Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
On Thursday, 2013-10-31, 10:57:51, Ross Boylan wrote: On Thu, Oct 31, 2013 at 11:54:50AM +0100, Kevin Krammer wrote: On Thursday, 2013-10-31, 11:48:10, Michael wrote: Am Wed, 30 Oct 2013 18:34:56 +0100 schrieb Kevin Krammer kram...@kde.org: On Wednesday, 2013-10-30, 18:00:46, Michael wrote: And on the thread itself, I did not talk about any applications, I only speak of the UI + widgets and its issues. I know the threshold might be fuzzy there sometimes. Right. There are more precise ways to address different products, e.g. Plasma desktop or Plasma workspace(s), but anything than using the project/vendor name is usally already an improvement. So, KDE4 is officially abandoned, great! :-( No. As explained in short and in length :) From what I wanted to know, it generally is. That not all-and-everything KDE-related is obsolete is quite clear. I guess it also depends on the definition of abandoned. Usually that means discarded or remaining untouched, etc. If we define abandoned as no new extensions that is of course a different case. Cheers, Kevin My main concern with 4 is not whether features are being added but whether bugs are being removed. What are the prospects for that? I can see bugfix commits going into the kde-workspaces KDE/4.11 branch so I'd say it isn't a matter of prospects but happening as planned. And has anything been done in the KDE5 cycle to assure higher levels of reliability? Don' know, I am not involved in either workspace development nor the Qt5 porting efforts. Cheers, Kevin -- Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer KDE user support, developer mentoring signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ This message is from the kde mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
On Fri, Nov 1, 2013 at 2:02 PM, Duncan 1i5t5.dun...@cox.net wrote: ... [tl;dr summary, more modular-qt/kde-frameworks discussion] Yay! Duncan, I love you :) Regards, Myriam -- Proud member of the Amarok and KDE Community Protect your freedom and join the Fellowship of FSFE: http://www.fsfe.org Please don't send me proprietary file formats, use ISO standard ODF instead (ISO/IEC 26300) ___ This message is from the kde mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
Am Thu, 31 Oct 2013 14:58:43 +0100 schrieb Kevin Krammer kram...@kde.org: On Thursday, 2013-10-31, 11:45:04, Michael wrote: Am Tue, 29 Oct 2013 14:35:29 + (UTC) schrieb Duncan 1i5t5.dun...@cox.net: Up the stack at the application level, kde5 is breaking up and shipping most individual apps with their own version tagging and release timing, so apps that are evolving fast can ship updates every month or even every week if they wish, while already mature apps in primarily maintenance mode might ship an update a year, mostly just to keep them building on current libraries with current tools, with the occasional security update as well when necessary. With QT4 / KDE4, could applications not just build against maybe older qt- / kdelibs which would then not prevent fast-paced application-development? There are already quite some applications that have their own pace, e.g. Amarok and Digikam, so this is mostly an option that might be explored by more applicatons in the future. So it *is* possible with qt4 / kde4 already and not a feature (planned or already done) in qt5 / kde5. To convince other application developers to do the same, no idea how qt5 might help help there. As I guess the most obvious reason for slower paced development is just lack of manpower. Any pointers there that qt5 does actually help? The relation to the KDE Frameworks 5 initiative is that are consideration to potentially release frameworks separately or in smaller groups on individual schedules. When the release of dependencies is no longer synchronized, it becomes more unlikely that things built upon them are released in a synchronized fashion. But, as I said in another posting, this is not definit yet. Uh... even after reading that paragraph several times, I seem to have some issues understanding it. O_o So... come again? Or point me to the other mail, maybe that will clear things up. That means currently qt-but-non-kde apps and desktop options may become more popular as well. There's smplayer, and the razor-qt desktop. Right, there *is*! No idea why the new de-coupling style benefits such projects. BUT ignore the question you might see here, as it will go in a direction which is out of the scope of this thread. Really, don't answer the question, ignore it. Should probably not ask it then ;-) Yeah! :-) But it is kind of hard to make the balancing act between showing Duncan what parts *could* (or should) be skipped and carrying on the overall conversation. The idea was to show him a possible conclusion a person might have and as the reaction to that conclusion would miss the scope of the conversation, try to convince him to not answer it. But agreed, under normal circumstances I would not have written a thing that could be understood as a question when I don't want that question to be followed in the first place. But in this case the idea may have failed or was a bad idea to begin with... whatever. :-) It is somewhat relevant though. Making KDE technology more available to projects currently not using it has the potential of increasing the number of people working on them. Another thing that influences the topic of QA is that part of the effort is to increase test coverage, or, making the tests more explicit (things that got lots of implicit testing through being used by other parts now gain their own tests). As I don't want to go there any further anyway: We'll see. ;-) regards Michael ___ This message is from the kde mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
On Friday, 2013-11-01, 17:31:33, Michael wrote: Am Thu, 31 Oct 2013 14:58:43 +0100 schrieb Kevin Krammer kram...@kde.org: There are already quite some applications that have their own pace, e.g. Amarok and Digikam, so this is mostly an option that might be explored by more applicatons in the future. So it *is* possible with qt4 / kde4 already and not a feature (planned or already done) in qt5 / kde5. There is no technical limitation now, if you mean that. To convince other application developers to do the same, no idea how qt5 might help help there. Qt5 or KDE Frameworks 5 doesn't change anything, however the reorganization of the platform into frameworks constitutes a change in how the libraries will be handled (as products of their own) which will likely serve as a trigger for other changes. As I guess the most obvious reason for slower paced development is just lack of manpower. Any pointers there that qt5 does actually help? I don't think Qt5 changes anything regarding man power. The KDE Framworks 5 effort might result in an increase of developers spending time on the frameworks, i.e. applications developers currently not working with KDE based libraries but rolling their own. The relation to the KDE Frameworks 5 initiative is that are consideration to potentially release frameworks separately or in smaller groups on individual schedules. When the release of dependencies is no longer synchronized, it becomes more unlikely that things built upon them are released in a synchronized fashion. But, as I said in another posting, this is not definit yet. Uh... even after reading that paragraph several times, I seem to have some issues understanding it. O_o So... come again? Or point me to the other mail, maybe that will clear things up. Separate release schedules are something that is discussed but not decided yet, at least not by all application teams. Cheers, Kevin -- Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer KDE user support, developer mentoring signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ This message is from the kde mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
Am Wed, 30 Oct 2013 18:34:56 +0100 schrieb Kevin Krammer kram...@kde.org: On Wednesday, 2013-10-30, 18:00:46, Michael wrote: And on the thread itself, I did not talk about any applications, I only speak of the UI + widgets and its issues. I know the threshold might be fuzzy there sometimes. Right. There are more precise ways to address different products, e.g. Plasma desktop or Plasma workspace(s), but anything than using the project/vendor name is usally already an improvement. So, KDE4 is officially abandoned, great! :-( No. As explained in short and in length :) From what I wanted to know, it generally is. That not all-and-everything KDE-related is obsolete is quite clear. regards Michael ___ This message is from the kde mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
On Thursday, 2013-10-31, 11:48:10, Michael wrote: Am Wed, 30 Oct 2013 18:34:56 +0100 schrieb Kevin Krammer kram...@kde.org: On Wednesday, 2013-10-30, 18:00:46, Michael wrote: And on the thread itself, I did not talk about any applications, I only speak of the UI + widgets and its issues. I know the threshold might be fuzzy there sometimes. Right. There are more precise ways to address different products, e.g. Plasma desktop or Plasma workspace(s), but anything than using the project/vendor name is usally already an improvement. So, KDE4 is officially abandoned, great! :-( No. As explained in short and in length :) From what I wanted to know, it generally is. That not all-and-everything KDE-related is obsolete is quite clear. I guess it also depends on the definition of abandoned. Usually that means discarded or remaining untouched, etc. If we define abandoned as no new extensions that is of course a different case. Cheers, Kevin -- Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer KDE user support, developer mentoring signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ This message is from the kde mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
