[kde] Re: Question for the old hands, about disks

[gene heskett]

On Thursday, April 14, 2011 11:25:47 PM Duncan did opine:

> gene heskett posted on Wed, 13 Apr 2011 11:42:46 -0400 as excerpted:
> > As I have gone about preparing /dev/sdb to move the install to it, I
> > have had several instances where the machine was frozen, usually for
> > about 70 seconds at a time.  Dmesg is reporting that ata2 is being
> > reset, quite a few times.
> 
> In my experience, repeated minite-timeouts and reset is pre-fail
> behavior.  But with your mention of warranty, it sounds like you already
> know that.

Well, I hitched a ride over to seacrates site and picked up the latest 
firmware updating iso, this about 3 days ago, maybe 4, time has been a blur 
here since.

Following their instructions, I pulled the cables on the other drives and 
booted the cd I burnt.  It updated the firmware on that drive, to cc49, 
from some version in the late 20's.

So now the drive is stable, but the write speeds are running about 2 
megs/sec.  I replaced the SATA cable with another and doubled the from 
platter read speeds, but they still don't match the other nearly identical 
drive.  But its working with no errors now.

What pulled the plug and flushed the whole system was when I plugged in the 
cable to /dev/sda and booted the cd, it updated the firmware on it too, and 
somehow managed to also do the MBR on the drive so that even selecting it 
as the boot device in the F8 bios menu, it simply hung with a blank screen 
deadlock.  It is still that way despite fdisk showing it as bootable, and I 
have mounted the individual partitions and have the majority of the data 
recovered now.  But, that drives partition labels are meaningless & 
scrambled so that the partition bearing the sea-slash label, is actually, 
from its contents, the old /opt partition.  Other labels are similarly 
miss-placed.  Entirely possible since all the distros have fallen in love 
with the UUID numbers because they are supposedly more unique than a human 
generated label.

Anyway, I installed a freshly burnt version of pclos, and have been 
watching paint dry at 2megs/sec while mc gets my data back.

And yes, I run amanda, so it ought to be easy, but my next outgoing msg 
will be to the amanda-users list because I can't get it to build, missing 
includes bailouts.  With zero clues as to what the package name that would 
fix it.  And since the rpm packages are a totally different setup, I'll 
wait till the local build problems get sorted, its one of the few programs 
that I have been building and using the svn versions of since back in the 
late 90's.

Anyway, I haven't fallen over, yet, just occupied trying to get a new 
install that didn't use the partitions I gave it, sorted, but now I have 
/home, /opt, /root, and /var back on their proper partitions.

One positive side effect seems to be that a lot of my kde4 problems have 
vanished too.  And I think I have it all back to 4.6.2 now too.  As I've 
rebooted 20+ times as I get the data moved & the only time I lost any 
config was when I mounted the new /home partition over the top of the 
install directory and rebooted after fixing fstab.  But give me time, I'm 
sure I can screw it up again. :-)

Cheers, Duncan & now to see if my recovered kmailrc can still send an 
email.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)


Avoid the Gates of Hell.  Use Linux
(Unknown source)
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[kde] Re: KDE Quality (problems)

[Duncan]

John Layt posted on Thu, 14 Apr 2011 17:17:12 +0100 as excerpted:

> On Thursday 14 Apr 2011 15:29:17 Billie Walsh wrote:
>> On 04/14/2011 08:59 AM, Anne Wilson wrote:
>> > On Thursday 14 April 2011 13:23:33 Billie Walsh wrote:
>> >> I suppose we all have our favorite parts of KDE. For me it's Quanta.
>> >> For whatever reason the devs at wherever have pretty much decided it
>> >> was not worth the effort to bring it along with KDE 4.x. There is
>> >> one person trying to bring it along and I hope someday he manages to
>> >> do it.
>> >> 
>> >> Why they decided to kill off Quanta is beyond me, well maybe "kill
>> >> off" is a bit of an over statement, but it is crippled very badly.

"They"...  Why THEY decided to kill...

