[kde-linux] Am I Alone?

[Duncan]

Anne Wilson posted on Wed, 30 Sep 2009 10:23:55 +0100 as excerpted:

> I think your comments are are from objective.  Can you imagine just how
> many possible combinations of things there are, for a customised
> desktop?  Of course not every possibility will have been checked.  The
> most common ones work.  If you have a less common need and it doesn't
> work, then you need to file a bug report.  If no-one draws attention to
> the problem there's no way the devs can know about it.

Excuse me, I know I sound a bit like a Johnny One Note to you, but you 
hit a raw nerve, here.  Of course, this is all IMO, and all that, but...

The most common ones work... if others don't, please file a bug report.  
OK, fine.  I've not a problem with that.  I've not a problem with however 
long it takes to "get it right", either.  What I've a problem with is 
people saying it's ready for normal everyday use, when even such basics 
as proper HTTPS support aren't there, the bugs filed, voted WAY up into 
the the top-10, etc.  They KNOW.  True, the basic mechanisms work well 
enough to sort of get by... if one's lucky enough to have their system 
certs setup correctly, etc... and no MitM attack is underway.

The other day, some place I was going to popped up some warning about the 
cert, so I clicked the details button to see what was going on.  The 
dialog disappeared... and nothing came up!  No details, no explanation, 
no crash dialog, no NOTHING!!  Well, except the systray notifier went 0/1 
and had its little animation going... and going... and going... and 
going...

But the **MOST** worrying thing about it was this.  Thinking something 
had crashed or something, I tried the same URL again (it was an https bug 
link in a mail or some such, so I could).  *THE* *THING* *WENT* *THRU* 
*WITH* *NO* *WARNING*!!!  (Yes, I AM YELLING!  This is seriously screwed 
up!)

OK, so maybe it was a temporary issue, and the problem went away.  I 
forgot about it... until I had reason to reference the same page again, 
and tried again, now probably an hour or two later.  SAME BEHAVIOR.  An 
initial warning, click details to see what's up, everything disappears 
except the little spinning notifier thing now says 0/2... (That's 
actually when I really noticed it... and noticed it hadn't cleared the 
first one, even some hours later.)  Click the link again, to see if I can 
get the dialog to actually work this time...  IT GOES THRU WITHOUT A 
WARNING AGAIN!!!

What bothers ME about this is that while this time that was just a bug 
URL, it COULD have been someone's BANK, they MIGHT have been connecting 
thru to using WIFI, and if they weren't CAREFUL, they MIGHT have been hit 
with a MitM attack!  Checking details simply disappears the dialog, a 
second try goes thru as if nothing's wrong...

They KNOW about it.  The BUG IS THERE.  It IS being worked on.  Fine.

What's NOT fine is them saying everything is hunky dory, it's all ready 
for "normal" use!

WE'RE TALKING POTENTIALLY SOMEONE'S BANK CONNECTION HERE!!

Come ON!  Ready for normal use!  In what person's pipe dream!?  Maybe 
these guys don't do online banking.  Maybe they do, but they don't 
consider it normal.  Maybe they have so much money losing the contents of 
a single bank account or two is like handing the bum on the street their 
pocket change.  Maybe they don't have any money at all and don't care.

All *I* know is that *I* don't consider that acceptable, at least not for 
something being marketed as ready for ordinary people to use.  That's 
seriously ****ed up, no matter /how/ you try to finesse the PR.

Now all that's perfectly acceptable for a beta product, but KDE 4 isn't 
any longer being marketed as a beta product... unfortunately... because 
that's about where it is.  And yes, every release is progressing by leaps 
and bounds, and I believe in KDE's devs and the tech and all the hard 
work that's behind it.  That's not the problem.  The problem is saying 
it's ready for normal use, when such "normal" use could compromise your 
bank account, among other things!  For a properly warned about beta, such 
things are perfectly understandable.  For a third major release, now 
marketed as fully ready for ordinary use, it's not.  That's what we give 
MS hassles on all the time, and I'm not going to let KDE slide just 
because it's freedomware I'll use, while MS products are slaveryware I 
was lucky enough to escape years ago.

As I said, the bug's filed.  As I said, the bug's voted WAY up.  They 
KNOW.  Yet they STILL continue to promote kde4 as perfectly acceptable 
for ordinary use.  Something's seriously wrong with this picture.  That's 
all I'm saying... and yes, I may sound like a Johnny One Note, but 
they're still saying it's acceptable for ordinary use, and I'm still 
saying it's not, and will continue to say that, until the facts 
appropriately match the claims.

BTW, a day later, the systray notifier still said 0/2... and would most 
likely STILL say that, if I hadn't rebooted.

> I'm not in agreement with the statements in your second paragraph
> either.  I know it's still far from perfect, but even in KDE 3.5 some
> things worked better than others.  The only sensible way is to try out
> the possibilities and see which ones work for you.  I've seen features
> that others rave about, but when tried I found that I didn't actually
> like them.  Desktop settings are a very personal need.  What suits you
> won't suit me, and vice versa.  File bugs reports for the things that
> are important to you, and live with the less important stuff ;-)

All that's fine.  But when KDE 3.5 appears to be being abandoned, before 
4.x works equivalently well... after Aaron Segio, president of KDE-
whatever at the time so in a position to speak for the project if anyone 
is, so publicly stated that there'd be KDE 3.5 support as long as there 
were users...  And when the PR is making statements about KDE 4 usability 
that if anyone actually relies on, could cost them their bank account...

<shrug>  What can one say?

-- 
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