KDE and Version Numbers
I’m fed up! I’m sorry, but I just don’t buy it. MAYBE it worked with the .0 release, but anything above x.0 IS NOT a preview / beta / release candidate. KDE 4.2.4 is the real, proper, full up released version of KDE. Amarok 2.1 is the real, proper, full up released version of Amarok.
The KDE fanboi’s (and frankly, I think it is just the fanboi’s who are still trying to use this excuse – looking at the KDE blogrolls I don’t see the devs using it any more) need to stop falling back on this excuse. NO ONE else tries to use it, and I don’t understand why they insist on trying to use it. It’s really getting old now.
KDE had all the features and stability (from my point of view, as a user) and they went and decided to throw away almost the entire codebase in favor of SHINY! What’s worse is they concentrated on new features before getting the really basic stuff which KDE3 does really well right.
The same for Amarok 2 – the developers concentrated on their stupid shiny new UI which doesn’t even work properly before getting back even a tiny amount of the functionality that makes me use Amarok 1.4 over any of the other umpteen million other media players.
I don’t think I’ve seen anyone else do this to this degree with desktop software. The first thing developers do when they do a major rewrite (and thus a major version bump) is get the product roughly on par with its predecessor in terms of features. THEN they concentrate on shiny new features. Why is this so hard for the KDE devs to grasp?
Edit: I am not saying anything (major) is lacking in KDE 4.2 – this is basically a rant about the excuse used by many whenever someone does come up with something that’s missing.
For the record, the features I am noticably missing in KDE 4.2 are:
- Plasma still crashes occaisionally (I think this may be related to downloaded plasmoids, but plasma should still sanely handle issues so my entire desktop doesn’t stop responding with no messages telling me why)
- No ability to put spaces between icons placed on a panel
- No run panel widget
- No nice small, clear memory/cpu panel widget like the KDE3 system monitor applet (there doesn’t seem to be a memory usage widget at all. I wonder if that’s so the devs can keep perpetuating the (from my experience) myth that KDE4 uses less memory)
- Memory usage is noticably greater than KDE 3.5 (as measured at hibernate time on my laptop – My laptop may have been upgraded to 2G from 512M at xmas, but the memory usage affects the time it takes to hibernate/resume my laptop)
I totally agree. KDE screwed up royally. I’m still using KDE 3.5.10, and doing just fine with it. What gets me into a tizzy is that you should be able to do the same things you did in KDE 3, only better. However, you simply can’t. I tried to move the desktop pager on the Kicker by righ-clicking on it to select “Move…” but it wasn’t even a option. Totally throwing away the conventions that the user base has become accustomed to is bad…very bad.
- No ability to put spaces between icons placed on a panel
Go to the panel, unlock> Panel options > add widget > add spacer wherever you wish
– No run panel widget
kde-look.org > plasma-runner; anyway, there’s alt+F2; and btw, there’s tons of plasmoids already (check that same webpage)
– No nice small, clear memory/cpu panel widget like the KDE3’s
cpuload, and there’s others.
with regard to memory usage and crashes, which distro do you use? My experience says other different story.
@ Miguel
- Spacers between icons
But why do I have to do that? In KDE3 the space just appeared if I dropped the icon a little further away. The KDE3 method is so quick and intuitive. I can’t even see the spacer widget in KDE 4.2.4 – I wouldn’t be surprised if it got dropped because every time I tried to use it before it crashed plasma.
- Run panel widget
plasma-runner doesn’t appear when I go through the download plasmoids dialogs. I really can’t be bothered to trawl through 1000s of “this is my first attempt at programming” entries to get functionality that is standard in KDE3.
- Memory/CPU panel widget
It’s not in as standard and doesn’t appear in the download plasma widgets dialog. Again, I can’t be bothered to trawl through 1000s of “this is my first attempt at programming” entries to get functionality that is standard in KDE3.
I use Gentoo (my laptop runs CFLAGS=”-O2 -march=native”, 64-bit userland, tuxonice-2.6.28, Athlon64 3200+). I’ve tested with the same or less amount of applications and Konqueror tabs open in KDE4.2 as KDE3.5. I have cache/buffer dropping enabled on hibernate for tuxonice.
AllenJB,
I don’t know what you’re doing wrong but I simply can’t agree. Sure there are some missing features like a proper bluetooth integration and also amarok 2 has less features than amarok 1.4. But remember the KDE team is not responsible for all KDE based apps…
I also use gentoo and I really appreciate the work of the KDE/QT team and its contibutors. Can’t remember a crash (well now I’m using latest beta and there are some crashes…) of plasma or whatever… I also use kubuntu on some machines, there I could understand your complaints as I often have some crashed but not on gentoo!!! It may be a 32/64bit issue but maybe you screw up you system elsewhere and blame now KDE as I can’t follow your arguments.
Plasma-runner should AFAIK be installed by default, you don’t have to add the plasmoid…
Hey people !!!
There is still KDE 3.5.10. I’m using it. A desktop enviroment has a lot of lines of code, and it’s not that easy to please everybody wish. Why do you use a peace of software that disturb You so much? I don’t get it. That’s why I dont use Gnome. I don’t like it. I don’t use it. Point. Amarok 2. You don’t like it, change it for Amarok 1.whatever. Problem solved. With too many rants You don’t aqctually help the devs to improve a new product. The revolutionary things always has a lot of discussion around. Still, try to work with Vista interface, which needs triple graphic card to produce 3 sad efects…….
Denis
@ bearsh
Amarok is housed at amarok.kde.org – therefore it’s part of KDE from my point of view.
I doubt it’s anything like a 32/64-bit issue. I run 64-bit multilib and my machines are kept very clean in terms of maintenance (I always run both depclean and revdep-rebuild as part of my world updates, and my world file is kept perfect in terms of top-level contents. I don’t run any strange CFLAGS / LDFLAGS). KDE 3.5 works perfectly without any crashes.
@ Denis
Yes, KDE 3.5.10 currently exists and is supported, but for how much longer? It will one day (possibly fairly soon) become unsupported, and when that happens I want a usable replacement that is equivalent in terms of functionality.
Why do I use KDE? I’ve tried other desktop environments and just never got along with any of them. KDE 3.5 is perfect for my needs. I want KDE 4 to be the same when KDE 3 becomes unsupported.
Beyond the fact that this is my blog and part of its purpose is to be a place for me to rant, I have to disagree with about rants not helping to improve products. I’m voicing what I think is wrong with the products and what I want changed. If no one did this, the developers would continue to think that all is right with the world. If lots of people do this, and the developers have half a brain, they’ll listen and change things.
While I would love to contribute changes to improve these projects, I simply don’t have the time. The next best thing I can do, in my view, is voice my opinions and hope that someone listens.