>> > This thread is a perfect example of how basic facts about KDE are
>> > misunderstood.  It sounds, for instance, as though KDE consists of a
>> > body of people who sit in a room and make decisions about what will
>> > or won't be developed.  That couldn't be further from the truth.
>> > 
>> > There are thousands of developers, most of which code for fun after
>> > doing a day-job.  Once you understand this, it makes a lot more
>> > sense.

KDE, like free/libre and open source software (FLOSS) in general, is 
pretty much all volunteer, either of the individual devs doing the work, 
or as John Layt mentions below, corporations volunteering to sponsor 
individual devs to do that work.

>> > I would like Quanta to be ported to KDE4, too, but the truth
>> > is that it's a job that doesn't appeal to anyone capable of doing it.
>> > enough to spend their evenings on it.

Volunteers volunteer on what they're interested in.  Just because 
something needs doing to fill a hole in the system as it is, doesn't mean 
there's going to be someone that cares _enough_ about it to volunteer 
either their scarce time that could be spent elsewhere, or their hard 
earned money that could be spent elsewhere, to fill that hole.

This BTW is one of the big reasons documentation tends to be such a 
problem in FLOSS.  The devs doing the actual coding don't find it 
particularly interesting, and the users either don't understand it well 
enough to document, or once they do, their need is filled, so they're no 
longer particularly interested.  This is a problem the community has been 
aware of for awhile, filled in part by all the mainly user-peer lists and 
groups (such as this one) around, and more recently, by various wiki 
efforts.  But it remains a problem, never-the-less.

>> > Then you have things like Telepathy, that are ambitious, and will
>> > eventually be very useful, but again, the developers are going as
>> > fast as their time will allow.  The developers of Kopete lost
>> > interest in taking it further,

What did they do?  They lost interest.  They're volunteers, and when the 
interest level no longer caused them to prioritized development of the 
specific project in question above all the other things they could be 
doing with their time instead...

>> > and the new team wanted to do more, so
>> > a new project was born.  That's how it goes. Developers come and go. 
>> > Life happens to them.  They leave college, get a job, get a
>> > girlfriend, get married, have a family etc., etc., etc..  Their work
>> > slows and sometimes has to stop altogether.  They are simply human.

Again, this is a challenge for FLOSS.  Beyond a certain level, there's 
little appeal in the mundane task of supporting a reasonably mature 
project, continuing to keep it working with updated libraries, fixing 
bugs, etc.  This is where the distributions step in, providing that 
service for a time, but after a period of years, their efforts fail to 
keep up with the increasing demands of supporting software that has become 
more and more stale as the rest of the system evolves around it, and 
eventually they drop support as well.  (The enterprise level distributions 
tend to provide such support for longer, but at a cost of keeping up with 
current changes, and often at some monetary cost, as well, because paying 
someone to do it is the only way to sustain interest, at that point.  
Again, interest being the key.)

Rather, all the interest is in the new super-features.  Particularly since 
may of the volunteers are college students or the like.  If a larger share 
were people actually using the software in their work, the focus of 
interest would likewise shift toward stability, etc, from features.  But 
we deal with reality...  Unfortunately, once people's focus turns to use 
and they're interested in stability over features, that's exactly what 
happens, they're now users, not so much developers.  They have other 
commitments that take their time, a family, a day job, etc, and far less 
time and energy left to spend on what /would/ now interest them, if they 
had the time, actually focusing on stability and reliability.

Of course, that's where corporate voluntarism in the form of sponsorship 
comes in, that being a majo

[kde] Re: KDE Quality (problems)

[Clemens Eisserer]

> In my opinion, the major problem here is not the timing, but rather that
> after putting version 4.N out, focus switches to version 4.N+1 instead
> of focusing 90% on 4.N.1, .2, etc.  This way, a truly nice, stable and
> solid release in never achieved.  The devs always hunt after the next
> big thing, rather than trying to make what they currently have as
> rock-solid as possible :-/  Right now, every release is riddled with
> glitches and annoyances, and instead of focusing on fixing them, new
> features are added for the next major version.

That was basically what I ment with "Features count most",
stability/performance/bug-fixing don't get the attention they deserve.

The question is where to go from here on. As far as I can see things
won't chance for KDE. As a user, I could try Gnome3 but I am afraid it
needs at least a year to mature and I dislike their idea of hiding
"whats behind" from users.
I didn't like xfce years ago, but haven't tried it lately.

