Yet another failed KDE release?

[dE .]

On Fri, Mar 22, 2013 at 11:29 PM, Duncan <1i5t5.duncan at cox.net> wrote:

> Kevin Krammer posted on Fri, 22 Mar 2013 12:53:01 +0100 as excerpted:
>
> >> Honestly, why can't KDE SC support seamless update from previous major
> >> release? Is it too much work to rewrite config files whose format has
> >> changed?
> >
> > This is of course intended to happen, KDE software has had configuration
> > and data modification tools for ages. My personal setup has been with me
> > for over a decade now, rarely prompting me to reconfigure things.
>
> FWIW, that's true here as well.  I've been running the same kde config,
> with /home copied over to new hardware (which on my workstation unlike my
> netbook, I upgrade a piece at a time so there's never a new computer,
> just a changed out drive, or max-change, a changed out cpu/mobo/memory/gpu
> all at the same time, as all the buses and formats had changed so to
> upgrade one I had to upgrade them all, but then it's the old hard drive
> installed in the new machine) as appropriate, since kde 2.x in late 2001,
> when I switched from MS to Linux.
>
> Yes, that's the same base kde2 config now running kde4.  Every once in
> awhile, especially after the 2.x to 3.x upgrade and later the 3.x to 4.x
> upgrade, a few months after the upgrade I go thru and check file times,
> moving files to a backup location if the mtimes haven't bumped since the
> update, to see if they get recreated and/or whether they're I lose any
> customizations.
>

Major releases, (1.x, 2.x, 3.x, 4.x), use different config directories.


>
> And yes, there's specific files (the infamous plasma-desktop-appletsrc
> being one of them) that I keep extra backups of and usually backup before
> any major changes, as I've learned the hard way how difficult it can be
> to find and edit out the bad bits on the more complex files if something
> does go wrong.
>

And yes, when I hit a problem, I know how to use the bisect method to
> narrow it down to a single config file if I have to (tho after doing it a
> few times and figuring out the way kde organizes its config, I found I
> could often pick the problem file purely by name, or at minimum, reduce
> it to a handful of files right away, so the bisect is now often only 3ish
> rounds max), and am used to doing just that, in kde config files or using
> git to bisect a kernel bug, either way.
>
>
I remember reporting a phonon bug a year ago related to the config and
deprecated xine backend; but the devs ignored it possibly cause they were
rushing through releases, and creating a new tags every 10 days.


> But it really is possible to use the same basic config that long, even
> with heavy customizing, and I'm a case in point.
>
> My problem isn't so much with that, it's with killing support for old
> versions before the new versions are sufficiently stable replacements,
> ESPECIALLY after promising support "as long as there are users!"  That
> triggered a drop of a lot of my former kde software choices with the bump
> to kde4, when kde was insisting that kde4 was stable and that they
> weren't supporting kde3 any longer, at the very SAME time they were
> saying on bugs "Oh, that's not ported to kde4 yet."  The story repeated
> with the akonadification of kdepim; I honestly DID try the akonadified
> kmail, but somewhere about the time it lost my 10th mail or so and I was
> trying to figure out whether it got caught in akonadi somewhere or was
> simply gone (after having to do much of the conversion manually in the
> first place because the automated process failed), I asked myself why I
> put up with it, why I couldn't just expect, AND HAVE, email that "just
> worked", that devs didn't needlessly change something that was working
> perfectly fine as it was, breaking it in the process.  (Ironically, I
> ended up on claws-mail, one of the "short list" of clients I had
> evaluated but eventually dropped for kmail, back when I originally
> switched from MS and OE.  It's still using the same mh-dir mail format it
> was back in 2001... and it still works.  Only unlike kmail, they didn't
> drop a well working solution in a chase for utopia.  Had I only chosen it
> back then...)
>
> But, as I said earlier in the thread, that means I'm now running only the
> core kde desktop, with nearly all of my "mission critical" apps now non-
> kde and to the extent possible, with semantic-desktop not just disabled
> at run-time, but without support for it even built at all.  Which means I
> don't have to worry about a broken kde killing my mail (for instance) any
> more.  Which means I'm now much freeer to run and /enjoy/ running the kde
> pre-releases. =:^)
>
> And it also means if kde pulls the kde4 stunt again, since it's only the
> core kde desktop and a few games I'm running now, it'll be MUCH easier to
> drop it entirely, if I have to.
>
> Fortunately, kde5 aka kde frameworks is supposed to be a much less
> disruptive upgrade, and it's going much more modular as well, so it's
> much less likely.  But THIS time I'm prepared, should it happen.  I won't
> be caught not viably being able to switch, again.
>
> Which is even more proof that kde's not going to drop the ball that way
> again, because I'm actually prepared for it now, so of course it's not
> going to happen. =;^]
>
> Of course there's the possible upcoming xorg -> wayland switch to worry
> about too.  That could really upset the Linux desktop environment status
> quo in all sorts of interesting ways and I think most of the leading DEs
> realize that.  But again, I'm much better prepared now, so regardless of
> how it turns out or what DE and apps I end up running on wayland and what
> kind of promises DEs and their devs make that they ultimately end up
> dropping like yesterday's dead fish in a malfunctioning refrigerator, I
> expect that switch to be far less personally disruptive than the kde3 ->
> kde4 upgrade was.  Which means to a certain extent I'll be able to sit
> back and enjoy the ride instead of sweating it out so badly this time,
> and I really am looking forward to that. =:^)
>
> --
> 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
>
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