On Thu, Oct 31, 2013 at 11:54:50AM +0100, Kevin Krammer wrote: On Thursday, 2013-10-31, 11:48:10, Michael wrote: Am Wed, 30 Oct 2013 18:34:56 +0100 schrieb Kevin Krammer kram...@kde.org: On Wednesday, 2013-10-30, 18:00:46, Michael wrote: And on the thread itself, I did not talk about any applications, I only speak of the UI + widgets and its issues. I know the threshold might be fuzzy there sometimes. Right. There are more precise ways to address different products, e.g. Plasma desktop or Plasma workspace(s), but anything than using the project/vendor name is usally already an improvement. So, KDE4 is officially abandoned, great! :-( No. As explained in short and in length :) From what I wanted to know, it generally is. That not all-and-everything KDE-related is obsolete is quite clear. I guess it also depends on the definition of abandoned. Usually that means discarded or remaining untouched, etc. If we define abandoned as no new extensions that is of course a different case. Cheers, Kevin My main concern with 4 is not whether features are being added but whether bugs are being removed. What are the prospects for that? And has anything been done in the KDE5 cycle to assure higher levels of reliability? Ross Boylan ___ This message is from the kde mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
Kevin Krammer posted on Tue, 29 Oct 2013 22:02:12 +0100 as excerpted: Hi Duncan, as usual thanks for the thorough explanations. I've noted a couple of minor inaccuracies, so here we go :) On Tuesday, 2013-10-29, 14:35:29, Duncan wrote: Both the kde foundations and the qt it's based on are becoming a lot more modular, with the ability for developers to pick and choose the dependencies they want/need without having to bring in the whole big currently monolithic qtlibs and kdelibs. Qt itself is maturing as a developer-community-based toolkit in its own right, and qt5 is far more community-driven than any qt ever before in history. As part of that, it's both expanding and going modular, with most of its components becoming optional -- developers only pull in what they need, and will no longer have to depend on (and ship, for platforms where bundling is common) the parts they don't pull in. The modularisation of Qt5 compared to Qt4 is mostly on the respository level though. Qt4 is already split into several modules which can be used individually, e.g. a program can choose to use QtCore, QtGui and QtNetwork and not choose to depend on QtXml, QtSql and so on. That change already happened at the Qt3 to Qt4 transition. Agreed, but I think that misses a part of the overall picture just as I did, because we're focusing on different close-ups of the overall picture. At least here on gentoo, qt4 has in fact already been for some time a convenience metapackage that simply pulls in all the separate qt4 module packages, while individual apps depend on the individual qt4 modules the need, tho I'm unaware to what extent other distros have split up qt4. But with a quick check (on 4.8.5) confirming it, qt4 is still shipped as a single tarball, much as early kde4 still shipped many of its category packages (such as kdegames and kdepim) as monolithic tarballs, even when they were already split into individual packages internal to the tarball. (FWIW, in an ongoing process, those big kde category tarballs have been splitting into individual package tarballs as kde4 has matured, with a lot more but much smaller tarballs for say 4.11 as compared against say 4.5.) For both kde and qt, those tarballs generally reflect upstream development repo layout altho I guess there are some exceptions. But I don't believe mostly on the repository level fully reflects the reality of the situation, however, tho you're correct in that it's part of an ongoing process. The repository splits do indeed reflect an ultimate separation that has in other regards already occurred, yes, but it's my belief that despite the earlier conceptual separation, the combined repositories were holding the otherwise mostly separate modules hostage to a combined immediate future, and that fully separating them not only reflects evolving reality, but will in fact free them from the limits that were being artificially imposed on them due to that current situation and immediate qt4 future, such that we will now see the individual modules evolving further now that those restrictions are lifted. In the qt realm, that's likely to result in the individual modules becoming far more popular as library dependencies, since it'll be much more like pulling in an individual library dependency to take care of a specific function, instead of having to pull in the whole heavy ecosystem when most of it wasn't to be used. Of course that's mostly at the dev level, as will be the changes at the kdelibs and base frameworks five level. The far more visible results at the user level will be as I said, individual kde apps chosen for their genre leading features and/or because they are the best match for a specific need, as users are able to pull them in with just their direct deps, instead of having to pull in an entire kde and qt ecosystem just to support a single app they want, thus making it less likely they'll use ANY kde apps, unless they happen to be willing to standardize on nearly ALL kde apps. The Qt5 transition splits QtGui into two (QtGui and QtWidgets) but most other modules remained the same (library wise, some got their own respository source wise as noted above). As I said, while (AFAIK) that's literally true, I believe it's missing the larger picture, and that now freed from the heavyweight bonds of having to depend on the entire qt package in many cases, individual qt modules and libs will likely see dramatically increased use over the coming years, as more distros (generically, not just Linux) split up qt into these modules and thus dramatically lower the dependency cost to depend on the functionality of just one or two of them. Up the stack at the application level, kde5 is breaking up and shipping most individual apps with their own version tagging and release timing, so apps that are evolving fast can ship updates every month or even every week if they wish, while already mature
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
Am Tue, 29 Oct 2013 21:45:55 +0100 schrieb Kevin Krammer kram...@kde.org: On Tuesday, 2013-10-29, 06:48:40, Michael wrote: Hi Frank, Am Mon, 28 Oct 2013 20:36:02 +0100 schrieb Frank Steinmetzger war...@gmx.de: I suppose right now the migration to 5.0 takes lots of developer resources, so I imagine fixing bugs in “obsolete” 4 gets even less attention. I attempted fixing bugs before (and sent a patch in two instances), but it requires lots of work to get into the code, especially in bigger projects like Amarok or KMail. Oh, KDE4 is more or less in maintenance-mode? Yes and no :) In the context of this discussion, i.e. KDE's desktop environment, yes. In the larger context of all KDE products, no. Duncan already explained that in more detail :) In *wy* too much detail. I really did not want to be too rude as I informed him about my concerns there (telling people possible flaws is always a tricky thing which I did not master yet), but am I really the only one that feels somewhat annoyed by his extremely longish and in times painfully repetitive mails? :-/ And on the thread itself, I did not talk about any applications, I only speak of the UI + widgets and its issues. I know the threshold might be fuzzy there sometimes. So, KDE4 is officially abandoned, great! :-( not so optimistic Michael ___ This message is from the kde mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
On Wednesday, 2013-10-30, 18:00:46, Michael wrote: And on the thread itself, I did not talk about any applications, I only speak of the UI + widgets and its issues. I know the threshold might be fuzzy there sometimes. Right. There are more precise ways to address different products, e.g. Plasma desktop or Plasma workspace(s), but anything than using the project/vendor name is usally already an improvement. So, KDE4 is officially abandoned, great! :-( No. As explained in short and in length :) Cheers, Kevin -- Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer KDE user support, developer mentoring signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ This message is from the kde mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
Kevin Krammer posted on Mon, 28 Oct 2013 14:29:37 +0100 as excerpted: Well, you could have used a + instead of /, same number of characters, no? :) Mmm, indeed. Thanks for the hint. It makes sense and I'll file it away to (hopefully remember to) use the next time. =:^) -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master. Richard Stallman ___ This message is from the kde mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
I'm going to disagree with you there DE. KDE is the most user friendly of desktops I've yet found. Odd behavior plagues all desktops, especially windoze. That Unity insanity which Windows 8 apparently attempted to mirror, trying to walk a new user through that garbage is like trying to learn a foreign language AS you are teaching it to somebody else. Gnome just seems primitive and unfriendly to me. It's usable but I suffer plenty of odd behavior under Gnome, probably more than under KDE. I have my own gripes about KDE (I still mourn the loss of Kedit for example. More so, so many of KDE's default apps are so lame when compared to other KDE apps availible). My biggest gripe is Dolphin which is all but unavoidable because opening up removable drives is a real pain with far better file managers. The whole single click thing which cannot be modified too a double click makes file transfers from disks an effort in frustration. I don't want to OPEN the thing, just because my control or shift key is not quite pressed hard enough. I might want to click on it so I can right click and view information or open with something other than default. Gah I HATE using Dolphin for file management. My complaints however are generally mild. The interface is highly customizable, friendly and I spend my time doing stuff WITH my computer not TOO it. KDE + Linux is an awesome combo. I can take a noob or an experienced user and they are able to sit down with little or no KDE experience and have at it. My daughter was 8 years old and without having to teach her anything really she was able to sit down and use my KDE machines. People look at Gnome or Unity or most other desktops and wonder just how to get started and what to do. I still prefer KDE 3 over KDE 4, but the future of KDE has more than enough promise to stay with KDE. Just wish I could get Kedit back and change the default file manager for removable media. On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 5:40 AM, dE de.tec...