Legion wrote:I can see both sides of the argument to some degree, but think that the 'write it yourself' comments are juvenile and self defeating for KDE if it wishes to be seen as a professional, usable and user friendly environment.

well, this is a forum for users by users.
i don't see any point why one group of users should stick to diplomatic responses in order not to make kde look like an unprofessional, unusable and unfriendly environment.

I find it quite juvenile to demand people who are providing all this software for free to us to implement whatever pet feature we want to see.
That isn't how opensource worked 12 years ago when i first came in contact with it. And i find it embarising to see that it has grown into that.
opensource should be about the community of users and developers all together working side by side to make this the greatest software in the world, and not about seperate groups, where the users are beating up the developers when the software doesn't behave as they expected or that development isn't going as fast as they would like to see it.

the other day I started Dolphin SU to navigate to and edit CUPS config, and found that I couldn't, no matter what I tried Dolphin Su would not open text files, regardless of the editor I tried to use.

works fine on my system.
You mean no editor started, or do you mean the editors started with the user priviliges, in stead of root privileges?

Sorry, but I would have thought that the ability to navigate to a file and open it as root is a pretty fundamental thing, why else does Dolphin SU exist?

Well, that is a juvenile argument: in stead of wondering if there isn't something wrong with your installation, you decided to rant about it in stead.

Riinse,

You seem very quick to dispel my criticisms without any analysis.
i) Amarok interface is clunky and a big backward step from KDE3
ii) DigiKam does NOT work over a network. You cannot store your database on a network share. This is documented and acknowledged by the developers
iii) Adding actions for a digital camera, as samhain says, how many clicks and how complicated? It's like a programming language - which I tried and failed to get working after 2-3 hours.

It seems as though the issue here is more to do with a defensive attitude. KDE has intelligent users, but we fail to understand the thinking behind what turned out to be the massive backwards step of KDE4.

I saw a post a while ago, which I cannot find now, from a KDE developer who was defending the advance of KDE4, saying that if there were a problem, it was that other software on which it depends, eg: xorg & video drivers, had not kept pace with KDE4.

I have managed development teams in large enterprises and the one main lesson you learn here is "risk assessment". How is this development going to affect the business community that it serves. KDE4 didn't do this. It was a technical proof of concept that was not suitable for main stream integration. And it still doesn;t seem to be there yet.

Don't forget, without your users you wouldn't have a need.

And yes, I do contribute to the community ... so please accept this donation of time and effort in the manner that it was given; as a very concerned user!

kde4 indeed pushed the envelope and has speed up the development of Qt and Xorg-drivers in a certain manner.
You are saying that kde should not have done that and simply ignore new features that aren't as well written as they should be.
Well, i don't that's a good idea. When all the software sticks to the safest way of development, linux will never get on par with windows on subjects as 3D, gaming and such, as on Windows, the new areas are being correctly developed because 3D stuff and games are pushing the capabilitities to their limits.


About your points: none of them have anything to do with **** Xorg-drivers or bugs in Qt.

i) amarok isn't part of KDE SC 4. So their decision to dramaticly change the application interface in their 2.0 version has nothing to do with KDE SC 4.
You don't like the new interface, others love it.

ii) digiKam also isn't part of KDE SC 4. They indeed lack the support on remote resources, but you can go around that by simply mounting the remote storage, so that digikam isn't aware of the fact that it isn't on the same computer.

iii)like i said, applications should propagate their offerings to the kde device manager. So when you connect a camera, all applications that are capable of accessing the camera should make themself available as choice in the device manager.
That has nothing to do with kde4. It is indeed all about choice, and the developers of whatever application you like to use for accessing camera's chose not to provide the neccesary information for the device manager.

Speaking of choice: when you are using kde, you aren't forced to use amarok for playing music or digikam for collecting photo's.
So if the application doesn't do what you want it to do, and the developers aren't willing to implement your pet features, simply move on to a better application that does the trick for you.

Riinse wrote:I find it quite juvenile to demand people who are providing all this software for free to us to implement whatever pet feature we want to see.

We're not talking about a pet feature, we're talking about a functioning file manager. If anything is a pet it is Dolphin, as I said, an ego driven whim.

That isn't how opensource worked 12 years ago when i first came in contact with it. And i find it embarising to see that it has grown into that.opensource should be about the community of users and developers all together working side by side to make this the greatest software in the world, and not about seperate groups, where the users are beating up the developers when the software doesn't behave as they expected or that development isn't going as fast as they would like to see it.

You have hit the nail on the head, a community working together. But, if one section (some developers) are ignoring reasonable comments by another then it is no longer a balanced community. The fact that people went to K4 persevered with it up to the current release gives an indication of their desire that the software succeeds. But, when they find problems and are ignored then the community becomes fragmented.

the other day I started Dolphin SU to navigate to and edit CUPS config, and found that I couldn't, no matter what I tried Dolphin Su would not open text files, regardless of the editor I tried to use.

works fine on my system.

