KDE4 release discussion, Was: KIO::NetAccess static methods question

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Thursday 25 October 2007, Guillaume Laurent wrote:
> On Thursday 25 October 2007, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> >  i remember just how crappy 2.0 was on my machine then (a
> > PII 400 no less =): slow, buggy as hell, incomplete in many places,
> > relatively few apps....
>
> I have different memories.
>
> I very much recall the first KDE 2 betas, because that's when I started
> using KDE, coming from "the other side", and was very impressed. It
> basically filled all my needs (those of a C++ developer - mail, web,
> console), except for a few sites which Konq wouldn't handle properly.

well, yes, it did mail web and console well. mail is coming in 4.0 faster than 
i think we expected, which is good! web and console are in good shape too.

i was thinking, however, of things like the new visual styles, the relative 
*ahem* simplicity of things like kicker/konqi at the time and the complete 
lack of the awesome apps we take for granted today such as digikam to pick 
one randomly. back in 2.0 days i was still forced to the command line + file 
manager for most of my photo stuff; digikam and apps like it have alleviated 
that need completely. even konq has gotten to the point where it's great for 
lightweight photo management on its own.

now, kde 2.0 was impressive to draw me into developing for KDE, but not 
because it stunned me with how rock solid or production quality it was (at 
the time my opinion was that it wasn't either of those things; i certainly 
did not recommend 2.0 to any of my friends except the hard core people i 
knew ... 2.1 was different in that regard though). what drew me to it was the 
exciting pace of movement in new directions: dcop, kparts, xmlgui .... one 
could *see* the future assembling itself before one's eyes.

and for 2.0 the KDE team had the rocks to release it right then, after a 
hugely long development cycle which included false starts (hello, corba), 
etc. when kde 4.0 started i fully assumed it would turn out nearly exactly 
the same way. i guess i've been surprised that it hasn't been as apparent to 
others in the project.

hell, a gnome'r at red hat earlier this year commented on how we were doing 
the same thing they did in gnome 2.0 in terms of massive reworking of the 
platform and what not, gave his props for the moxy and courage it took to do 
it, that it would innevitably be disruptive and take a few releases to sort 
everything out. so people outside of the project can see it, too.

sometimes i need to step outside of my own closet to see what things look like 
from the outside; it's a great way to try and maintain perspective because 
usually it's a very different view =)

i also look back at 2.0 and try and think of actually being derisive to any of 
the people who had been working on it ... and can't even imagine doing such a 
thing. 

someone wrote on one of the mailing lists a few weeks back that it seems 
sometimes we've forgotten how to just have fun writing software as a 
project/team. that's a very similar observation to my "we're taking ourselves 
too seriously".

> Same 
> for KDE3.0. It doesn't seem that KDE4 will be the same - though I
> understand the change from KDE3 to 4 is much bigger.

yes, kde3 was a completely different sort of release and not at all comparable 
to either kde2 or kde4 in the sense that it was an evolutionary step rather 
than a set of fundamental, major changes to the platform.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

KDE core developer sponsored by Trolltech
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