@gmail.com wrote: On 10/27/13 12:24, Michael wrote: Hi peops, I somewhat force myself to use KDE (once again), even though I am very likely to get annoyed rather fast when it comes to the KDE-specific kind of issues. Issues, I have never seen with any other project to that extent. And I ask myself, if others are annoyed too there or am I just a whiny little bitch and no one else really bothers there? To describe the kind of issues I am referring to, some examples: 1.) KSysGuard: I just closed a program via its own menu (file - close), wondered why even after several minutes (and even now, half an hour later) KSysGuard still showed that process, so I did look with ps and to my surprise, the process is *not* there anymore, but KSysGuard shows it nevertheless in the process table. https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.**cgi?id=261255https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=261255 2.) Panels: Changed the alignment on one panel (for DualHead mirrored panel setup), one should think now the alignment is changed like in any other tool (mostly word processing tools I guess) but well, it is not, widgets and stuff still want to fall to the left. I guess because of that and other bugs there, several issues arise. http://forum.kde.org/**viewtopic.php?f=67t=94642http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=67t=94642 https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.**cgi?id=248186https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=248186 http://askubuntu.com/**questions/116040/how-to-right-** align-widgets-in-panel-in-**kubuntu-11-10http://askubuntu.com/questions/116040/how-to-right-align-widgets-in-panel-in-kubuntu-11-10 3.) Widgets, plasmoids, generel KDE features: Yeah well, really nice design (mostly), but from a usability standpoint? Often a mess. First one sees a feature and thinks Great and later on he might realize how bad that feature is implemented. I don't want to get into details yet, as this mail is going to be long enough already, but if there is any need and someone has no idea what I am talking about here, just ask. But remember, I don't say all and everything is implemented badly, with KDE-stuff it just looks to me the tendency is there that stuff gets implemented in a rather weird / bad / less- to un-usable way. 4.) Weird messages and... stuff: Be it annoying phonon messages that a audio device was removed, though it definitely was NOT, power-manager framework telling me it doesn't work because of... yada yada, but it does work nevertheless, starting others DEs stuff while KDE is running (or the other way around) might screw things up bigtime, configuration tends be be trashed every now and then, from one moment to the next (in the process of configuring KDE for example, so no change to the installed packages or other changes to the system) KDE may start to behave weird. Like starting KDE-apps (dolphin) takes several minutes while other apps just start fast as before, context-menu might need *minutes* to open, shutdown-, reboot-, logout-popup takes minutes to show...
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
Dnia 2013-10-29, o godz. 07:13:37 Draciron Smith draci...@gmail.com napisał(a): The whole single click thing which cannot be modified too a double click makes file transfers from disks an effort in frustration. Unless something changed in 4.11 (I am still using 4.10), you can go to configuration dialog in Dolphin and there, in Navigation pane, make double click open files (single click selects, then). -- Best regards Mirosław Zalewski ___ This message is from the kde mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
On Tuesday, 2013-10-29, 13:42:16, Mirosław Zalewski wrote: Dnia 2013-10-29, o godz. 07:13:37 Draciron Smith draci...@gmail.com napisał(a): The whole single click thing which cannot be modified too a double click makes file transfers from disks an effort in frustration. Unless something changed in 4.11 (I am still using 4.10), you can go to configuration dialog in Dolphin and there, in Navigation pane, make double click open files (single click selects, then). Or in system settings, input devices, mouse Cheers, Kevin -- Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer KDE user support, developer mentoring signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ This message is from the kde mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
Michael posted on Tue, 29 Oct 2013 06:48:40 +0100 as excerpted: Oh, KDE4 is more or less in maintenance-mode? Err... scratch that. As of now I still believe maintenance is something that does not apply well to the KDE-kind-of development-style, so KDE4 is more or less obsolete now? That would seem to be the case, yes. Well, it would fit the (current and as of now unofficial) description. If KDE5 will have the same QA-style, I guess KDE will go into the history books of open source software, as always shiny but buggy to a degree that it may even be unusable. Call me an optimist (heh, wrote that before noting your email address =:^) if you will, but I believe the kdeers are on the right track with this kde frameworks five stuff. Both the kde foundations and the qt it's based on are becoming a lot more modular, with the ability for developers to pick and choose the dependencies they want/need without having to bring in the whole big currently monolithic qtlibs and kdelibs. Qt itself is maturing as a developer-community-based toolkit in its own right, and qt5 is far more community-driven than any qt ever before in history. As part of that, it's both expanding and going modular, with most of its components becoming optional -- developers only pull in what they need, and will no longer have to depend on (and ship, for platforms where bundling is common) the parts they don't pull in. As part of the expansion and because it /is/ more community focused now and kde has been and remains a large part of that community, parts of what were kdelibs are now becoming part of qt5. But at the same time, because qt's becoming more modular and much of it is now optional, all those extra features aren't bloating qt5 out of control, because if a developer doesn't need them he simply won't pull them in, and the modular components that are pulled in may well be far slimmer with qt5 than with qt4. At the same time, kdelibs and the kdebase platform is similarly modularizing, allowing the same choice at the kde developer and user level as well as blurring the lines between what's qt and what's kde, since parts that were once kdelibs are now qt, but either way, they're now optional, so a formerly kde app may actually find itself only needing qt now, and even if it does pull in some kde libraries, because both the kde libs and qt are going modular, the dependencies may now well be smaller as a full kde app than they were previously as a qt-only app! Up the stack at the application level, kde5 is breaking up and shipping most individual apps with their own version tagging and release timing, so apps that are evolving fast can ship updates every month or even every week if they wish, while already mature apps in primarily maintenance mode might ship an update a year, mostly just to keep them building on current libraries with current tools, with the occasional security update as well when necessary. So the kde frameworks 5 core is going to be MUCH smaller, while most of the bundled apps we know as kde today will be unbundled and shipped separately, either as individual apps or possibly as a functional bundle -- dolphin and kmail and rekonq and konqueror and plasma will likely all release separately, with their own versions. (Actually, some of them have their own versions now; kmail is version 2.something these days for instance, but nobody knows their kmail version without looking, they simply say kmail 4.11.2 or whatever, the kde version.) But kdegames (for example) may still ship as a kdegames bundle, with a common kdegames (not kde) version. That means currently qt-but-non-kde apps and desktop options may become more popular as well. There's smplayer, and the razor-qt desktop. The effect should be that individual kde apps will be chosen on their merits, no longer simply because they're part of kde, and people doing what I'm effectively already doing here, mixing a few kde apps with a few gtk apps with a few independent apps, picking the app in each case that best fits their needs, will become much more common. Of course since I'm effectively already doing that, rejecting kmail since I don't like its akonadi and semantic-desktop dependencies and don't need that additional functionality, preferring the gtk-based claws-mail, and preferring firefox to konqueror/rekonq, but running it all on a (semantic- desktopless) core kde desktop including plasma. But what's going to be interesting is what happens with plasma vs the relatively new and much lighter razor-qt. I expect the latter to become very popular as a kde-lite desktop base, while plasma will continue to be the full-featured alternative. And then there's lxde, formerly a gtk- based lite desktop, that's switching to qt and cooperating with razor- qt in some development areas. I expect quite a few former lxde folks will end up running more kde apps, since the dependency gap will be FAR smaller than it
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
