you're complaining about KDE4.0, it's downright stupid to complain about that, because that's something that came out 3 years ago and no one uses any more. It's like complaining about the Ford Pinto, when they haven't made that car in decades. If you're complaining that KDE4.x (current versions being 4.7.4 and 4.8.x) is like Unity or Gnome3, that's also downright stupid, because it isn't anything like those two. If you're complaining that KDE4.x has problems, such as issues with Kmail, or some other real problem, that's a perfectly valid gripe. There's plenty of valid criticisms of the latest KDE4.x versions (such as the Kmail problems that several posters here frequently complain about). It certainly isn't perfect software. However, most of the criticisms I read about it are utterly idiotic, usually one of three things: 1) complaining about bugginess in KDE4.0/4.1 (answer: upgrade to something made in the last year), 2) lumping it in with Gnome3 and Unity, when it's nothing like those two, and 3) complaining about the default configuration, such as the moronic complaints I frequently read about the K-menu not being exactly like the KDE3.x menu (answer: right-click on K icon, select "Switch to Classic Menu Style"). |
| jdixon Apr 03, 2012 1:41 PM EDT |
> However, most of the criticisms I read about it are utterly idiotic, usually one of three things... What about the criticism that the KDE 4 devs are arrogant jerks who don't deserve the time of day, much less someone using their software? Or can you make a legitimate argument that that's changed over the past 3 years? Because I haven't seen any evidence that it has. |
| Khamul Apr 03, 2012 2:28 PM EDT |
@jdixon: That's just a personal attack, with nothing to substantiate it whatsoever, except some vague reference to something that happened ages ago. Do you have a valid criticism of the software itself? Do you have some kind of "arrogance test" for every single piece of software you use? |
| dinotrac Apr 03, 2012 2:37 PM EDT |
@jdixon - That would be the big one. Sounds like you've hit khamul's hot button, and the limits of his knowledge. Apparently he does not realize that software is much, much more than code. |
| jdixon Apr 03, 2012 5:22 PM EDT |
> That's just a personal attack, with nothing to substantiate it whatsoever... It's not an attack. It's an assessment. Being a personal assessment, it is necessarily subjective, but that doesn't make it invalid. Anyone who wishes can review the KDE developers public responses to their users who voiced complaints. I think Tracyanne also gave numerous examples in the comment threads here. They're then free to draw their own conclusions as to the character of the KDE developers. > ...except some vague reference to something that happened ages ago... I think you need to reassess your reference for the term "ages ago". Most people don't consider something within the past 5 years to be in that category. > Do you have some kind of "arrogance test" for every single piece of software you use? Yes. And I see you've offered no evidence to counter it, so I'll take the answer to my second question to be no. |
| Khamul Apr 03, 2012 6:36 PM EDT |
In software (especially UI software), 5 years is a very long time. Go back 5 years and look at the state of smartphones, for example. Different industries operate on different timescales. Software isn't like cars, or worse mining. Things don't change so quickly in those industries. FOSS software itself has only been really active for about 15-20 years total (mostly in the last 15). @dino: the only thing that's important about software is the code itself. That's the part you download and use. If you don't like the attitude of the developers, who cares? Do you use any commercial software? Have you talked with all the developers of all those products to find out if you like them personally or not? Their attitudes might dictate the future direction of the software, but again, who cares if they're arrogant, as long as the software does what you want, and isn't likely to take a hard left turn, leaving you stranded? The only thing I care about is that the KDE devs apparently agree with me that having a traditionalist DE that's highly functional on desktop systems is more important than some dumb idea about trying to merge all UIs together, and that it's better to have different UIs, optimized for different devices, and also that users should be allowed to configure things to suit their preferences; this is the polar opposite of the Gnome and Unity devs, who believe we need to have a single UI on all devices and that users shouldn't be allowed to configure anything to be different. Given that we don't have a whole lot of choices as far as fully-functional DEs (no, I don't consider "lightweight" DEs to be fully functional in this sense), I'll pick the best of the bunch, which is obviously KDE. |
| jdixon Apr 03, 2012 10:05 PM EDT |
> In software (especially UI software), 5 years is a very long time. I'm not evaluating software. I'm evaluating people. For people, 5 years isn't "ages ago". I could respond to your other points, but I since you directed them to Dino, I won't, with one exception: > ...and isn't likely to take a hard left turn, leaving you stranded? Since that's exactly what KDE 4 did to KDE 3 users, why should anyone assume that? |
| tracyanne Apr 03, 2012 10:30 PM EDT |
With respect to KDE4 as of KDE 4.7.4, it's pretty good. as of KDE 4.8.1 it's clearly still unstable, to the point that some applications KMail, I'm looking at you, in particular, are completely unusable (I'm using the latest version of Evolution on my KDE 4 (4.8.1) desktop) I tried KMail but it starting crashing badly after a software upgrade (yes I reported it)... I've gone back to Evolution, which I've used for nearly 10 years (I started using it when I was using KDE 3.x), and which has never let me down. KDEnlive is brilliant, DigiKam is fantastic. Dolphin is finally usable, although the places panel is still a pain in the arse, but still not a patch on GNOME 2 Nautilus. KDEWallet is still my preferred password manager, on any DE. The developers, I'd have to still go for arrogant. |
