Brandybuck wrote:No, I do NOT think the new stuff in KDE 4 is pointless. I have heard from numerous people, however, that we are supposed to lavish praise on the new KDE 4 paradigms merely because they are new.

I have never heard anything like this. I have heard people saying we are supposed to lavish praise on the new KDE 4 paradigms because they allow a great deal more flexibility and additional functionality, which I agree with. New is not necessarily better, but it is not necessarily worse, either. The truth is there is a lot more people can do with the KDE 4 framework than they could with the KDE 3 one. There is still a lot of work that has to be done to take advantage of that. Can you give me an example of anything that was changed just for the sake of changing it?

TheBlackCat wrote:Can you give me an example of anything that was changed just for the sake of changing it?

It's pointless continuing this. It is not the change that is the problem, it is the condescending attitude of a few developers.

@Brandybuck: Please define "a few developers" ( names possibly? )

lol, I know what you mean, but geeze, these people are loosing sleep over trying to make KDE as good as possible for everyone. Their blood, sweat and tears are going into this software. I think we should be understanding if they get a bit cranky sometimes :P A lot of them are really nice people under normal circumstances. Also, there are a lot of undeserved hater posts, so you can't blame them for getting defensive about certain things. But as you can see from the direction 4.2 took, the developers are listening to the opinions of the users, and thats what really matters :P.

Developers aren't automatons. They have feelings. And those feelings can be hurt by the self-righteous who like to complain well beyond the scope of their perceived wrongs. Don't blame the devs, blame the trolls.

Besides, I've seen a lot of people claiming "condescension" where there was only rational explanation of what has gone into KDE4. People like to be right, so when they find that their arguments were out of line, or based on misguided expectations, they'd rather try to invalidate the devs than admit that they had been rude where rudeness wasn't due. (btw, rudeness is never due, but some people seem to believe it is).

"That’s what I’m on about — did you see him repressing me, you saw it didn’t you?"
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail

It says a lot about the problems with the rollout of KDE4 that even LINUS FREAKING TORVALDS, the man I named my cat after, didn't get the message that all he had to do was stick with KDE3.5 and wait it out.

In the end, great software will trump bad public relations. I, who once hated and feared KDE4 with a passion that even I knew was not rational, now sing the praises of KDE4.2 whereever I go. I hope that Linus gives KDE another chance, I'd love to hear what he has to say about 4.2, and I also hope that everybody in the whole FOSS community learn from this experience. As far as I know, KDE4 has been a project without precedent in FOSS history for ambition and vision, so it's not hard to see how KDE could have been taken by surprise by the reaction, but the next big FOSS project, wherever it comes from, will have been warned.

...removed...

Would somebody lock this topic please? I think we've skewed a bit off topic and all the main points (such as "Linus is just one guy, we are a community", and various ways of saying "Yes I agree" or "Linus is a fool KDE rocks") have already been said. We can all make our own opinions. Linus has made his. Whether or not you think it's right doesn't affect anything. If you think KDE is great, support the developers. If you don't, supporting the developers can only make it better for you and them and the rest of the community. That's what people need to understand instead of discussing things like this.

furanku wrote:I think the most frustrating thing about that story is, that it comes now, one year late. 4.0 had been released that way, lots of people complained, no real conciliation between the critics and the defender of this release as 4.0 was achieved. But things cooled down and 4.2 is something completely different than 4.0.

This story will do some harm to KDE's reputation, and maybe restart the whole discussion. Well, maybe that will be a lesson for a 5.0 release, that communicating honestly to the users is important, which is IMHO what went wrong with the 4.0 release. Releasing it as 4.0 and claiming at the same time that it's not ready is an impossible thing to explain, esp. in the open source world with it's conservative version numbers. But even in that case it would be better if Linus had said that after the 4.0 release, not now.