Frank Steinmetzger posted on Mon, 28 Oct 2013 20:36:02 +0100 as excerpted: But from a convenience standpoint, KDE beats them all with nice extra features (KIO, global keyboard shortcuts, range of consistent base-applications). And even though I have some issues with it now and then (like reliable and *easy* file transfer via Bluetooth), I come back to KDE every time, despite it taking 20 hours to compile on an Atom. ^^ FWIW, I run an old first-gen 32-bit-only atom netbook here too. But I couldn't tell you how long kde or anything else takes to build on it, because I have a 32-bit build-image chroot on my main 6-core Athlon fx with 16 gigs RAM and dual SSDs in btrfs raid1 mode. That's where I do all my atom/netbook targeted update builds, then rsync them across to the netbook. Tho I only actually update the netbook every year or longer... it's still running kde 4.6, IIRC, and I really should update it again, one of these days... -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master. Richard Stallman ___ This message is from the kde mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 06:48:40AM +0100, Michael wrote: Hi peops, […] 3.) Widgets, plasmoids, generel KDE features: Yeah well, really nice design (mostly), but from a usability standpoint? Often a mess. Plasma is a constant source of annoyance for me. I never really understood the need for a second UI style next to the “normal” one. The many animations that can’t be switched off and low contrasts are causes of grievance for me. There are layout bugs [...], redrawing bugs [...], UI bugs [...] and feature regressions [...]. I guess one has to be fair here. I guess KDE4 is designed to be feature-rich, beautiful, with many bells and whistles. One could argue, it is not designed to be stripped down to a bare minimum. Well, different to other “modern” desktops, which only seem to offer the lower end, KDE can be both simplistic and over-the-top full of stuff. I may be wrong, but I see it like a person walking in a car-salon, he wants to buy some means of transportation. No, he wants to buy a car. And usually already made up his mind about specifics, b/c salons commonly have only one or two brands. Sorry, car comarisons are common in IT discussion, but this one’s not very applicable. ;-) As he is offered some cars, he complains [...]. Don't go to a car-salon, if you really want a motorcycle or even a bike. What exactly is your KDE analogy? Don’t use KDE if you want a window manager? Btw. what about that netbook-design? Isn't that something specifically designed for lower-end hardware? To me, it’s the same plasma, just with a specific default widget setup. I never used it because (you might guess) it has too many animations and requires too much clicking. I prefer the classic K-Menu. [...] I suppose right now the migration to 5.0 takes lots of developer resources, so I imagine fixing bugs in “obsolete” 4 gets even less attention. I attempted fixing bugs before (and sent a patch in two instances), but it requires lots of work to get into the code, especially in bigger projects like Amarok or KMail. Oh, KDE4 is more or less in maintenance-mode? That was more of a sarcastic nudge at how fast KDE 3 was dropped in favour of the yet unusable 4.0. And I believe I read somewhere that 4.11 was to be the last 4.x release. Anyhoo, I remained with KDE 3 for a long time, then used both in parallel and only around 4.3 or even 4.4 I made the final switch (Gentoo provided for the parallel installation of both for a long time). -- Gruß | Greetings | Qapla’ Please do not share anything from, with or about me with any Facebook service. There are two kinds of people in this world: Those who are good with words and those who are... erm... thingy... signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ This message is from the kde mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
Michael posted on Mon, 28 Oct 2013 15:14:40 +0100 as excerpted: Am Mon, 28 Oct 2013 16:10:16 +0530 schrieb dE de.tec...@gmail.com: I think KDE is not suitable for production environment. Just for casual enthusiasts. I guess that view is a bit too extreme, but interesting nevertheless. As annoying as the typical KDE-issues might be or get, there will be a point where users know the issues and can adapt to the buggy situation, so that KDE is not a general show stopper to their workflow. I think it's extreme at one level, but not at another. I already stated that I think kde 4.5 (and will further specify here later 4.5, so 4.5.4 and 4.5.5) finally reached release quality. Since then, the quality has gone up and down a bit, but as a general rule, by 4.x.4 or so it tends to be reasonably good, production environment level, for at least some definition thereof. What's more disturbing to me, however, and why I agree that at a different level, dE's correct and kde is not production environment quality, is the longer term record of claims made vs. reality. We have a situation where a very public statement was made that kde3 support would continue as long as there were users, which WOULD have been production environment quality, but then exactly the opposite occurred, support was dropped for what real users were saying was the only reasonably working version. At the same time, kde was publicly insisting that the new version was ready, while the facts were very clearly otherwise, both because even the devs were saying various bits weren't ported yet, and because the real users were simply finding the new version unworkable in the state it was in at the time. That's not production environment quality by pretty much any measure, so even if the code does arguably literally reach production environment quality at some point (as I assert it did with late 4.5), taking the project as a whole including the claims made and evident behavior seen, no, kde in its 4.x state is NOT production environment quality -- it cannot be depended on over time to maintain a product that can be relied upon at claimed level of support, because the quality of the in-support code drops *WELL* below production environment quality for **YEARS** at a time, with users being left in the lurch. It remains to be seen if that has changed. With the 5/frameworks effort in full swing now, we'll see over the coming couple years just how much kde learned with the early kde4 disaster. If they continue to support kde4 code until *USERS* say 5/frameworks is actually ready, or at a very minimum, refrain from claiming that they'll do so and then dropping support just like that, then when USERS say 5/frameworks code is production environment ready, a reasonable argument can then be made that kde has learned from its earlier mistakes and really /is/ production environment ready, even if literal code quality does drop below that level from time to time. I'm actually quite optimistic, as the plan I've seen stated is to allow and support both 4.x and 5.x applications running side by side for a time, so users can upgrade individual apps to their frameworks-5 versions as /users/ consider them ready, while continuing to run other apps at the 4.x version level until they (the users) consider the frameworks-5 versions suitably stable to upgrade to them individually. This actually fits the whole more modular emphasis and theme of frameworks-5 as well, so as I said I'm optimistic. OTOH, the more cautious side of me says we've seen promises of continued support before, and we know how THAT turned out! So we'll see, but I really AM optimistic, hopefully not to my own detriment. Regardless, once bitten, twice shy, and I'm better prepared for a less-than-smooth transition this time, in part because over time I've been forced off of kde based technologies for one thing after another, so there's less kde on my system now TO be affected and the effect will thus be much more limited however it turns out, and if worse does come to worse, it'll be far easier to switch entirely off of kde, since there's simply less to switch out, now. We /will/ see! As of your problems -- if you continue to use KDE, you'll get used to it. For e.g. now removable disks will now show up in device manager. I've to restart KDE to fix it. Used to it? That is most unlikely. I could tolerate such issues for some time but I guess I could never adapt to a point where I would not even realize the issues anymore. Arguably, this is actually what happened to the kde devs themselves -- they became used to their workarounds to the point they ceased to even be aware of them as workarounds any longer, thus explaining their claim that kde 4.2 was ready for ordinary use. Only the new users still trying to upgrade from the by then unsupported 3.5.x could see how horribly broken 4.2 and 4.3 still were, because they still had to come
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 01:17:34PM +, Duncan wrote: Frank Steinmetzger posted on Mon, 28 Oct 2013 20:36:02 +0100 as excerpted: I thought of not sending this, as it is more like a collection of bug whining, but after having spent lots of time on composing, it would be a waste of electrons not to send it. FWIW, I've quit worrying much about that. [...] so I'm the better for having written it, regardless of whether I send it or simply hit the X and close the window without sending. That doesn’t help here, the screen session with mutt inside would still be running. Getting OT, but *SCNR*. -- Gruß | Greetings | Qapla’ Please do not share anything from, with or about me with any Facebook service. Three words to describe myself? Not good at maths. signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ This message is from the kde mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
On Monday, 2013-10-28, 20:36:02, Frank Steinmetzger wrote: On Sun, Oct 27, 2013 at 07:54:09AM +0100, Michael wrote: Hi peops, […] 3.) Widgets, plasmoids, generel KDE features: Yeah well, really nice design (mostly), but from a usability standpoint? Often a mess. Plasma is a constant source of annoyance for me. I never really understood the need for a second UI style next to the “normal” one. I think the UI style was more a side effect. The main idea of Plasma was to be able to create adaptable and customizable workspace shells. Quite forward looking given the time when this all started, but unfortunatly also hampered by the available technologies of the time (QGraphicsView). It took Qt itself until 5.1 to have widget like styling available for QtQuick (a.k.a QtQuick.Controls). 4.) […] configuration tends be be trashed every now and then, from one moment to the next (in the process of configuring KDE for example, so no change to the installed packages or other changes to the system) KDE may start to behave weird. Akonadi, the problem child for many, is a nice example with its (for this human) incomprehensible config and data file layout. Off-topic for this discussion about KDE's desktop environment or workspace, but as a new project Akonadi follows the guidelines for cross desktop locations: config in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/akonadi, data in $XDG_DATA_HOME/akonadi I suppose right now the migration to 5.0 takes lots of developer resources, so I imagine fixing bugs in “obsolete” 4 gets even less attention. I think I read somewhere tht the workspace people will be going with 2.0, since the next version will be the second iteration of Plasma workspaces. But yes, it currently seems to bind a lot of their resources, however, I am pretty sure they still maintain the current version, after all there are more KDE software compilation releases scheduled which they are a part of. I attempted fixing bugs before (and sent a patch in two instances), but it requires lots of work to get into the code, especially in bigger projects like Amarok or KMail. No idea about Amarok and only very little about KMail, but as far as I can tell its developers are working quite determined on further modularization, making it easier to tackle sub areas. Still quite complicated due to being one of the oldest KDE application in existance, lots of generations of code and coders preferenecs in there :) Cheers, Kevin -- Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer KDE user support, developer mentoring signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ This message is from the kde mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