Time will show ;)

- Clemens
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[kde] Re: KDE Quality (problems)

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 04/14/2011 09:45 AM, Clemens Eisserer wrote:
>[...]
> Another problem is the release cycle. The cycle is so short, that even
> many bugs reported during
> alpha stage aren't fixed. At release-time, devs are already working on
> new features, often not backporting their fixes.
> So you end up again with release+1, this time with other bugs.
>
> Its not uncommon for me to see integral parts broken after updating to
> a new major (like the panel in my multimonitor setting when updating
> to 4.6).

In my opinion, the major problem here is not the timing, but rather that 
after putting version 4.N out, focus switches to version 4.N+1 instead 
of focusing 90% on 4.N.1, .2, etc.  This way, a truly nice, stable and 
solid release in never achieved.  The devs always hunt after the next 
big thing, rather than trying to make what they currently have as 
rock-solid as possible :-/  Right now, every release is riddled with 
glitches and annoyances, and instead of focusing on fixing them, new 
features are added for the next major version.

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[kde] Re: KDE Quality (problems)

[John Layt]

On Thursday 14 Apr 2011 15:29:17 Billie Walsh wrote:
> On 04/14/2011 08:59 AM, Anne Wilson wrote:
> > On Thursday 14 April 2011 13:23:33 Billie Walsh wrote:
> >> I suppose we all have our favorite parts of KDE. For me it's Quanta. For
> >> whatever reason the devs at wherever have pretty much decided it was not
> >> worth the effort to bring it along with KDE 4.x. There is one person
> >> trying to bring it along and I hope someday he manages to do it.
> >> 
> >> Why they decided to kill off Quanta is beyond me, well maybe "kill off"
> >> is a bit of an over statement, but it is crippled very badly.
> > 
> > This thread is a perfect example of how basic facts about KDE are
> > misunderstood.  It sounds, for instance, as though KDE consists of a body
> > of people who sit in a room and make decisions about what will or won't
> > be developed.  That couldn't be further from the truth.
> > 
> > There are thousands of developers, most of which code for fun after doing
> > a day-job.  Once you understand this, it makes a lot more sense.  I
> > would like Quanta to be ported to KDE4, too, but the truth is that it's
> > a job that doesn't appeal to anyone capable of doing it. enough to spend
> > their evenings on it.
> > 
> > Then you have things like Telepathy, that are ambitious, and will
> > eventually be very useful, but again, the developers are going as fast
> > as their time will allow.  The developers of Kopete lost interest in
> > taking it further, and the new team wanted to do more, so a new project
> > was born.  That's how it goes. Developers come and go.  Life happens to
> > them.  They leave college, get a job, get a girlfriend, get married,
> > have a family etc., etc., etc..  Their work slows and sometimes has to
> > stop altogether.  They are simply human.
> > 
> > And that's why in FOSS we will always have some beautiful fireworks and
> > at the same time some things that make us weep.
> > 
> > Anne
> 
> I realize how the "system" works. And I do applaud their efforts, they
> do a great job. And, Quanta probably fills a "niche market" so it's
> priority is low, except for those that "need" it.
> 
> It's just a shame that such a great program is allowed to drift off into
> Never-Never Land. You can spend several hundred dollars and not find a
> better program.

We were lucky with Quanta for a long time that there was a commercial sponsor 
of the work, an American small business owner who liked it so much he 
sponsored an Eastern European developer to work on it.  Unfortunately that 
person can no longer afford to sponsor development, the developer has moved 
on, and few people in KDE are interested in web development work so no-one was 
available to port Quanta to KDE4.  I believe the future plans for Quanta is to 
use the KDevelop framework, but it's still a lot of work.

