A few words about the Quality of KDE 4.2

[Anne Wilson]

On Tuesday 24 March 2009 23:20:35 James Richard Tyrer wrote:
> Anne Wilson wrote:
> > On Sunday 22 March 2009 13:08:11 James Richard Tyrer wrote:
> >>  But, the current
> >> release has an unstable  desktop with serious usability issues.
> >
> > My desktop is not unstable,
>
> What do you mean by unstable?  I ask because some people define unstable
> as only meaning that it crashes.  That is not what I mean.  When a Panel
> decides to change its configuration on its own without any user input,
> that is unstable.  

Agreed - but I've never experienced that.

> When things only work correctly part of the time,
> that is instability.
>
Also agreed, but the only things that have given me that kind of trouble are 
either KDE3 apps or those that I have installed knowing full well that they 
are beta releases (yes, I have a couple of those deliberately installed for 
testing).

> I note that I find the desktop to be a lot less stable when I attempt to
> configure it, than if I simply use the defaults.
>
Vague - what configuration makes it unstable?

> > and the usability issues are no more than I have
> > found in any previous desktop I've used, linux or windows.
>
> You must be using a different desktop than I am. :-)
>
Or on different hardware, or with different configuration.  So many variables.

> >> I guess that I will have to get into Skinnerian psychology.  People
> >> aren't really as complicated as you think.  People will do what they
> >> receive positive reinforcement for doing.
> >
> > Our developers have had precious little of that in the last 12 months.
>
> Yes, that is unfortunate since BFS was also quite clear that aversive
> control (negative reinforcement) doesn't really work.  So, it is best to
> discuss how to improve things rather than to simply gripe about what is
> wrong.
>
> > Can we stop this now?  There really can't be anything more to be said.
>
> Yes, we can go back to ignoring the Elephant, but it will still exist.

Yet repeating the statement that it exists gets us nowhere.  Let's make up our 
minds that we will focus on finding the cause of problems, rather than just 
encouraging whinging.  If you look at bug reports, and I know you do, you'll 
realise that most of the people that whine most do not contribute to bug 
chasing.  We should push the need for that, so that developers are helped 
rather than just discouraged.

Anne
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