Does anyone know if there are any plans for additional maintanence releases of KDE3?? I am extremely disturbed by the fact that major distros like opensuse and kubuntu have dropped support for KDE3

KDE 3 will not be having any further feature releases (3.x) or bug fix releases (3.5.x) at this time. I believe KDE 3 has been indefinitely frozen for all further development since Qt3 is no longer developed by Trolltech/Qt Software. It believe it has also been frozen for bug fixes meaning KDE can no longer get problems in Qt3 fixed.

As a result, distributions are following Qt 4 and KDE 4 now, since it they are having new features added, and bugs being actively fixed by Trolltech/Qt Software and KDE.

geigy wrote:Does anyone know if there are any plans for additional maintanence releases of KDE3?? I am extremely disturbed by the fact that major distros like opensuse and kubuntu have dropped support for KDE3

The best information I could find comes from this blogpost from Aaron Seigo dated last January:

http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2008/01/talking-bluntly.html

Basically, if KDE3 continues to have a userbase. it will continue to be maintained... that probably doesn't mean new development, it means security updates and bugfixes. And it's pretty apparent that you won't be able to get it out of the box from just any distro you want. You may have to learn to buiild it yourself if you want to run it on Ubuntu and Suse. This is the freedom that you get, the freedom to build your own solution.

I think KDE3 does have a userbase, nearly everybody in my lug seems to prefer it. If Debian and Slackware finally drop it, I'd expect to see some small independant distros, maybe slackware based, start to offer it as a default.

But I am never right about anything that I expect . Please don't let this turn you into a whiny little buzzkill like it did for me. Last night I sent a donation to KDE, not a lot of money for some but for me it hurt, just to atone for all the complaining I had done for so long that turned out to be so wrong. I love the new KDE 4.3 beta, it's the best home desktop I have ever seen or could imagine. and even though I still prefer KDE3 for some workstation uses, I've started learning to take care of myself in that regard. Just last night I compiled KDE 3.5 myself for the very first time. That's what they mean by free as in freedom, and to expect more is to expect too much.


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PS: If you don't want to live like a refugee, or be regarded by others as a mean old man who hates the future, you might want to consider a close look at xfce as an alternative to KDE3. I suspect that KDE4 is one reason why XFCE seems to be coming on big in some quarters, including as the default for a lot of sweet little distros like Vector and Zenwalk. If KDE3 is the past, XFCE just might be the future of the past. (That doesn't really mean anything, does it? Sorry.) If, like me, you want to have it both ways (A more traditional desktop for the work week, KDE4 for evenings, weekends, and casual Fridays) there's a simple but powerful system of building custom launchers for the XFCE panel that makes it easy to plug your kde applications into XFCE for when you want to slip into something a little less distracting. For me, the major buzzkill with XFCE is no real drag and drop, but you can do most if not all of the same functions by right-clicking.

(EDIT)

bcooksley wrote:KDE 3 will not be having any further feature releases (3.x) or bug fix releases (3.5.x) at this time. I believe KDE 3 has been indefinitely frozen for all further development since Qt3 is no longer developed by Trolltech/Qt Software. It believe it has also been frozen for bug fixes meaning KDE can no longer get problems in Qt3 fixed.

As a result, distributions are following Qt 4 and KDE 4 now, since it they are having new features added, and bugs being actively fixed by Trolltech/Qt Software and KDE.

Hey, wait a minute! Qt 3 is free software! I looked it up in wikipedia just to be sure. Whenever anyone brings up the Qt3 thing, they always make it sound a lot more final and out of our hands than (apparently) it actually is. As I understand it, Trolltech closing the door doesn't mean the door can't be opened again, by anyone who wants to, if it's really needed. But is it? We all get that there aren't going to be new features for KDE3. Or we should. If you expect to use the old software and get new features, I think you're expecting too much. All I hope for is that the community watches over KDE3 to make sure no major new security issues open up. And if i can't get that I'll use it offline. Because it's irreplaceable.

I suppose some people think KDE4 should be all things to all people. I don't think it is, and I'm not sure it should be. Some people seem to be offended by this opinion, and I'm sorry, but will you forgive me if I tell you that I do think that KDE4 is a really really awesome home desktop? I love to show it off now. I immediately show it to my guests, and let them play with it for a while, and just when they're really starting to get super impressed, I smile crookedly, and I tell them that I was completely opposed to this whole project. And we share a laugh at my expense.

(Actually, this has only happened once with one guest, but I'm sure it'll happen again, if I ever have another guest.)

It says on the KDE website that KDE4 is "for the majority of users". At this point, I agree wholeheartedly, but I'm hoping that the minority will not be deprived of the benefit of something that already exists.

I know of one non kde application that uses Qt3-- the Linux version of the opera webbrowser. I wonder what Opera is planning for the future.

An "indefinite freeze" is probably appropriate right now. Barring sudden security issues popping up, or some other emergency of a similar nature, KDE should just wait to see what happens when KDE4 finally reaches the stable Debian and Slackware releases before deciding if and how to maintain KDE3. When we finally reach the end of the line, will the last KDE3 refugees just give it up, or will they start building their own Desktops from source and inventing new KDE3 distros? You may have an answer to that question. I may have an answer to that question. (Here's a hit: I've been practicing my compiling! ) The only answer that matters is the event itself.

FYI: You could probably train a chimp (or a windows user) to compile KDE3.5 onto Vector Linux. When I post my tutorial, that will be the title.

compiling KDE 3.5 is a piece of cake. The royal pain is installing and configuring ALL THE PREREQUISITE LIBRARIES to enable full KDE functionality! And each KDE app has its own library requirements! Fun.