I don't think that there was ever a problem with honesty, just a failure to anticipate how users would handle upheaval, and PR decisions handled irrationally. I remember commenting on the publicity mailing list (I was a member for about one day early last year) how I thought it was a mistake that the first thing I saw when I went to the KDE site was a big banner for KDE4, and no banner for KDE3. You really got the feeling, looking at that, that KDE3 was dead and gone. The reply I remember most was: "We're proud of KDE4."

Pride is not a rational basis for major PR decisions, and what to put on your home page is the most major PR decision there is. The only helpful information about the future of KDE3 I ever found wasn't on the KDE site, it was on Aaron's blog, and I only found that because a link was resurrected in the forums by a spambot. I'm not saying that the information that would have kept me from posting a hundred angry blogposts wasn't somewhere on the KDE website, but I couldn't find it. If you wanted to be sure I got the information that would keep me from posting a hundred angry messages, the place to put a signpost would be where the KDE4 banner was, with that annoying slogan "Don't Look Back" which always sort of translated for me into "Screw you, KDE3 lover!" I'm not yet convinced that wasn't sort of the intent of that slogan, appearing as it did after the first big wave of complaints. If so, it would have been another good example of an irrational PR decision. One thing's certain, if the intent was to sooth the angry mob, that was one **** slogan.

Again, I wish to repeat, I have eaten every word of those 100 posts. I'm crazy about KDE 4.2. In the end, great software trumps bad PR, and calling KDE4.2 "great software" is, if anything, an understatement... but if Linus Torvalds didn't get the message, if he didn't understand what was happening, what chance does your average user have?

Not that users like me don't need to learn that the whole FOSS universe doesn't revolve around their desktop, and that sometimes what seems like change for the sake of change is really change for the sake of the future, or change for the sake of the community... and that sometimes, making the adjustment, even if it's a little bit inconvenient, is how one contributes to the community.

bcooksley wrote:@Brandybuck: Please define "a few developers" ( names possibly? )

Bad idea.

neversfelde wrote:Probably Linus hates desktops? A few years ago, he did not like gnome and now he do no want to go with KDE. Anyway, I do not think that it is bad PR, an advanced user does not care what Linus uses and a new user does not even know Linus...

Of course it's bad PR! It's terrible PR! How long do you think it will take for a new user to figure out that Linus played an important role in the origins of Linux? Sure, his personal preferences don't really matter more than anyone else's, but the symbolic value of the story is there, and that's what's giving it legs.

But it comes at a time when KDE4 is finally coming into it's own, and (as I keep saying in here) great software trumps bad PR. Great software has the longest strongest legs of all. Linus is a nice guy, a reasonable guy, and I'm sure he'll eventually try KDE 4.2 or KDE 4.3, and if he likes it (I think he should) he'll make a point of publically saying so.

Brandybuck wrote:Again I am being called a troll. Please people, know what a word means before you use it!

I don't remember ever calling you a troll. And the word "troll" doesn't show up anywhere else, so I assume you meant me. I simply said trolls exist, and they upset people causing those people to be less helpful and more defensive and irritated. A troll hides under a bridge and intentionally disrupts the traffic over said bridge. It's an analogy. See how disruptively this thread about Linus Torvalds was derailed?

But yeah, I can't see Linus disliking KDE in its current state. That being said, I don't know the guy, so he might be missing a few essentials still. But he sounds open minded and I doubt he'll hold a grudge. Sounds like something that many people should emulate...

Anyways, Linus switching away from software on Linux will be seen by many people as definitive that that software is sub par. In a way, KDE 4.0 was sub par. All I see here is more of the same: people switching away from KDE because they were subjected to a .0 release. A lot of people will see this as a wave of complaints that won't die down easily. Vista sp1 isn't all that bad (still a bit slow, but overall its stable) but a lot of people are still going around with Vista horror stories from the pre sp1 days, as well as some made up ones. We still have to see if Win7 will break through this grudge.

In the same way, we have to see if KDE4 can pull through the grudge. There has been a large trend of people starting to like KDE4. However there still are people who *HATE* KDE4, for whatever reason. Some have used it, some haven't. Some only tried 4.0, some tried 4.1.