John.
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[kde] Re: KDE Quality (problems)

[Peter Nikolic]

On Thursday 14 April 2011 14:34:47 Billie Walsh wrote:
> On 04/14/2011 08:20 AM, Clemens Eisserer wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> >> I suppose we all have our favorite parts of KDE. For me it's Quanta. For
> >> whatever reason the devs at wherever have pretty much decided it was not
> >> worth the effort to bring it along with KDE 4.x. There is one person
> >> trying to bring it along and I hope someday he manages to do it.
> > 
> > No offense, but why at all should Qanta be part of a Desktop Environment?
> > I like Quanta, but what makes it worthwile to integrate it tightly into a
> > DE?
> 
> Just for openers, it's about the best webpage editor around for any
> operating system.
> 
> I can't speak for anyone else but I spend about eight to ten hours a day
> working on web pages. Nothing fancy, genealogy and history pages.
> Quanta, even in it's crippled stated, is head and shoulders above
> anything else. When it was whole, it was awesome.
> 
> As I said before, we all have our favorite "parts." That may not be a
> "must have" for a lot of people but for those that need
> it
> 
> >> Kopete is meant to be replaced by telepathy (which is in early
> >> development)
> > 
> > So I suppose a KDE frontend will be developed by the KDE project.
> > Which has to be maintained again, same situation but different program.
> > 
> > - Clemens
I'll second that  i spend a lot of time working on motorsport web sites  and 
Quanta was the bees knees  of editors for the job i use Bluefish right now but 
it aint a patch on Quanta   and neither for that matter is Komposer that is a 
joke to put it very mildy ..

Pete .

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[kde] Re: KDE Quality (problems)

[Billie Walsh]

On 04/14/2011 08:59 AM, Anne Wilson wrote:
> On Thursday 14 April 2011 13:23:33 Billie Walsh wrote:
>> On 04/14/2011 01:45 AM, Clemens Eisserer wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I use KDE since 1998/1999 with kde-1.1 beeing the first version I
>>> remember having used.
>>> I always found it to be simply the best Desktop Environment,
>>> escpecially during KDE-2.x/3.x times.
>>> Since KDE-4 I am not that happy anymore.  Early releases were
>>> horrible, ~4.3/4.4+ is ok, but still not as solid as one would expect.
>>>
>>> The problems I see are:
>>> 1. Too few developers, too much code
>>> 2. Too short release cycles&   Quality testing
>>> 3. Features count most mentality.
>>> 4. Performance
>>>
>>> I normally wouldn't bother the list with my ideas, however I have been
>>> encouraged to do so.
>>>
>>> Thanks, Clemens
>> I suppose we all have our favorite parts of KDE. For me it's Quanta. For
>> whatever reason the devs at wherever have pretty much decided it was not
>> worth the effort to bring it along with KDE 4.x. There is one person
>> trying to bring it along and I hope someday he manages to do it.
>>
>> Why they decided to kill off Quanta is beyond me, well maybe "kill off"
>> is a bit of an over statement, but it is crippled very badly.
> This thread is a perfect example of how basic facts about KDE are
> misunderstood.  It sounds, for instance, as though KDE consists of a body of
> people who sit in a room and make decisions about what will or won't be
> developed.  That couldn't be further from the truth.
>
> There are thousands of developers, most of which code for fun after doing a
> day-job.  Once you understand this, it makes a lot more sense.  I would like
> Quanta to be ported to KDE4, too, but the truth is that it's a job that
> doesn't appeal to anyone capable of doing it. enough to spend their evenings
> on it.
>
> Then you have things like Telepathy, that are ambitious, and will eventually
> be very useful, but again, the developers are going as fast as their time will
> allow.  The developers of Kopete lost interest in taking it further, and the
> new team wanted to do more, so a new project was born.  That's how it goes.
> Developers come and go.  Life happens to them.  They leave college, get a job,
> get a girlfriend, get married, have a family etc., etc., etc..  Their work
> slows and sometimes has to stop altogether.  They are simply human.
>
> And that's why in FOSS we will always have some beautiful fireworks and at the
> same time some things that make us weep.
>
> Anne

I realize how the "system" works. And I do applaud their efforts, they 
do a great job. And, Quanta probably fills a "niche market" so it's 
priority is low, except for those that "need" it.

It's just a shame that such a great program is allowed to drift off into 
Never-Never Land. You can spend several hundred dollars and not find a 
better program.

