Yet another failed KDE release?

[Kevin Krammer]

On Saturday, 2013-03-23, dE . wrote:

> Cause of this behaviour of distros, KDE gets less chance to get tested. The
> only solution is to elongate the release cycles, that way, each version of
> the DE gets tested slowly by every advanced users; so they face and report
> bugs before the very end user face them.

I am not sure I understand this fully, isn't this what already happens?

Due to the way of how distributions undergo their development cycles it 
effectively already increased the testing phase for software they contain.
First each software is tested by the respective community's beta testers, then 
each software is tested even more widely by the distribution's beta phase and 
after that by its early upgraders.
I would guess that at the point a normal user upgrades the software has been 
in testing for a couple of months, maybe even half a year.

Lets have a look at the most recent version
KDE SC 4.10 Beta 1 tag was in November 2012 at which point it is most likely 
tested by KDE beta testers. This continues until February 2013 (about three 
months).

If we take openSUSE as an example distribution, its respective release is 
March 2013, adding another monthof testing by people who build from source.
The test audience at this point has expanded to include early upgraders of 
openSUSE.

Not sure how long each update interval for openSUSE is but if we assume one 
month, then enthusiastic users who are not early upgraders will probably wait 
for the first of those, more cautious users even for the second or third.

So depending where such users are comfort zone wise, the time between start of 
testing and deployment will be four and six months.

Cheers,
Kevin
-- 
Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer
KDE user support, developer mentoring
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