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

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Thursday 25 October 2007, Torsten Rahn wrote:
> On Thursday 25 October 2007 20:54:27 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 have also very different memories. Yes, it was pretty buggy (which meant
> that konqueror crashed about once every 1-2 hours), had slow application
> startups and took quite some memory on the machines back then.

so ... your different memory is pretty much exactly like mine. that's good. i 
guess in this case "different" means "the same, but i internalized it 
differently".

> But it still was totally  usable for a common user, had only little feature
> regressions

by the time 4.0 comes, assuming i keep up my motivation, there should be 
little difference. 

> - Journalists will be keen on reporting about KDE 4.0. If KDE 4 will e.g.
> will lack a volume slider they will report that no matter whether you tell
> them "Oh, this release is not meant to get used by people".
>
> - Users will ask distributors to provide packages

obviously. this is good, not bad. "innocent" true end users won't know about 
it, so it'll be the enthusiasts. they can be communicated with to set 
expectations. in fact, we already have been and at most events i go to i hear 
from the enthusiast community how they think 4.0 will be a great start and 
that 4.1 will likely be

> - Product managers of big distributions are always keen on shipping brand
> new software. Given that I don't expect that after KDE 4.0 gets released
> there will be a second release KDE 4.1 within less than 4-6 months I'm

expectations are assumptions, and when you assume ...... ;) i certainly hope 
we do have a 4.1 out ~6 months after 4.0. why? because we have a ton of 
things that will be 90% done by 4.0 and really won't be able to mature until 
there is a release.

the windows port is one of those things, for instance. ditto for the mac port 
too, probably.

we also will want to integrate with qt 4.4 as quickly as possible when it is 
out, which is spring '08.

it will also communicate to the community that we're back to doing rapid and 
timely releases after the Big Four Oh cycle.

so i think your expectation here is not as sure as you seem to consider it to 
be.

> _very_ sure that KDE 4.0 will get shipped by distributions if the release
> falls into their release cycle. Maybe not as the default desktop but still
> prominent enough that distributors will be able to have a selling point.

and so? they won't ship it as the default until it's ready as defined by their 
target market. unless they are stupid. in which case they deserve everything 
they get.

> So we better make the quality live up to the one of KDE 2. I'm pretty much
> aware that there is no chance to fix all the feature regressions of plasma
> compared to kicker 2.

do you actually remember what kicker in 2.0 could do? let's see:

http://developer.kde.org/~granroth/LWE2000/html/slide_8.html
http://www2.linuxjournal.com/article/3744
http://linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/previews/2139/1/

you'll see that it's major new feature was that the taskbar was in the panel 
and that it supported plugins better. it also had regressions compared to 
kpanel when it was released.

please take off your "good old days" glasses.

> Plasma should:
>
> - enable the user to start every app available in KDE (works now)
> - enable the user to easily access tasks (has issues)

yes, this will be worked on.

> - provide at least basic functionality: volume slider and a clock should be
> enough (I don't see a volume slider yet ..)

a volume slider is not the responsibility of plasma. nor was it the 
responsibility of kicker. don't blame me (or by extension plasma) for things 
that are certainly not in our basket of duties.

> - have no obvious usability issues (like the plasmoids in the panel which
> can easily get accidently moved right now).

i actually fixed that the other day, which caused a problem with mouse release 
event propagation. so the fix for moving applets in the panel too easily is 
commented out pending me finding the problem. Andreas is also looking into 
it.

> If those are there, work in a stable manner at sufficient speed then I'd
> agree that we are ready for a .0 release. We seriously don't need all the
> fancy options (like moving panel or taskbars to different screen boarders)
> but the basic functionality should work without issues.

then we're very nearly there. if people would stop sending me negative 
messages that really affect me on an emotional level i could get these things 
done even faster.

i got up early this morning to work on things and had my motivation completely 
destroyed by people on this list and on irc. i really don't want to be faced 
with *either* communicating *or* getting work done. i'd like to do a bit of 
both, but for the communication part i'll need your help since it's a two way 
street and i only control half, at best, of that.

-- 
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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