-- 
"A good moral character is the first essential in a man." George Washington

_ _...  ..._ _
_._  ._  .  ._..  ...  .._

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[kde] Re: KDE Quality (problems)

[Anne Wilson]

On Thursday 14 April 2011 13:23:33 Billie Walsh wrote:
> On 04/14/2011 01:45 AM, Clemens Eisserer wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I use KDE since 1998/1999 with kde-1.1 beeing the first version I
> > remember having used.
> > I always found it to be simply the best Desktop Environment,
> > escpecially during KDE-2.x/3.x times.
> > Since KDE-4 I am not that happy anymore.  Early releases were
> > horrible, ~4.3/4.4+ is ok, but still not as solid as one would expect.
> > 
> > The problems I see are:
> > 1. Too few developers, too much code
> > 2. Too short release cycles&  Quality testing
> > 3. Features count most mentality.
> > 4. Performance
> > 
> > I normally wouldn't bother the list with my ideas, however I have been
> > encouraged to do so.
> > 
> > Thanks, Clemens
> 
> I suppose we all have our favorite parts of KDE. For me it's Quanta. For
> whatever reason the devs at wherever have pretty much decided it was not
> worth the effort to bring it along with KDE 4.x. There is one person
> trying to bring it along and I hope someday he manages to do it.
> 
> Why they decided to kill off Quanta is beyond me, well maybe "kill off"
> is a bit of an over statement, but it is crippled very badly.

This thread is a perfect example of how basic facts about KDE are 
misunderstood.  It sounds, for instance, as though KDE consists of a body of 
people who sit in a room and make decisions about what will or won't be 
developed.  That couldn't be further from the truth.  

There are thousands of developers, most of which code for fun after doing a 
day-job.  Once you understand this, it makes a lot more sense.  I would like 
Quanta to be ported to KDE4, too, but the truth is that it's a job that 
doesn't appeal to anyone capable of doing it. enough to spend their evenings 
on it.

Then you have things like Telepathy, that are ambitious, and will eventually 
be very useful, but again, the developers are going as fast as their time will 
allow.  The developers of Kopete lost interest in taking it further, and the 
new team wanted to do more, so a new project was born.  That's how it goes.   
Developers come and go.  Life happens to them.  They leave college, get a job, 
get a girlfriend, get married, have a family etc., etc., etc..  Their work 
slows and sometimes has to stop altogether.  They are simply human.

And that's why in FOSS we will always have some beautiful fireworks and at the 
same time some things that make us weep.

Anne
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[kde] Re: KDE Quality (problems)

[Billie Walsh]

On 04/14/2011 08:20 AM, Clemens Eisserer wrote:
> Hi,
>
>> I suppose we all have our favorite parts of KDE. For me it's Quanta. For
>> whatever reason the devs at wherever have pretty much decided it was not
>> worth the effort to bring it along with KDE 4.x. There is one person
>> trying to bring it along and I hope someday he manages to do it.
> No offense, but why at all should Qanta be part of a Desktop Environment?
> I like Quanta, but what makes it worthwile to integrate it tightly into a DE?

Just for openers, it's about the best webpage editor around for any 
operating system.

I can't speak for anyone else but I spend about eight to ten hours a day 
working on web pages. Nothing fancy, genealogy and history pages. 
Quanta, even in it's crippled stated, is head and shoulders above 
anything else. When it was whole, it was awesome.

As I said before, we all have our favorite "parts." That may not be a 
"must have" for a lot of people but for those that need 
it

>
>> Kopete is meant to be replaced by telepathy (which is in early development)
> So I suppose a KDE frontend will be developed by the KDE project.
> Which has to be maintained again, same situation but different program.
>
> - Clemens
>


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_._  ._  .  ._..  ...  .._

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[kde] Re: KDE Quality (problems)

[Clemens Eisserer]

Hi,

> I suppose we all have our favorite parts of KDE. For me it's Quanta. For
> whatever reason the devs at wherever have pretty much decided it was not
> worth the effort to bring it along with KDE 4.x. There is one person
> trying to bring it along and I hope someday he manages to do it.

No offense, but why at all should Qanta be part of a Desktop Environment?
I like Quanta, but what makes it worthwile to integrate it tightly into a DE?


