Next Plasma LTS and openSUSE

[Martin Gräßlin]

Am 2017-04-18 13:55, schrieb Luca Beltrame:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> this is basically the same discussion as already took place for 5.8.
> 
> According to distrowatch, it looks very much like we're currently the 
> _only_
> remaining Top 10 distro with KDE (Plasma+Apps) installed and used by 
> default.
> Not only has Ubuntu switched to GNOME, for openSUSE there's currently 
> also a
> major fork in the road happening next:
> 
> - openSUSE Tumbleweed will likely switch to having no default at all
>   (user has to choose one)
> - openSUSE Leap _may_ switch to GNOME as it is the desktop in SUSE 
> Linux
>   Enterprise. The argument here is that SUSE has a desktop team that is 
> paid
>   to fix bugs, while this is not the case for the community-maintained 
> KDE
>   packages.
> 
> It's obvious that this switch must not happen for various political 
> reasons:
> - GNOME becomes the de-facto standard desktop (Fedora, Ubuntu, 
> openSUSE)
> - This headline: "openSUSE switches default desktop after 10+ years, 
> KDE not
> viable?"
> - openSUSE KDE users might think that the focus shifted away
> 
> The only chance I can see avoiding the switch is by delivering a 
> flawless
> experience for the next major release, which will be released roughly 
> this
> time next year. So it would be perfect to have a 5.12 (?) LTS by then. 
> The way
> the schedule aligned for Leap 42.2 with Plasma 5.8.2 was perfect, 
> thanks for
> that again!
> 
> Additionally, it would be great to have an Applications LTS as well, 
> which
> would make a faster feature-release cycle alongside a slower LTS cycle
> possible.
> 
> I'm aware that this is an awful situation to be in, but I hope that we 
> can
> figure something out...

Hi Luca,

like what Aleix said a retrospection oh how 5.8 worked would be great. 
Concerning the release schedule I suggest to have the openSUSE Leap 
release team talk directly to our release team to come up with a nicely 
aligned schedule which works for both projects. 5.8 was a little bit 
hurried, so more planning is good.

Personally I'm quite concerned about this constant threat of "we switch 
to GNOME". I have a feeling that people high in openSUSE are lobbying 
for it and we have no real chance. Either it's used as a way to put 
pressure on us - which would suck - or it might be better for our 
developers health to say "let openSUSE move". This is now my personal 
opinion based on the last year. Overall it felt to me like openSUSE is 
trying to push us around with the constant threat of using GNOME.

In any case I want to collaborate as much as possible with openSUSE and 
I'm all for aligning the LTS so that it works for you, but I think the 
pressure from openSUSE and the threats need to stop.

Cheers
Martin