On Tuesday, 2013-10-29, 06:48:40, Michael wrote: Hi Frank, Am Mon, 28 Oct 2013 20:36:02 +0100 schrieb Frank Steinmetzger war...@gmx.de: I suppose right now the migration to 5.0 takes lots of developer resources, so I imagine fixing bugs in “obsolete” 4 gets even less attention. I attempted fixing bugs before (and sent a patch in two instances), but it requires lots of work to get into the code, especially in bigger projects like Amarok or KMail. Oh, KDE4 is more or less in maintenance-mode? Yes and no :) In the context of this discussion, i.e. KDE's desktop environment, yes. In the larger context of all KDE products, no. Duncan already explained that in more detail :) Cheers, Kevin -- Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer KDE user support, developer mentoring signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ This message is from the kde mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
Hi Duncan, as usual thanks for the thorough explanations. I've noted a couple of minor inaccuracies, so here we go :) On Tuesday, 2013-10-29, 14:35:29, Duncan wrote: Both the kde foundations and the qt it's based on are becoming a lot more modular, with the ability for developers to pick and choose the dependencies they want/need without having to bring in the whole big currently monolithic qtlibs and kdelibs. Qt itself is maturing as a developer-community-based toolkit in its own right, and qt5 is far more community-driven than any qt ever before in history. As part of that, it's both expanding and going modular, with most of its components becoming optional -- developers only pull in what they need, and will no longer have to depend on (and ship, for platforms where bundling is common) the parts they don't pull in. The modularisation of Qt5 compared to Qt4 is mostly on the respository level though. Qt4 is already split into several modules which can be used individually, e.g. a program can choose to use QtCore, QtGui and QtNetwork and not choose to depend on QtXml, QtSql and so on. That change already happened at the Qt3 to Qt4 transition. The Qt5 transition splits QtGui into two (QtGui and QtWidgets) but most other modules remained the same (library wise, some got their own respository source wise as noted above). As part of the expansion and because it /is/ more community focused now and kde has been and remains a large part of that community, parts of what were kdelibs are now becoming part of qt5. Mostly single classes though, nothing in the scope of a Qt module. Also some contributions of new code inspired by KDE code, contributed by KDE developers who worked on the original KDE code. Up the stack at the application level, kde5 is breaking up and shipping most individual apps with their own version tagging and release timing, so apps that are evolving fast can ship updates every month or even every week if they wish, while already mature apps in primarily maintenance mode might ship an update a year, mostly just to keep them building on current libraries with current tools, with the occasional security update as well when necessary. I am not sure that this has been fully established as the new procedure yet, but it is one of the possibilities. Applications might still be released together or in sets, etc. the full-featured alternative. And then there's lxde, formerly a gtk- based lite desktop, that's switching to qt and cooperating with razor- qt in some development areas. I think they actually are planning to merge. But I could be misinterpreting things. So the qt5/kde-frameworks-five generation is going to bring with it an entirely new level of choice and flexibility, both at the developer and user levels, and it's going to be very interesting indeed to watch how that ends up working, and what the fallout is in terms of app popularity say five years from now. Indeed! Cheers, Kevin -- Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer KDE user support, developer mentoring signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ This message is from the kde mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
Kevin Krammer wrote, On 10/29/2013 06:53 AM: On Tuesday, 2013-10-29, 13:42:16, Mirosław Zalewski wrote: Unless something changed in 4.11 (I am still using 4.10), you can go to configuration dialog in Dolphin and there, in Navigation pane, make double click open files (single click selects, then). Or in system settings, input devices, mouse Or, kwriteconfig --file kdeglobals --group KDE --key SingleClick false You can use this to setup an /etc/kde/kdeglobals so all users default to double-click mode. But, this doesn't take effect for any currently open 'dolphin' windows (but it does for any subsequently opened windows). I tried: qdbus org.kde.dolphin-21870 /MainApplication reparseConfiguration but doesn't seem to be the right thing to do to notify the running dolphin Anybody know how to signal running applications to reprocess kdeglobals (or their own KConfig setup?) --stephen -- Stephen Dowdy - Systems Administrator - NCAR/RAL 303.497.2869 - sdo...@ucar.edu- http://www.ral.ucar.edu/~sdowdy/ ___ This message is from the kde mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
Kevin Krammer posted on Sun, 27 Oct 2013 21:23:05 +0100 as excerpted: Those commercial/proprietary model proponents do have a point, that IS a weakness of FLOSS I think the problem with this statement is mixing terms for orthogonal properties into one. A commercial product is something that is monetarized, a proprietary product is something that only one entity has source access to, a FLOSS product is something that is also available in source to anyone. Since some of those labels are for orthogonal concepts, they can appear in different combinations. FWIW, that's actually why I chose to use both terms, commercial/ proprietary, instead of just one or the other by itself. The group of people (and their argument) I had in mind are rather specifically the proponents of /both/ concepts unified. There's commercial software that's FLOSS, but this argument is unlikely to be made there, because it's hitting too close to home -- they're often built on non-commercial FLOSS components so they're in effect arguing that the choice of components they made was a poor one. And there's proprietary software that's not commercial, but there too, this particular argument is unlikely to be put forward, because often, the argument actually applies to them to some degree as well (they scratched their own itch and then simply made the binaries public, but kept the sources to themselves). So it's the specific combination of /both/ commercial and proprietary that tends to put forth this argument, and as I said, they do have a point, but it's my opinion that the balance of things is still overwhelmingly against commercial/proprietary, even if they do score a minor point with this one argument. Tho arguably in ordered to make that clear, I should have specified commercial _and_ proprietary (both together, not just one), but I was attempting to abbreviate the concept and argument, and as often happens when I try that, someone came along to point out the gap I left with my impreciseness. =:^/ I guess I should be happy that people are paying enough attention to what I wrote to notice that gap. =:^) Plus of course that's a common pattern on public lists/newsgroups/forums anyway; someone stakes out an original position, then others come along and expand on it, filling in the gaps as well as calling attention to cases where it doesn't apply, thus inviting further adjustment of the original position, developing and honing the now common work until the whole is a far better product than any individual would/could have posted on their own. =:^) -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master. Richard Stallman ___ This message is from the kde mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
On 10/27/13 12:24, Michael wrote: Hi peops, I somewhat force myself to use KDE (once again), even though I am very likely to get annoyed rather fast when it comes to the KDE-specific kind of issues. Issues, I have never seen with any other project to that extent. And I ask myself, if others are annoyed too there or am I just a whiny little bitch and no one else really bothers there? To describe the kind of issues I am referring to, some examples: 1.) KSysGuard: I just closed a program via its own menu (file - close), wondered why even after several minutes (and even now, half an hour later) KSysGuard still showed that process, so I did look with ps and to my surprise, the process is *not* there anymore, but KSysGuard shows it nevertheless in the process table. https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=261255 2.) Panels: Changed the alignment on one panel (for DualHead mirrored panel setup), one should think now the alignment is changed like in any other tool (mostly word processing tools I guess) but well, it is not, widgets and stuff still want to fall to the left. I guess because of that and other bugs there, several issues arise. http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=67t=94642 https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=248186 http://askubuntu.com/questions/116040/how-to-right-align-widgets-in-panel-in-kubuntu-11-10 3.) Widgets, plasmoids, generel KDE features: Yeah well, really nice design (mostly), but from a usability standpoint? Often a mess. First one sees a feature and thinks Great and later on he might realize how bad that feature is implemented. I don't want to get into details yet, as this mail is going to be long enough already, but if there is any need and someone has no idea what I am talking about here, just