> Kopete is meant to be replaced by telepathy (which is in early development)

So I suppose a KDE frontend will be developed by the KDE project.
Which has to be maintained again, same situation but different program.

- Clemens
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[kde] Re: KDE Quality (problems)

[Billie Walsh]

On 04/14/2011 01:45 AM, Clemens Eisserer wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I use KDE since 1998/1999 with kde-1.1 beeing the first version I
> remember having used.
> I always found it to be simply the best Desktop Environment,
> escpecially during KDE-2.x/3.x times.
> Since KDE-4 I am not that happy anymore.  Early releases were
> horrible, ~4.3/4.4+ is ok, but still not as solid as one would expect.
>
> The problems I see are:
> 1. Too few developers, too much code
> 2. Too short release cycles&  Quality testing
> 3. Features count most mentality.
> 4. Performance
>
> I normally wouldn't bother the list with my ideas, however I have been
> encouraged to do so.
>
> Thanks, Clemens

I suppose we all have our favorite parts of KDE. For me it's Quanta. For 
whatever reason the devs at wherever have pretty much decided it was not 
worth the effort to bring it along with KDE 4.x. There is one person 
trying to bring it along and I hope someday he manages to do it.

Why they decided to kill off Quanta is beyond me, well maybe "kill off" 
is a bit of an over statement, but it is crippled very badly.

-- 
"A good moral character is the first essential in a man." George Washington

_ _...  ..._ _
_._  ._  .  ._..  ...  .._

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[kde] Re: KDE Quality (problems)

[Clemens Eisserer]

Hi Rafa,

Probably I've just seen too much bad examples. I saw all the crashes
during 4.1,
I had to live with the dbus bugs, wih kmix crashes. I can't even count
all the bugs I had to arrange me with going from 4.1 to 4.6 ;)
For now I have exactly 43 bugs "open".

And now when I updated to kde-4.6 I have to delete my panel and
re-create it every time I don't use my external monitor because it
doesn't resize.
And when I updated from 4.6.1 to 4.6.2 kmix stopped working correctly.
However when I report such bugs - most of the time nothing happens.


> I agree with you here but, I would add MHO: maybe 1 release in every 3
> should be just for "polishing" KDE SC 4.x. No new features just bug
> squashing, optimizing performance, fixing security issues, profiling,
> ... The other 2 releases would be the "normal everyday work".
>
> Maybe this would help make a "better" KDE (if that's possible ;)

Absolutly! I already thought about such "quality" releases and I think
its a great idea.
If the goal of a release if to improve stability and fix those bugs a
dev usually has no time for,
it would greatly reduce the amount of bugs that accumulated over time.


> Adding new features is not always bad (MHO, again). For
Of course, new features are what keeps software from bit-rot.
However, when something new is added, it should also be checked for
performance concerns, not only if it doesn't crash plasma ;)


Thanks again, Clemens
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[kde] Re: KDE Quality (problems)

[Rafa Griman]

Hi :)

On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 8:45 AM, Clemens Eisserer  wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I use KDE since 1998/1999 with kde-1.1 beeing the first version I
> remember having used.
> I always found it to be simply the best Desktop Environment,
> escpecially during KDE-2.x/3.x times.
> Since KDE-4 I am not that happy anymore.  Early releases were
> horrible, ~4.3/4.4+ is ok, but still not as solid as one would expect.


I've been using KDE since more or less the same time (makes me think
I'm getting old ;)

When KDE 4.0 came out I decided not to switch and stick to KDE 3.x
because KDE 4.0 was meant mainly for developers. Since I'm not a
developer ... I waited til KDE 4.2. At that same time I switched from
openSUSE to ArchLinux. What I found was that KDE 4.2 was WAY more
stable on ArchLinux than on openSUSE (and other distros).

Since then (KDE 4.2), I haven't looked back: ArchLinux + KDE SC 4. I
still keep an eye on other distros (mainly openSUSE & Gentoo) and I
must say that the stability that I find with ArchLinux is way better
that that of other distros. I would suggest you try other distros if
you find that KDE SC 4 on your distro is not that stable.