Opera is making available Qt4 builds I believe, although only Static ones currently. I believe they are going to drop Qt3 support at some point in the near future.

bcooksley wrote:Opera is making available Qt4 builds I believe, although only Static ones currently. I believe they are going to drop Qt3 support at some point in the near future.

Well, it's in Opera 10.

blackbelt_jones wrote:

bcooksley wrote:Opera is making available Qt4 builds I believe, although only Static ones currently. I believe they are going to drop Qt3 support at some point in the near future.

Well, it's in Opera 10.

You get the Qt4 builds via their FTP-Server only, the standard download gives you the Qt3 version.

A small, dedicated community of KDE3 users just formed a week ago, and started a bulletin board at

http://www.outkasts3510.hyperboard.com

We're a KDE3 group, not an anti KDE4 group "Respect for other Desktop environments and their developers." is a forum rule.

Whenever something happens that makes us mad (e.g. Patrick Volkerding recently wrote that "KDE3 is dead",) there is loose talk about forking KDE, but that's pretty unlikely right now. Instead, I see KDE3 development continuing on a small scale in live CD distributions, perhaps based on Knoppix, Ubuntu, and Slax. Slax looks especially promising, for reasons which I won't go into here, but which are discussed at the above forum.

The http://www.outkasts3510.hyperboard.com link gets a page load error, Firefox can't find the server.

I needed Kopete to work with Yahoo Instant Messenger servers, so I switched to KDE4 (going from Hardy to Jaunty) a few weeks ago. Thus far, while KDE4 looks really slick, it is annoying in that it is so much more restrictive and well... 'clicky'. It takes so many more mouse clicks to use. (Is it just me or did anyone else get that nasty 'Vista' feeling when they tried KDE4? Granted, not as SLOW, in fact quite fast! but still cumbersome. When going from Windows XP to Gutsy the feeling was one of liberation and adventure.)

My need for YIM has vanished and it seems likely that Jaunty and KDE4 will too... from my desktop.

It is sad news to hear that they will not be actively supporting KDE3 at least until the next LTS release... it feels like a broken promise, even though no one made any promises. I do hope that the final decision is to continue to develop KDE3, or at the VERY least that those working on KDE4 begin to incorporate more of what made KDE3 so fantastic.

At any rate, thank you for the information about KDE3!

Erica

Rather than going to a lot of trouble to maintain KDE 3, why not focus your efforts on fixing what you consider to be problems with KDE 4.3? It seems like a lot of duplicated effort when you could be cooperating and working towards the same goal. There shouldn't be anything in KDE 3.5 that can't be duplicated in KDE 4.3 if someone just put in the effort. Bugs can be fixed, problems like perceived slowness are be worked on constantly.

TheBlackCat wrote:Rather than going to a lot of trouble to maintain KDE 3, why not focus your efforts on fixing what you consider to be problems with KDE 4.3? It seems like a lot of duplicated effort when you could be cooperating and working towards the same goal. There shouldn't be anything in KDE 3.5 that can't be duplicated in KDE 4.3 if someone just put in the effort. Bugs can be fixed, problems like perceived slowness are be worked on constantly.

Let them develop KDE 3.5 if thats what they want. That's their freedom.
I cannot see any reasons to complain about people doing what the want on their own free time. I have said it to people complaining that the current KDE developers should continue support KDE 3.5 and I think that statement goes both ways. Let's embrace the freedom of open source.

/Mats

TheBlackCat wrote:Rather than going to a lot of trouble to maintain KDE 3, why not focus your efforts on fixing what you consider to be problems with KDE 4.3? It seems like a lot of duplicated effort when you could be cooperating and working towards the same goal. There shouldn't be anything in KDE 3.5 that can't be duplicated in KDE 4.3 if someone just put in the effort. Bugs can be fixed, problems like perceived slowness are be worked on constantly.

My goal is to keep what I already have, and that's easy. Unless other people show up with bigger plans, I just want to use preexisting KDE3 based live cds, remaster KDE3-based live CDs, and maybe help support other people who want to do the same thing, if there are any such people.

I'm not sure that there's any need for anything more. KDE4 is coming along fine, though I think it's too soon for KDE3 to be disappearing as an option for most distros. I think it's an extremely important project, and the devs are doing a great job. I've got Kubuntu installed on my hard drive, so I can I'll be keeping tabs on the progress.

Most of the time, I'm running Slax 6.1.2, from a remastered live DVD with packages I easily ported myself from Slackware 12.2. I mount a partition on the hard drive as /home, and all my personal configuration data is retained. It's perfect, exactly what I want, and it's a closed system. I have all the software I need to keep running a Slax system with KDE3, and there are scripts for porting packages to Slax's lzm for from Slackware's tgz format, the newer txz format, and even .deb packages! Not everything's going to run on this version of Slax, which is based on Slackware 12x, but I can certainly try. It runs great, and I can copy it directly to the RAM if I need a little boost. I run firefox from the ~ home directory, which means that I always have the newest browser. I don't know that much about security, but I do know that nothing survives on the live CD system after a reboot, so I reboot a couple of times a day.

If I want to run KDE3, I should be able to have that freedom, and I do. So I have nothing to complain about, and anyone one who wants to keep using KDE3 for whatever rational or irrational reason has that freedom. I only regret not understanding that sooner. I've said this before: if you want to run the old desktop, and have it still be new somehow, you probably want too much.

Other than the sometime lag, I can't even explain why I like KDE3 better, but I'm not going to worry about that anymore. Thanks to live CDs in general, and the amazing SLAX in particular, I can go on using KDE3 as long as I like, at least part of the time. I can support others who share my preference, and I can support the important work of the KDE team at the same time. That's a win-win.