ask. But remember, I don't say all and everything is implemented badly, with KDE-stuff it just looks to me the tendency is there that stuff gets implemented in a rather weird / bad / less- to un-usable way. 4.) Weird messages and... stuff: Be it annoying phonon messages that a audio device was removed, though it definitely was NOT, power-manager framework telling me it doesn't work because of... yada yada, but it does work nevertheless, starting others DEs stuff while KDE is running (or the other way around) might screw things up bigtime, configuration tends be be trashed every now and then, from one moment to the next (in the process of configuring KDE for example, so no change to the installed packages or other changes to the system) KDE may start to behave weird. Like starting KDE-apps (dolphin) takes several minutes while other apps just start fast as before, context-menu might need *minutes* to open, shutdown-, reboot-, logout-popup takes minutes to show... And a bunch of other stuff that might just happen when using KDE that somewhat feels... well... awkward, weird, annoying. Bottom line, it feels like a lot of rough edges and that those edges might be smoothed out eventually, but apparently it looks like they don't, as where I pointed out links to bugtracker or forum-posts, the issues are as old as Methusalems grandpa. With other DEs (Gnome2 + 3, Mate, Xfce, LXDE, e17) I have never seen that amount of roughness. They might have other issues, like the apparent need the Gnome-devs feel to get rid of every useful feature ;) (well, I could be more fair there, but I am on a KDE list anyway, so no need for gnome-devs-understaning, right? *g*), but I always had the feeling the rough edges were smoothed out from release to release. I was not always happy with the way issues were addressed, but at least I could understand why it makes sense for some or even most users to have an issue resolved in that particular way it was addressed with. Granted, not all issues will face on every system, something triggers the issues, sure. Not all users will think some stuff is implemented weird and in a rather un-usable state (even if I think something must be wrong with them then, as I can even understand the Gnome-decisions and way of implementing things!), not everyone has the same need and idea for a feature and how to implement it. Some may never have any issue whatsoever, be it just coincidence or they just don't use that particular feature or at least not in a way that the issues would show itself. So, that all said, what do you guys, users and maybe even developers of KDE, think? I don't want to come around as rude or overly harsh, as really, I think KDE is a great Desktop Environment, it just has some really rough edges. Is it just me, or are others also thinking KDE could / should invest more efforts in QA and maybe less in implementing new stuff? I know, send patch yada yada... that does not apply here, at least not well enough. Optimistic greetings Michael ___ This message is from the kde mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html. I
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
On Monday, 2013-10-28, 09:42:07, Duncan wrote: Kevin Krammer posted on Sun, 27 Oct 2013 21:23:05 +0100 as excerpted: Those commercial/proprietary model proponents do have a point, that IS a weakness of FLOSS I think the problem with this statement is mixing terms for orthogonal properties into one. A commercial product is something that is monetarized, a proprietary product is something that only one entity has source access to, a FLOSS product is something that is also available in source to anyone. Since some of those labels are for orthogonal concepts, they can appear in different combinations. FWIW, that's actually why I chose to use both terms, commercial/ proprietary, instead of just one or the other by itself. I see. I read the / as a way to suggest replacability, especially since the context on the other side was just FLOSS not something like FLOSS/. The group of people (and their argument) I had in mind are rather specifically the proponents of /both/ concepts unified. There's commercial software that's FLOSS, but this argument is unlikely to be made there, because it's hitting too close to home -- they're often built on non-commercial FLOSS components so they're in effect arguing that the choice of components they made was a poor one. And there's proprietary software that's not commercial, but there too, this particular argument is unlikely to be put forward, because often, the argument actually applies to them to some degree as well (they scratched their own itch and then simply made the binaries public, but kept the sources to themselves). Exactly. So it is important IMHO not to repeat the omissions but to show that the comparison was non-sensical in the first place. So it's the specific combination of /both/ commercial and proprietary that tends to put forth this argument, and as I said, they do have a point, but it's my opinion that the balance of things is still overwhelmingly against commercial/proprietary, even if they do score a minor point with this one argument. I don't think they have a point because they conciously conflate areas to which there criticism does not apply into the same abbreviation. More over using an abbreviation that covers the one aspect of the competing product that has least to do with their allegded advantage/disadvantage comparison. Tho arguably in ordered to make that clear, I should have specified commercial _and_ proprietary (both together, not just one), but I was attempting to abbreviate the concept and argument, and as often happens when I try that, someone came along to point out the gap I left with my impreciseness. =:^/ Well, you could have used a + instead of /, same number of characters, no? :) Anyway, I was mostly commenting on the second part of the comparison, see above. Cheers, Kevin -- Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer KDE user support, developer mentoring signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ This message is from the kde mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
On Monday, 2013-10-28, 16:10:16, dE wrote: I think KDE is not suitable for production environment. Just for casual enthusiasts. I guess it will depend on the definition of those terms. I am sure the people who use KDE as their work place environment will enjoy learning that they are enthusiasts in yours :) As of your problems -- if you continue to use KDE, you'll get used to it. For e.g. now removable disks will now show up in device manager. Removable disks show up in device manager for quite some time now. But I guess it might also depend on the definition of now. Had that since KDE3 times, so now would several years back :) Cheers, Kevin -- Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer KDE user support, developer mentoring signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ This message is from the kde mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
Hi Duncan, Hell! Don't take it the wrong way, but I strongly suggest you rethink your way of communicating on mailinglists. You went in such lengths in absolutely unrelated topics and even with slightly related topics you went by far, far, far, far to deep. It was really no pleasure at all to read it all, which I had to as courtesy demands it, as I did ask for feedback. And what I took from your 25.457 characters in 441 lines and 4270 words would fit in roundabout 10-20 lines. If you really feel the urge to go into such detail, do everyone on the list a favour and divide your mails in two parts. One where you try to stick to the topic as closely as possible and a second one which you mark as detailed stuff or whatever fits the situation. So others can choose to read it all, or just get the essentials out of it. As for me, I am really in no way interested how you configured your KDE, how much you like gentoo, what features gentoo has, what assumptions and possible ways to debug all those possible issues have, especially not in SUCH DETAIL (including the redundant repetition that happened several times). But enough critics... let's get to your mail. Am Sun, 27 Oct 2013 16:47:08 + (UTC) schrieb Duncan 1i5t5.dun...@cox.net: Michael posted on Sun, 27 Oct 2013 07:54:09 +0100 as excerpted: Hi peops, I somewhat force myself to use KDE (once again), even though I am very likely to get annoyed rather fast when it comes to the KDE-specific kind of issues. Issues, I have never seen with any other project to that extent. And I ask myself, if others are annoyed too there or am I just a whiny little bitch and no one else really bothers there? There are certainly issues with most desktop environments. [snip] All software tends to have issues, but this conversation here is solely about KDEs possible QA-issues and if you folks think the situation is worse compared to other Desktop Environments or not. So it is a rather limited scope I follow here and I humbly ask of you to stay on topic as good as possible as chances are the topic will get heated anyway. To describe the kind of issues I am referring to, some examples: 1.) KSysGuard: I just closed a program via its own menu (file - close), wondered why even after several minutes (and even now, half an hour later) KSysGuard still showed that process, so I did look with ps and to my surprise, the process is *not* there anymore, but KSysGuard shows it nevertheless in the process table. https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=261255 [snip] First point, most directly apropos to that bug, while I'd /think/ it would be obvious enough to note as it was my immediate first question upon reading the above, you didn't above and nobody seems to have noted it specifically in any of the bug comments either... Well, because it is save to assume no one would be that censored to deliberately set that value to 0 and because the default is something sane as 2 seconds? And of course because it was said more than once, that not every application / process did still show up after closing it. So your idea does not make much (if any) sense. What do you have the sheet/tab properties update interval set for? If it's set to zero, it's not going to update and of course the information will ultimately go stale. Similarly if the interval is maxed out... here the max it will let me enter is 1000 seconds, aka 16 minutes 40 seconds. You do mention half an hour so it should have updated in that time, but perhaps only once. ... default, 2 seconds [snip] 2.) Panels: Changed the alignment on one panel (for DualHead mirrored panel setup), one should think now the alignment is changed like in any other tool (mostly word processing tools I guess) but well, it is not, widgets and stuff still want to fall to the left. I guess because of that and other bugs there, several issues arise. FWIW, I'd not think that at all. In fact, quite the contrary, just because I switch a panel from one end of the edge its on to the other, does NOT mean I want or expect the individual plasmoids to change alignment within the panel as well! I'd go so far as to consider it a bug if they did! Well, there is an option one can set for the alignment on the panel. It offers right, left and middle. for What else should that alignment be? http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=67t=94642 https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=248186 http://askubuntu.com/questions/116040/how-to-right-align-widgets-in- panel-in-kubuntu-11-10 In general panel plasmoid alignment and spacing in kde4 plasma has ALWAYS been buggy at best. Well, figures. But at least other DEs have trouble with sane panel-behaviour as well, even if I'd say it is not as broken there it is more like they lack some feature to make it behave in a sane way, whereas in KDE it offers features that do not work - bug. At this point I'm not sure it's even possible to make it work
