KDE4

[Roger Oberholtzer]

On Tue, 2009-05-19 at 17:13 -0700, Tony Alfrey wrote:
> Gary Wilson wrote:
> > David A. Bandel wrote:
> >> Folks,
> >>
> >> OK, I don't know about you all, but I'm annoyed.  Just WTFO is wrong
> >> with all the world's programmers?  Does something have to be different
> >> to be better/improved?  And even if they think it's better, why is it
> >> rammed down a user's throat with a firehose?
> >>
> >>   
> > You missed the news earlier this year: Linus Torvalds ditches KDE 4 for 
> > GNOME
> > 
> > In an interview with Computer World, Torvalds said:
> > 
> > I used to be a KDE user 
> > <http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com/2009/01/linus-torvalds-ditches-kde-4-for-gnome.html#>. 
> > I thought KDE 4.0 was such a disaster I switched to GNOME. I hate the 
> > fact that my right button doesn't do what I want it to do. But the whole 
> > "break everything" model is painful for users and they can choose to use 
> > something else.
> > 
> > I realise the reason for the 4.0 release, but I think they did it badly. 
> > They did so may changes it was a half-baked release. It may turn out to 
> > be the right decision in the end and I will re-try KDE, but I suspect 
> > I'm not the only person they lost.
> > 
> 
> When users would make essentially the same comment on the SuSE list, 
> some of the developers would say things like "can you document which 
> specific thing doesn't work for you?" or "well, linux is all about 
> choice, you can use a different window manager" or "did you file a bug 
> report?".  Maybe Linus didn't file a bug report ;-)

Be sure to point out that openSUSE allows you to install either 3.5, 4.x
or both, as well as xfce, fvwm and others as part of the original
install. Meaning that a newly installed openSUSE can just as easily only
have xcfe as the desktop. And that you can switch between them. Of
course, 3.5 is not going to be in the next release of openSUSE as a
desktop - 3.5 apps will still be available as apps. But by that time, I
think most of the real issues with 4.x will sorted. I also think that
after the initial reaction by users to the missing 

Change is always painful. It is nature's way of making sure it is only
done when the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. For me, the biggest gain
of KDE 4 when used in our measurement systems is that external storage
seems to work more consistently than ever before. For example, in how
many releases of KDE3 did you plug in a device, see it
called /media/whatever in konqueror, and yet there was
no /media/whatever mounted. So it could be accesses in KDE/konqueror,
but not in the same way from the command line. KDE4 seem to have this
sorted. That alone, for me, it worth the trip.

-- 
Roger Oberholtzer

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