| dinotrac Apr 03, 2012 11:02 PM EDT |
@khamul - No. Code matters, but is only one part of software. Software -- or, at least, software that matters -- is developed for a purpose, and that purpose can be scuttled in a myriad of ways. Seriously, have you ever actually encountered real-world computer users who have things they need to do? |
| dinotrac Apr 03, 2012 11:05 PM EDT |
@tracyanne -- I have to agree about Digikam. It's fantastic. I'm also pretty fond of K3b. Will have to try KDEnlive. Last time I used it, it was so-so, but evolving. Now you've got my interest piqued. |
| Khamul Apr 04, 2012 1:43 AM EDT |
@jdixon: KDE4 definitely didn't handle the transition well, but who really left you stranded? Did anyone force you to "upgrade" to KDE4.0 from KDE3.5.x? No. You could have stuck with an older distro that used 3.5.x. KDE gets some blame for telling people "it's ready!" when it really wasn't, but the rest of the blame goes to the distros for not doing any kind of quality checking or anything really, to make sure they were releasing a quality product. Heck, the distros could have even reverted back to 3.5.10 when all the users started bitching about the problems, but nooooo, they just "stayed the course". I think the distros deserve even more blame for the debacle than the KDE devs. Time for another car analogy. Suppose Ford makes cars, and uses Firestone tires. Unlike what happened in real life, these Firestone tires don't even look right from the factory; the tread seems to be falling off already. But Ford throws them on their cars anyway and ships them, with disastrous results. People complain about their tires falling apart, and instead of switching to some different tires, they decide to stick with the same Firestone tires because they don't feel like putting any effort into changing anything, and tell their customers to just shut up and be happy with them. Who's more to blame here, Ford or Firestone? |
| dinotrac Apr 04, 2012 6:33 AM EDT |
Quoting:Who's more to blame here, Ford or Firestone? Now you get to the heart of the problem: You don't have to choose. You can be mad at Ford for selecting poor tires that put your family in danger, but you're probably not buying another set of Firestones, either. |
| gus3 Apr 04, 2012 6:59 AM EDT |
Every Engineer's Solemn Duty (note: strong language therein) |
| jdixon Apr 04, 2012 9:22 AM EDT |
> KDE4 definitely didn't handle the transition well, but who really left you stranded? I used Slackware with XFCE, so the transition didn't affect me at all. > Did anyone force you to "upgrade" to KDE4.0 from KDE3.5.x? No. You could have stuck with an older distro that used 3.5.x I've never "upgraded" to KDE 4. I don't even have KDE 4 installed on my Slackware 3.1 box, opting for Trinity instead (though I did have to reinstall qt4 since VLC was linked to it). > KDE gets some blame for telling people "it's ready!" when it really wasn't, but the rest of the blame goes to the distros... Which completely misses the point of what I asked. Yes, the dev's blew it when they released alpha code as production ready. But the real problem was their reaction when long time KDE users pointed out that the problems. |
| Khamul Apr 04, 2012 9:56 AM EDT |
You don't have to choose. You can be mad at Ford for selecting poor tires that put your family in danger, but you're probably not buying another set of Firestones, either. For that case, yes. However, DEs aren't like tires; you're not going to die if your DE is buggy or missing features, so it's not an unforgivable sin like something that's safety-critical. So, instead, the appropriate response is to not trust the devs ever again when they say "it's ready!", but instead to evaluate the software independently (either reading reviews, or testing it out yourself on a liveCD or spare HD) and decide for yourself whether the software meets your needs or not. You could just avoid the software altogether, but then where does that leave you? Then you're stuck with Gnome3 or Unity if you want a fully-featured DE, and those are both unusable garbage. Cinnamon seems like a bad idea to me, as it's a new shell built on top of a hostile base (the Gnome devs certainly don't want people using it). And then the other choices are the lightweight DEs, which aren't really feature-complete; they're missing things like a WiFi manager, USB device manager, notifications, etc. |
| ComputerBob Apr 04, 2012 10:35 AM EDT |
@dino, I've been using Kdenlive for more than a year, to occasionally edit and render videos at my job. After trying to use OpenShot, Lives and several other FOSS video editors for my needs, I highly recommend Kdenlive, even though, on my own computers at home, I switched from KDE4 to Xfce "ages ago" (and have no desire to ever go back). By the way, at my job, my computer is mandated by corporate to run Windows 7, so when I want to work on videos, I boot up my AV Linux USB flash drive (in persistent mode) and use it to run Kdenlive, qt-faststart, and any other multimedia software I may require. I save my projects and rendered videos to my Windows hard drive. |
| jdixon Apr 04, 2012 11:34 AM EDT |
> And then the other choices are the lightweight DEs, which aren't really feature-complete; they're missing things like a WiFi manager, USB device manager, notifications, etc. You need to take another look at XFCE. It works fine with wicd and usb devices are handled appropriately. |
| Fettoosh Apr 04, 2012 12:20 PM EDT |
Quoting: I've been using Kdenlive for more than a year,... Watch out Dino, KDENlive is due for a rewrite. :-) They recently announced Kdenlive Refactoring drive and they surpassed their $4000. goal in just few days. As it stand today, they reached $5,864 and still have 27 days to go. If you like it, you might want to add to that so you can get support and for a good chunk of cash, you get to have any doable feature implemented. Do you feel rich today!? |
| dinotrac Apr 04, 2012 7:26 PM EDT |
Quoting: Do you feel rich today!? I did this morning, but then I bought coffee. Sigh. |
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