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
Am Mon, 28 Oct 2013 15:12:41 +0100 schrieb Kevin Krammer kram...@kde.org: Hi Michael, On Monday, 2013-10-28, 12:22:15, Michael wrote: Hi Kevin, Am Sun, 27 Oct 2013 13:08:10 +0100 schrieb Kevin Krammer kram...@kde.org: On Sunday, 2013-10-27, 07:54:09, Michael wrote: Granted, not all issues will face on every system, something triggers the issues, sure. Not all users will think some stuff is implemented weird and in a rather un-usable state (even if I think something must be wrong with them then, as I can even understand the Gnome-decisions and way of implementing things!), not everyone has the same need and idea for a feature and how to implement it. Some may never have any issue whatsoever, be it just coincidence or they just don't use that particular feature or at least not in a way that the issues would show itself. I guess this is at the heart of the problem, i.e. issues or weird behavior only triggered under certain circumstances. Computer systems have a huge variety of aspects, each potentially contributing to the observed behavior. And I guess that is not the point, at least it is not the primary point. Especially to negate such arguments I did provide some links to show that the issues are NOT limited to corner-cases or weird and unusual user setups. I didn't claim it was the full problem, just that large number of influences is at the heart of the problem. I feel without checking each ones claims how serious each and every issue KDE has is or how complex a bug-hunt would be, we can argue all day long how likely it is that any given issue is rather complex to track down. I can only speak for those issues that I found, reported and helped to track down with other projects (Xfce, Gnome, Mate, Linux Kernel, mdadm, mesa / radeon, smuxi (3) ...) and on average it was not *that* hard to track the issue down. How complex a fix was... well, no real idea as I can't code / don't know C or any other programming language, but most of the time it was a thing of minutes a fix was there, or at least the discussion on how to actually fix the given issue started when the fix was not so obvious or easy to get right. At least after all those years I tend to just think, the person who did program the code, knows his / her way around to find an issue many times rather fast. If KDE does differ there, no idea, but if so, why? I would tend to think something must be awfully wrong then. During analysis it is often estonishing how many different code paths can be executed depending on factors one wouldn't have considered at all. Well, let's stop right here the argument how complex any given issue might get, just try to answer why KDE has compared to other DEs more issues, if you even agree there. If not, why do you think many users (me included) have such a bad opinion about KDE in that regard? Especially since an observed behavior is often just a symptom. Fixing the symptom is nice short term but finding the cause is the real deal. Agreed, but see above. It often takes a concerted effort of many people to narrow down those candidates to the actually contributing factors in order to make a problem reproducable with enough reliability to analyse and fix it (including verification of the solution). Even though that might be the case for some cases, it can't be for the vast majority of issues, as I could easily reproduce most issues reliable on different boxes. Good :) I wasn't saying that all things are hard to reproduce, just that often narrowing down the variables to just the contributing factors can be time consuming. Well, life is no pony ranch, right? ;-) And yes, sometimes issues are really hard to track down. I myself know that for a fact. But I do know that many issues are visible in the code quite clearly too. Those are usually easy to fix then and make good candidates for contribution entries. In KDE's issue system they sometimes get labelled as JJ (Junior Job) to indicate that they are considered suitable tasks for people who have not dived into the code base that deep yet. But I hope you do not expect any given user needs to learn C / QT to actually fix even those easy bugs. A question I did ask already here and as you seem to be a KDE-developer (why else would you have such a fancy e-mail-address?)... please describe the expectations the KDE project / developers have for their users. And... 1.) Do you agree that KDE is more buggy than other Desktop Environments? 2.) If yes, why do you think KDE has so many issues? If no, how come many users have such a bad opinion about KDE? 3.) How could the situation change? For better not worse. :) There may be issues in one part of the stack that only affects some applications under some circumstances but it is not clear where in the stack the actual bug is. But for many other issues, it is quite clear where the issue
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
On Sun, Oct 27, 2013 at 07:54:09AM +0100, Michael wrote: Hi peops, […] 3.) Widgets, plasmoids, generel KDE features: Yeah well, really nice design (mostly), but from a usability standpoint? Often a mess. Plasma is a constant source of annoyance for me. I never really understood the need for a second UI style next to the “normal” one. The many animations that can’t be switched off and low contrasts are causes of grievance for me. There are layout bugs (notifications on a friend’s machine pop up in three places simultaneously), redrawing bugs (flicker in the taskbar when switching desktops), UI bugs (the scrollbars don’t adhere to the usual GUI behaviour like middle-click) and feature regressions (ksysguard graphs are nigh-useless in a panel). 4.) […] configuration tends be be trashed every now and then, from one moment to the next (in the process of configuring KDE for example, so no change to the installed packages or other changes to the system) KDE may start to behave weird. Akonadi, the problem child for many, is a nice example with its (for this human) incomprehensible config and data file layout. When I back up my setup or want to sync two machines, I’m never really sure what files to include and exclude if I, for example, want to sync only my address book data between machines. I went akonadi-free for a while on the netbook, but eventually installed it again because KMail just fits best into my Qt-centric computing ecosystem (although I prefer Firefox as main browser). […] So, that all said, what do you guys, users and maybe even developers of KDE, think? I don't want to come around as rude or overly harsh, as really, I think KDE is a great Desktop Environment, it just has some really rough edges. Sometimes I find myself using XFCE or even Awesome on my netbook for their sheer speed and easy go on resources. But from a convenience standpoint, KDE beats them all with nice extra features (KIO, global keyboard shortcuts, range of consistent base-applications). And even though I have some issues with it now and then (like reliable and *easy* file transfer via Bluetooth), I come back to KDE every time, despite it taking 20 hours to compile on an Atom. ^^ Is it just me, or are others also thinking KDE could / should invest more efforts in QA and maybe less in implementing new stuff? I, too, sometimes think “It’s a grave bug and so old already, why doesn’t it get fixed?eleven?”, like bad scrolling distances in Dolphin. But I suppose part of why I can’t always be accomodated with my problems is my diminishing use case -- KDE on a weak netbook. Brightness control is really messed up on *my* machine right now (it works, but KDE and ACPI fight over control, so I get temporary lockups). But I’m not the majority, so I can’t expect everything to go smoothly in all cases. After all, you get what you pay for. ;o) I suppose right now the migration to 5.0 takes lots of developer resources, so I imagine fixing bugs in “obsolete” 4 gets even less attention. I attempted fixing bugs before (and sent a patch in two instances), but it requires lots of work to get into the code, especially in bigger projects like Amarok or KMail. I thought of not sending this, as it is more like a collection of bug whining, but after having spent lots of time on composing, it would be a waste of electrons not to send it. -- Gruß | Greetings | Qapla’ Please do not share anything from, with or about me with any Facebook service. You call this cappucino? It’s not even sprinkled with Parmesan! signature.asc Description: Digital signature ___ This message is from the kde mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