And, BTW, not only is it more stable, it's "faster". What do I mean by
faster? Easy: in ArchLinux I click and it responds immediately, it's
snappier. With other distros ... you have to wait. BTW: yes, using the
same hardware so I'm not comparing different distros on different
hardware. And no, not virtualising anything, all bare metal ;)

Obviously, this is MHO and YMMV. But if you've been using Linux for
that long ... I assume you're not scared of a bit of CLI and file
editing so I would invite you over to ArchLinux and try it out :)


> The problems I see are:
> 1. Too few developers, too much code
> 2. Too short release cycles & Quality testing
> 3. Features count most mentality.
> 4. Performance
>
> I normally wouldn't bother the list with my ideas, however I have been
> encouraged to do so.


FLOSS is all about Community so I think that giving your opinion is
always good, specially if you do it in an educated way (as you have
done), you don't demand anything and you don't insult anyone. So as
far as I'm concerned: thanks for your opinion :)


> Ad 1.)
> I participated during the kde 4.2/4.3/4.4 beta phase - and came to the
> conclusion it was mostly worthless effort on my side. There are
> simply not enough contributors arround to fix all the open issues.
> I have already a few projects I contribute to, fixing the bugs myself
> is simply no option :/
>
> Furthermore KDE accumulated tons of code over time (I still don't
> see the reason it carries its own Office-Suite, HTML-Rendering
> engine, instant messanger, Media Player, whatever), but only
> few guys are actually working on the code.
> An excellent example is Kopete, which by itself is a great instant
> messanger - however its almost unmaintained. Very urgent problems are
> fixed by people alien to the code, but other than that, the code rots
> and nobody is willing to maintain it, not to mention implement new
> features. Looking back, probably the idea to include their own instant
> messenger into KDE was a bad idea? Who knows, at least it wouldn't be
> KDE's problem if kopete died. The same is true for Ark and a few other
> non-core components.


The # of developers is probably a "marketing" issue. What I mean is
that maybe KDE should try to recruite more developers in some way:
maybe in installfests, maybe in Universities, get more companies to
contribute patches, ...

Another thing that would help is to make more noise about who uses KDE
(or KDE technologies). Companies such as Kitware develop very
interesting (and useful) software, for example.


> Ad 2.)
> Another problem is the release cycle. The cycle is so short, that even
> many bugs reported during alpha stage aren't fixed. At release-time,
> devs are already working on new features, often not backporting their fixes.
> So you end up again with release+1, this time with other bugs.
>
> Its not uncommon for me to see integral parts broken after updating to
> a new major (like the panel in my multimonitor setting when updating
> to 4.6).


I agree with you here but, I would add MHO: maybe 1 release in every 3
should be just for "polishing" KDE SC 4.x. No new features just bug
squashing, optimizing performance, fixing security issues, profiling,
... The other 2 releases would be the "normal everyday work".

Maybe this would help make a "better" KDE (if that's possible ;)


> Ad 3.)
> Features count most. Plasma may still be not completly stable,
> and the TaskManager may do weird things (both from a user perspective
> absolute core-components),
> however wee see social network integration and whatever.


That's why I suggest having 1 (minor) release in every 3 (or maybe
every 4) just for bug squashing, profiling and the sort.

I know there are bug squashing weeks, beta versions, ... But as
Clemens says, it's a short release cycle ... and this is just MHO

[kde] Re: KDE Quality (problems)

[Jonathan Raphael Joachim Kolberg]

Am Donnerstag, 14. April 2011, 08:45:50 schrieb Clemens Eisserer:
> Furthermore KDE accumulated tons
> of code over time (I still don't see the reason it carries its own
> Office-Suite, HTML-Rendering engine, instant messanger, Media Player,
> whatever), but only few guys are actually working on the code.
> An excellent example is Kopete, which by itself is a great instant
> messanger - however its almost unmaintained. Very urgent problems are
> fixed by people alien to the code, but other than that, the code rots
> and nobody is willing to maintain it, not to mention implement new
> features. Looking back, probably the idea to include their own instant
> messenger into KDE was a bad idea? Who knows, at least it wouldn't be
> KDE's problem if kopete died. The same is true for Ark and a few other
> non-core components.
Kopete is meant to be replaced by telepathy (which is in early development)

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