Grand visions don't help me work
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| r_a_trip Jun 14, 2012 10:17 AM EDT |
If you search out the blogs of KDE developers, they clearly have a vision of how the desktop can be improved that they have been following and expanding upon for over six years. If you take the time to understand what they are attempting, you might even be intrigued by their vision as much as I am. And this is the problem. We don't need grand (but unproven) visions. We need tried and true. We need incremental change so we can more easily adapt to it or discard a small piece if it doesn't bring benefit. We need time to adapt to beneficial changes. What we get now are digital Hiroshima's, where we are left in the desert of the visionary aftermath. An largely alien environment, with no familiar anchors to hold on to. A wholesale "trust the developer knows best, don't question the beast; it will only get better". Nevermind that these periodic sweeping changes destroys hours and hours of learned skills in one fell swoop. Vision, pioneering and experimentation doesn't get (grunt) work done, tried and true, staid old systems and tools do. I'm not advocating stagnation, but change in a moderate and manageable way. After all, the basic design of the wheel hasn't changed in a few thousand years, but the level of sophistication on that design has risen to astronomic heights. |
| JaseP Jun 14, 2012 12:42 PM EDT |
Agreed... But that said, I'm largely comming back to KDE. However, I don't run it with all the stock bells and whistles. I've taken to disabling Akonadi server and Nepomuk, uninstalling Kontact, removing the digital clock from the menu bar and using it in conjunction with Cairo-dock (which means moving the dock bar to the top and hiding it by default). I found that whwn I did that, it restored KDE to the usability I had in v. 3.5 or Gnome 2.x... |
| Fettoosh Jun 14, 2012 1:13 PM EDT |
Quoting:We ... We ... We ... @r_a_trip There are many who kept using KDE 4 and more coming back to it, could you elaborate who is We? If it means you yourself, it is totally understandable, otherwise, I just don't see your point because none of them apply any more. |
| Scott_Ruecker Jun 14, 2012 3:39 PM EDT |
Quoting:Both GNOME and KDE have by now proven that if you use them, you will get screwed. Because as soon as you'll feel comfortable using any of them, they'll just stop supporting it and try getting you to switch to the new version that's awful and not what you wanted. They'll tell you 'it's just an early release, it'll get better.' And indeed, it'll get better . . . and once it's good enough, they'll throw it all away again. I have to agree with this comment quoted in the article because that is how I feel. I was REALLY used to the KDE3 line and when it got thrown off a cliff I was taken with it felt like. I have been at best only semi-happy with my GUI since.. |
| r_a_trip Jun 14, 2012 4:31 PM EDT |
Who is "We"? All the people who are severely disappointed in how major, public facing projects treat their user base, by subjecting them to bad PR, bad design and a large helping of arrogance. It's not just KDE. Canonical is screwing up with Unity. Gnome is screwing up with Shell. KDE was happy to inflict 3 years of pre-alpha misery on its users and dismissing the complaints as whining from users they don't need. At least KDE redeemed itself with a feature complete DE after years, but one has to fear the coming of QT6. The word vision makes me shudder these days. You like KDE. Good for you. Also good for all the other people who still like it. It's just that the suggestion that Bruce makes, that we need to read up on the vision that the developers have might get us interested in their pet projects that rubs me the wrong way. I don't feel like I need to read the fiction developers put on paper to justify their own personal software experiments, so I can receive enlightenment about the merits of half-baked or badly designed software. Once again, not an exclusive to KDE, Gnome and Canonical have dished out their fair share of manure over their brainfarts too. Then again, I get it for free; people work on it in their spare time, how dare I criticize; I shouldn't be so ungrateful; it is free software, I should change it myself (as a non-programmer), I should learn how to program; I should go back to Windows and see how I like it there. |
| JaseP Jun 14, 2012 5:12 PM EDT |
Quoting: I have to agree with this comment quoted in the article because that is how I feel. I was REALLY used to the KDE3 line and when it got thrown off a cliff I was taken with it felt like. I have been at best only semi-happy with my GUI since.. That was me 100%... And until I realized that there was a lot of people killing Akonadi & Nepomuk, and posting guides to do it,... I was really on the fence about KDE 4.x too... I'm still not 100% crazy about it, but I'm now more comfortable with Kubuntu, as I had a few years of Ubuntu experience and didn't want to go back to RPM distros (or Debian,... just not "finished" enough, more a 50% DIY distro). With the bloat removed, Kubuntu's actually a decent distro,... I'm almost on the fence about even bothering to use my beloved Cairo-dock with it... |
| dinotrac Jun 14, 2012 5:48 PM EDT |
If I might take a contrary view -- There is NOTHING wrong with grand visions. There is NOTHING wrong with people having the gumption and talent to implement those visions. Spectacular and more power to all of them. That is not the problem here. The problem is screwing over boatloads and boatloads of other people so that you can pursue your vision. The KDE team didn't develop KDE The Next Generation, FutureGreat, or some new DE. No. They obsoleted software upon which many people around the world relied and forced many of us to move on. I'm really glad that their vision is finally clicking into place. Sounds like some good code there. Might even be some good software. I still have trouble trusting that crew with such an important part of my day-to-day life. Screwing up my computer access is severely painful to me, and can interfere with making a living for my family. Let's see how the next major version goes. |