Hi Frank, Am Mon, 28 Oct 2013 20:36:02 +0100 schrieb Frank Steinmetzger war...@gmx.de: On Sun, Oct 27, 2013 at 07:54:09AM +0100, Michael wrote: Hi peops, […] 3.) Widgets, plasmoids, generel KDE features: Yeah well, really nice design (mostly), but from a usability standpoint? Often a mess. Plasma is a constant source of annoyance for me. I never really understood the need for a second UI style next to the “normal” one. The many animations that can’t be switched off and low contrasts are causes of grievance for me. There are layout bugs (notifications on a friend’s machine pop up in three places simultaneously), redrawing bugs (flicker in the taskbar when switching desktops), UI bugs (the scrollbars don’t adhere to the usual GUI behaviour like middle-click) and feature regressions (ksysguard graphs are nigh-useless in a panel). I guess one has to be fair here. I guess KDE4 is designed to be feature-rich, beautiful, with many bells and whistles. One could argue, it is not designed to be stripped down to a bare minimum. I may be wrong, but I see it like a person walking in a car-salon, he wants to buy some means of transportation. As he is offered some cars, he complains that they need fuel, that they are so heavy, that they pollute the environment, that they need constant maintenance, that they need so much space. Don't go to a car-salon, if you really want a motorcycle or even a bike. But agreed, low contrast on the gauges, bad design decisions and the overall buginess, is something a car-owner does not want. Btw. what about that netbook-design? Isn't that something specifically designed for lower-end hardware? 4.) […] configuration tends be be trashed every now and then, from one moment to the next (in the process of configuring KDE for example, so no change to the installed packages or other changes to the system) KDE may start to behave weird. Akonadi, the problem child for many, is a nice example with its (for this human) incomprehensible config and data file layout. When I back up my setup or want to sync two machines, I’m never really sure what files to include and exclude if I, for example, want to sync only my address book data between machines. I went akonadi-free for a while on the netbook, but eventually installed it again because KMail just fits best into my Qt-centric computing ecosystem (although I prefer Firefox as main browser). Yeah, there are several features KDE offers, which are hard to not miss if one chooses to switch to another DE. But as time goes by, other DEs might fill the gaps. I really don't need much, Cinnamon or Mate are almost there. But, we'll see. And one thing is sure, other DEs do have a better QA-reputation, so we might get features without all the stability issues. […] So, that all said, what do you guys, users and maybe even developers of KDE, think? I don't want to come around as rude or overly harsh, as really, I think KDE is a great Desktop Environment, it just has some really rough edges. Sometimes I find myself using XFCE or even Awesome on my netbook for their sheer speed and easy go on resources. But from a convenience standpoint, KDE beats them all with nice extra features (KIO, global keyboard shortcuts, range of consistent base-applications). And even though I have some issues with it now and then (like reliable and *easy* file transfer via Bluetooth), I come back to KDE every time, despite it taking 20 hours to compile on an Atom. ^^ Eeks! Those gentooers... I really don't get them. :) Is it just me, or are others also thinking KDE could / should invest more efforts in QA and maybe less in implementing new stuff? I, too, sometimes think “It’s a grave bug and so old already, why doesn’t it get fixed?eleven?”, like bad scrolling distances in Dolphin. But I suppose part of why I can’t always be accomodated with my problems is my diminishing use case -- KDE on a weak netbook. Brightness control is really messed up on *my* machine right now (it works, but KDE and ACPI fight over control, so I get temporary lockups). But I’m not the majority, so I can’t expect everything to go smoothly in all cases. After all, you get what you pay for. ;o) Well, sure. Corner-case bugs that only face under rare and uncommon circumstances might have a lower priority. But first, we are not talking about these bugs, second, bug is bug, every bug should be fixed. Even if lower-priority bugs might take longer. I suppose right now the migration to 5.0 takes lots of developer resources, so I imagine fixing bugs in “obsolete” 4 gets even less attention. I attempted fixing bugs before (and sent a patch in two instances), but it requires lots of work to get into the code, especially in bigger projects like Amarok or KMail. Oh, KDE4 is more or less in maintenance-mode? Err... scratch that. As of now I still believe maintenance is something that does not apply well to the KDE-kind-of development-style,
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
On Sunday, 2013-10-27, 07:54:09, Michael wrote: Granted, not all issues will face on every system, something triggers the issues, sure. Not all users will think some stuff is implemented weird and in a rather un-usable state (even if I think something must be wrong with them then, as I can even understand the Gnome-decisions and way of implementing things!), not everyone has the same need and idea for a feature and how to implement it. Some may never have any issue whatsoever, be it just coincidence or they just don't use that particular feature or at least not in a way that the issues would show itself. I guess this is at the heart of the problem, i.e. issues or weird behavior only triggered under certain circumstances. Computer systems have a huge variety of aspects, each potentially contributing to the observed behavior. It often takes a concerted effort of many people to narrow down those candidates to the actually contributing factors in order to make a problem reproducable with enough reliability to analyse and fix it (including verification of the solution). So, that all said, what do you guys, users and maybe even developers of KDE, think? I don't want to come around as rude or overly harsh, as really, I think KDE is a great Desktop Environment, it just has some really rough edges. Is it just me, or are others also thinking KDE could / should invest more efforts in QA and maybe less in implementing new stuff? I know, send patch yada yada... that does not apply here, at least not well enough. It does apply here as well. While sending a patch is a particular form of contribution, e.g. providing a potential fix, it is generally a suggestion to get involved [1] in the process of finding a solution. That process starts at, as I outline above, narrowing down contributing factors, ideally resulting in a situation that will show the faulty behavior on a development setup. Cheers, Kevin [1] http://community.kde.org/Getinvolved/Quality -- Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer KDE user support, developer mentoring signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ This message is from the kde mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
Re: [kde] KDE's rough edges... what are your experiences?
On Sunday, 2013-10-27, 16:47:08, Duncan wrote: FWIW, my thinking on this is that it just happens that the kde devs (and in particular the plasma devs, since that's the desktop kde uses) have a particularly bad case of one of the traits very common to free and open source application development and the developers behind them -- the developer scratches his own itch and stops when it stops itching for him phenomenon. I don't think so. Most applications have way more features than what the respective handful of developers would be using themselves. What is most likely true though is that those features which are not used by the developers themselves need to receive active and continuous testing by other contributors lest they easily break. Those commercial/proprietary model proponents do have a point, that IS a weakness of FLOSS I think the problem with this statement is mixing terms for orthogonal properties into one. A commercial product is something that is monetarized, a proprietary product is something that only one entity has source access to, a FLOSS product is something that is also available in source to anyone. Since some of those labels are for orthogonal concepts, they can appear in different combinations. E.g. a FLOSS product is not necessarily developed by a community of individuals, nor is it necessarily non-commerical. A proprietary product is also not necessarily commercial, etc. Proprietary software vendors often get a free pass at stabs at FLOSS software because they managed to make people think of certain combinations as opposite sides. Lets take for example a commercial, single-vendor product. Whether the code is proprietary or FLOSS licensed does not change its commercial status, does not change the development model, etc. If the vendor is responsive enough to implement new features and fix bugs there migth not even be a pratical difference from user point of view. However, should the vendor not be responsive enough, then a FLOSS license would make the vendor one of several options for change. This enabling of users to take their business elsewhere is why proprietary vendors try their best to fold all kinds of unrelated aspects into the FLOSS moniker, so people don't see that they can't get this advantage from the proprietary vendor but can get all other advantages from a non-proprietary one. This subterfuge is slowly breaking down though, as more and more categories of users see the bigger picture, see how different aspects affect different properties of the software they are using. I think it is important that we as users of FLOSS software understand and communicate how the different influences work together. For example for KDE products, the available features and/or development direction is most strongly influenced by the volunteer community driven development aspect, a bit by the non-commercial aspect and negligibly by the licensing aspect [1]. Other things are more influences by the non-commercial aspect, e.g. availability of services. And again other things, like customizability, are most strongly influenced by the licensing aspect, i.e. the license enabling others to provide tailoring. Cheers, Kevin [1] licensing obviously influences the amount of volunteers but it has only little direct impact on feature availability -- Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer KDE user support, developer mentoring signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ This message is from the kde mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