There's still a long way to go to repair KDE4s image, but I fully believe that KDE4 deserves a better image than the one that is showing up repeatedly (though less and less) on many blogs and forum posts.

And maybe, just maybe, Linus Torvalds, along with many other users, will switch to KDE (I wonder how GNOME people will feel)

SteveMcQwark wrote:I don't remember ever calling you a troll. And the word "troll" doesn't show up anywhere else, so I assume you meant me. I simply said trolls exist, and they upset people causing those people to be less helpful and more defensive and irritated.

Sorry, I misunderstood. Blame it on my thin skin.

SteveMcQwark wrote:

Brandybuck wrote:Again I am being called a troll. Please people, know what a word means before you use it!

I don't remember ever calling you a troll. And the word "troll" doesn't show up anywhere else, so I assume you meant me. I simply said trolls exist, and they upset people causing those people to be less helpful and more defensive and irritated. A troll hides under a bridge and intentionally disrupts the traffic over said bridge. It's an analogy. See how disruptively this thread about Linus Torvalds was derailed?

But yeah, I can't see Linus disliking KDE in its current state. That being said, I don't know the guy, so he might be missing a few essentials still. But he sounds open minded and I doubt he'll hold a grudge. Sounds like something that many people should emulate...

Anyways, Linus switching away from software on Linux will be seen by many people as definitive that that software is sub par. In a way, KDE 4.0 was sub par. All I see here is more of the same: people switching away from KDE because they were subjected to a .0 release. A lot of people will see this as a wave of complaints that won't die down easily. Vista sp1 isn't all that bad (still a bit slow, but overall its stable) but a lot of people are still going around with Vista horror stories from the pre sp1 days, as well as some made up ones. We still have to see if Win7 will break through this grudge.

In the same way, we have to see if KDE4 can pull through the grudge. There has been a large trend of people starting to like KDE4. However there still are people who *HATE* KDE4, for whatever reason. Some have used it, some haven't. Some only tried 4.0, some tried 4.1.

There's still a long way to go to repair KDE4s image, but I fully believe that KDE4 deserves a better image than the one that is showing up repeatedly (though less and less) on many blogs and forum posts.

Oh, yes.

As I've said, I was one of those doing the posting, and the complaining, and so I was tuned into the complaints, and what i could see finally see at around the level of opensuse's version of KDE 4.1.3 (with features backported from KDE 4.2) was that my complaints and other were being heard, and were being answered quite nicely by the software. I also want to give the KDE team credit for simply getting better at listening. I'd come in complaining, and developers would ask me for specifics and I'd tell them, and they'd seem interested, and I'd come away feel a lot better. It shouldn't surprise anyone that software developers are not born to public relations, but the KDE team seems to gotten better at it as time has passed, and they deserve credit for that. If I seem critical of how they handled the public rollout, it's not because I believe that I could have done better. But we all paid for these lessons in aggravation, and I want to make sure we all get full value.

But the software is what will matter. The only word I can use to describe my first encounter with KDE 4.2 is thrilling. When the history is written, the conflict will be just a footnote. KDE4 is a moment in cultural and communication history, like the gutenberg bible, that we all got to take part in. I'm proud to be a part of it, even i was one of the ones complaining. We need those, too.

blackbelt_jones wrote:
Again, I wish to repeat, I have eaten every word of those 100 posts. I'm crazy about KDE 4.2. In the end, great software trumps bad PR, and calling KDE4.2 "great software" is, if anything, an understatement... but if Linus Torvalds didn't get the message, if he didn't understand what was happening, what chance does your average user have?

But Linus'es comments were not about 4.2, they were about 4.0. He upgraded his distro. The distro came with 4.0, which he found unusable. So he started using GNOME instead. 4.2 was not part of the equation at all.

I can see where I haven't been clear. I mean the message that KDE 4.0 was an early release, KDE 3 will continue to be supported, the same message I didn't get when I was freaking out about KDE4.