Is KDE really usable?

[jos poortvliet]

Op Thursday 22 March 2007, schreef JRT:
> Iñaki wrote:
> > Hello, first of all I'm sorry for the severity of the critic I will do to
> > the whole KDE in this mail.
> >
> >
> > My conclusion:
> > ***************
> > KDE is very powerfull, of course, but has too much bugs and usability
> > issues and bad designed applications that make KDE no usable for commons
> > workes in an office.
> >
> > Unfotunatelly I don't see usability improvements in the most important
> > apps of KDE (Kontact, Konqueror), just new and "exotic" features that are
> > not neccesary for common users who only expect a reliable OS (that KDE
> > can't offer now to them).
>
> Yes, your analysis is correct.  KDE remains about 90% baked -- (some)
> bugs _are_ fixed, but more raw material is continuously added.
> Unfortunately, it never gets to 100% because many developers are more
> interested in adding new features rather than fixing the bugs and have
> things work 100%  So, what we have is a DeskTop that *would* be
> excellent IF only it all worked correctly, but remains too buggy for
> commercial use.
>
> I offer no solution to the problem.  Only the suggestion that we have
> two releases:
>
> 	A stable release that only contains proven features, does not
> 	allow new features till they have been debugged and emphasizes
> 	stability over feature bloat.
>
> 	A development release that includes new features that aren't
> 	ready for prime time yet.
>
> This should make everyone happy except that there will be complaints
> that it is more work.  Well making a commercial quality DeskTop is going
> to be more work.

It won't just be more work, but will also slow down development and stiffle 
innovation. So yes, it might deliver higher quallity, but it is still a bad 
idea. If Big Company's (TM) want a stable KDE, let 'em send patches or 
maintain a older KDE release for a longer time (distributions do this, a 
little, btw).

FOSS isn't about getting more users, or big companies. It's about getting as 
many contributors as possible, which you need for a healthy project. And for 
a healty project, you need to release early and often. If somebody wants to 
use KDE for a certain use (eg ultra-stable) they can have that. But don't 
expect the rest of the users AND developers to be willing to suffer for it.

You can't have your cake and eat it too.

> Any suggestions as to where this should be posted are welcome.  In fact,
> feel free to forward this.

You think this hasn't been discussed? Everybody knows this, exept ppl new to 
FOSS or KDE. It's a choice between features and stability. Always. Your 
two-releases system is a way to solve it, but it has too many downsides, and 
in a sense - it IS what we have. We're working on KDE 4, but are delivering 
stable bugfix releases, don't we? So use KDE 3.5.x, there is your stable 
release, and the development release IS KDE 4.

-- 
Jos Poortvliet
KDE-nl
http://www.kde.nl
http://www.kde.org

Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
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