| tracyanne Jun 14, 2012 9:51 PM EDT |
Actually the KDE developers didn't throw out the baby with the bath water, so to speak. Like the Gnome and Unity devs have done. It was always, as I understand it, their intention to build that functionality in. They just got carried away building the infrastructure for the new stuff. The KDE devs big mistake was to release KDE 4 too early (for which they were rightfully castigated), way before they had a properly working desktop ie the functionality that they had spent years building into KDE 3 was largely missing, along with most of the important basic functionality. As far as i can tell all of that wonderful KDE3 functionality is now back in KDE 4, and somewhere around 4.6 give or take, they actually had something that worked like KDE3. Now they can start building in the new functionality. If they handle the transition to QT 5 properly we should have a fairly smooth transition to the new libraries, with a fully functioning desktop that they can continue to build on. If not... the the daggers will be sharpened. |
| montezuma Jun 14, 2012 10:04 PM EDT |
It is kind of odd that this user disconnect has happened twice now and with the most popular desktops at that. There seems to be some lack of accountability going on which is present for other projects but not desktops. This issue never seems to occur much for server software or even office software. Why are desktops such a lightning rod? |
| Fettoosh Jun 14, 2012 10:07 PM EDT |
The article covered the majority of the misconceptions and there is no need to go over here again. There is enough blame to go around and I just want to highlight couple issue the article mentioned. Quoting:The crashes were undoubtedly due in some cases to the distribution as much as KDE, but KDE was the project that took the blame. Quoting:As for the feeling of betrayal, it is both unfair and fair. It is unfair in the sense that KDE 4.0's was introduced prematurely, thanks mainly to the distribution's desire to include the latest version before it was ready for general use. May be the KDE team mishandled its release by not communicating effectively enough with its users, but the fact is, they did keep KDE 3.x available and frozen for a long time. There were a few distributions that avoided KDE 4 until they felt it is stable and reliable enough. No one forced anyone to jump right into KDE 4. I personally did, but it was on a test machine for a while. In regards to Quoting:All the people who are severely disappointed in how major, public facing projects treat their user base, by subjecting them to bad PR, bad design and a large helping of arrogance. I believe the current status of KDE 4.x and the number of users who are impressed with it prove your perception to be inaccurate. Quoting:At least KDE redeemed itself with a feature complete DE after years, but one has to fear the coming of QT6. The word vision makes me shudder these days. There is no reason to fear the coming of QT5 or QT6 any more since you know better know to test before you jump. Besides, I believe the KDE team also learned their lessons and I am sure they will be more careful how to communicate and release new major versions. Recently, they announced a new testing scheme. It allows beta testers to install new KDE versions side by side along a current version to fully test without effecting its integrity. It is called the Neon project and you can read about it here. Neon Getting Started Other ways to build KDE Other ways to Build KDE project-neon-is-back |
| Fettoosh Jun 15, 2012 10:20 AM EDT |
Quoting:We don't need grand (but unproven) visions. We need tried and true. We need incremental change so we can more easily adapt to it or discard a small piece if it doesn't bring benefit. We need time to adapt to beneficial changes. @r_a_trip, I don't think you need to understand their vision, all you need is to read this article if you haven't yet, to realize what KDE 4 is bringing to its users. Without KDE 4 Plasma framework technology, Plasma Active wouldn't have been possible while keeping the classical desktop style and interface in tact. As a matter of fact, most of the advancements, if not all, that are being developed in Plasma Active will eventually be back ported to the classical desktop to improve its functions and enhance its features. In addition to entertainment, people use computers to do actual work. Daily work consists of multiple Tasks/Activities/Projects. Plasma Active streamlines daily activities to simplify the process of managing workload.That is what the vision of KDE 4 is all about. |
| dinotrac Jun 15, 2012 11:08 AM EDT |
@fettoosh >and frozen See Netscape. |
| JaseP Jun 15, 2012 1:27 PM EDT |
The KDE development team still have their myopia, unfortunately. They still insist that Nepomuk, Akonadi, and all the garbage they bring with them, like Strigi, are an absolute prerequisite to having the KDE desktop... I'm sure it's worked into Plasma Active,... And while it might work on a tablet, with it's limited storage and focus on being a communication and content tool, I have doubts they will ever get it right on the desktop. They don't get it. Not everyone WANTS the semantic desktop. Some people just want to use KDE as a desktop environment. Kontact doesn't even work that well... Poor integration with web mail, etc. What does work well? Integrated compositing. Desktop Widgets that don't use Akonadi. Window manager functions. KDE works best when you strip out the KDE bloat,... I'd rather see them lose the metadata scanning garbage and just focus on compatibility with prevailing web services. Let us choose our own media players and PIM software. Just make it play nice... I'd love someone to fork KDE4 into something like what Trinity was focused on... |
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