Hello,
my distribution Mandriva Cooker deprecated KDE 3.5.
Recently there was a poll about the best KDE distribution at http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/3016
Which of these KDE friendly distributions is up-to-date but keeps KDE 3.5 as well?

TIA,
testerus

The openSUSE distribution is a Live CD for 11.1 - so you can try it out:
http://news.opensuse.org/2009/01/09/uno ... nsuse-111/

john_hudson wrote:The openSUSE distribution is a Live CD for 11.1 - so you can try it out:
http://news.opensuse.org/2009/01/09/uno ... nsuse-111/

not sure this is a valid suggestion as 11.2 (due in Nov) won't be officially shipping with 3.5, though it might be available in the build service, think op wants a "current" distro that officially ships and supports kd3 3.5

i use arch linux with kde 4

you can still relatively easily install kde 3 (not officially supported). eventually yet another dependency of kde 3 breaks after updates but untill now all problems are easy to fix if you have the old version of the affected packages

opensuse 11.2 will have KDE 3.5 in the buildservice (actually, it already does).

google01103 wrote:not sure this is a valid suggestion as 11.2 (due in Nov) won't be officially shipping with 3.5,

Neither did 11.1 but most of what people think of as openSUSE isn't 'official' anyway, if you read the small print. I wouldn't bet against an 11.2 KDE3.5 Live CD being available somewhere.

At present, I think thge best KDE3 distros are Debian "Lenny" and Slax 6.1.2.

Big News: I'm going to release my own all-KDE3 live distro, Kiara (Kiara Is A Recursive Acronym) any day now. The basic technical concept behind the initial release is porting Slackware 12.2 packages to Slax 6.1.2, but the real mission is complete commitment to KDE3. It's not hard to understand how KDE3 isn't getting upstream support (If what I read in the gentoo forums is true) when (as far as I know) no distros are willing to say: We are committed to KDE3 to the bitter end. Kiara will continue to use KDE3 at all cost as long as there is a Kiara. That is why it exists, to keep KDE3 as alive as possible, for as long as necessary.

Let me make one thing clear: I support the KDE team and their important work on KDE4. In my own fanboy opinion, KDE4 is the most visionary and important desktop ever. However, KDE3 is the most user-friendly desktop ever, and killing KDE3 will not make KDE4 a jot more important or a whit more visionary.

Hi blackbelt_jones, I have to agree with you, I would like to see KDE 3 kept alive. I've used KDE4 a little and it seems that whenever a new version comes out (not just KDE) I have to spend a lot of time finding out where all of the settings have moved to. I think KDE4 looks nice and I certainly don't want to offend the developers but for some of us it's nice to have something that's not a moving target. I've used KDE since I started using Linux back around 1996 and Mepis for several years now because it "just works". My problem is that I have limited time to spend learning how to use software at this point in my life and it's frustrating to spend that time then have things change and have to start all over. (I exaggerate). I never quite liked Gnome and have been very satisfied with KDE so I never really spent much time trying other desktop environments. I'll keep watch for Kiara and try it out. I do prefer a Debian based distro, what will Kiara be based on?
I guess you could call this a "mini-rant" but I like to think of it as a vote.
L8ter.....wroot

blackbelt_jones - thanks for your post. I am very interested to hear your announcement and I'll be looking out for Kiara to give it a try at the first opportunity.

Chakra (Archlinux) has both KDE3 and KDE4.
And it's very simple to install.

When I asked "prefer a Debian based distro, what will Kiara be based on?" I probably should have looked at the image above your handle.

There has always been a KDE3 version of Kubuntu for Jaunty, Karmic. And they say 10.04 will have one, too:
https://wiki.kubuntu.org/Kubuntu/Kde3/Jaunty
https://wiki.kubuntu.org/Kubuntu/Kde3/Karmic

Surely Kubuntu has never been an outstanding KDE distro, but I think KDE 3 is really mature and tested at this time, so the desktop should not be that terrible.

Please disregard my previous post, I still haven't learned to read before I post, I see Kiara is based on Slax. Never tried Slackware as it required too much thinking

Just for your information. I tried Karmic KDE3 yesterday and it was buggier than I thought. Unbelievable. KMail crashed. When you restart, it exits, then logs back in the KDE desktop, then power suddenly goes off and the machine restarts. They must have focused all their developers to the main releases, lol.

JFYI: The KDE3 release on Karmic is not done by the Kubuntu people, but is an initiative by a user who packages it. Kubuntu packages and supports only KDE 4.