You must have a marvelous system then as this is a known bug and has been commented upon on numerous forums. To quote a developer from one of them "This is an outstanding bug - we all face. We currently do not have a text editor than can open a file, once found via Dolphin as Dolphin does not retain any meta data one files".

You mean no editor started, or do you mean the editors started with the user priviliges, in stead of root privileges?

No, I mean that I get a pop up which say (for EG Kate) KDEinit cannot launch /usr/bin/kate

Well, that is a juvenile argument: in stead of wondering if there isn't something wrong with your installation, you decided to rant about it in stead.

No, first I spent a week trying to fix the problem before finding out that there is nothing wrong with my installation, there is something specifically wrong with Dolphin (see quote above).
We are up to a 4.4 release, the default file manager is crippled. Dolphin should have been drowned at birth, much better if Konq had been properly ported to K4.

@rwsinter: It is suggested that anyone who wishes to use the Device Actions module read its help file ( shipped alongside it ) before attempting to use it, as it interacts with a very powerful underlying system, which cannot be simplified without reducing its ability to be used by Developers and Power Users who wish to have fine grained control over which actions are matched by devices.

I just tested apps as root. Dolphin was able to launch *without* issue, create a file, then open that with KWrite *without* issue as well. System KDE installation uses KDE 4.3, as installed from openSUSE 11.2. Launched from a standard "su -" terminal. Not sudo. Not kdesu. Not su. "su -".

bcooksley wrote:@rwsinter: I just tested apps as root. Dolphin was able to launch *without* issue, create a file, then open that with KWrite *without* issue as well. System KDE installation uses KDE 4.3, as installed from openSUSE 11.2. Launched from a standard "su -" terminal. Not sudo. Not kdesu. Not su. "su -".

There is a fix going around which will allow a root opening of config files. But you are talking of opening SU Dolphin through a terminal, I am talking of opening SUDolphin through the start up menu - in which case it doesn't work.

I used a standard Konsole to do this. KDESu is probably not setting the session up correctly. It likely uses "su -c <command>" which doesn't work with the "--login" option needed to purge the environment variables to make KDEInit spawn, along with dbus-daemon.

Legion wrote:You have hit the nail on the head, a community working together. But, if one section (some developers) are ignoring reasonable comments by another then it is no longer a balanced community.

According to the press release, "1433 new feature requests were implemented" in kde 4.4.0 and "7293 bugs have been fixed".

That of course doesn't mean that every feature request has been granted or that every bug in kde has been revolved, but to say that the community is unbalanced because the developers aren't listening to their users is kinda bold.

You must have a marvelous system then

Apperently

But like Bcooksley, i open dolphin via su -.
So this isn't a problem in dolphin, but a problem with kdesu not purging the environment variables correctly.

rwsinter wrote:

Major changes to the workflow, no matter if they were neccesary or not, will cause people to change the way they operated their computer, and not everyone will like that.

Yes, but until Dolphin you had the choice. With konqueror you can tailor the profiles to suit your needs. Give it a basic interface at the start and a pre-defined "Advanced" users profile as a starter for more advanced users to tailor.

Why remove the functionality that people use everyday? I have seen quotes "...for ftp use an ftp manager like filezilla ..." but I just don't understand the mind set of dumbing down what was a VERY good product. Revise the interface, give it a new look, but don't remove functionality.

Remember a file manager should manage files wherever they are; local drive, hot-plug device, ftp etc ... whether it be detail lists, icons, photo thumb viewer, zip archives - these are all jobs for an advanced file manager... in fact what about more functionality - local to remote syncing and more .....

So bring back the old Konqueror - let's take a vote!

Are you having trouble with FTP functionality? I'm using Konqueror to manage my website; no problem at all. I agree with the basic premise of this thread... the move to Dolphin as the default file manager makes no sense to me. But I have no complaints about Konqueror as it stands, except that the web browser portion needs serious help. If you don't like Dolphin just switch file managers.

Riinse wrote:

aapgorilla wrote: I would like a places plugin in the sidebar similar to dolphin,

So you want konqueror to act more like dolphin

He wants Konqueror to work like it used to DA!

konqueror never had a places plugin similar to dolphin.

I didn't miss it. Didn't use it under Windows XP, when I used that cruft ages ago, anyway.

annew wrote:

So bring back the old Konqueror - let's take a vote!

One problem with that - the thousands of happy Dolphin users won't be reading a thread like this, so you can guarantee that they won't vote.

Yes and that because all of a sudden what used to work in konq was killed . So people are proving it need to be brought back. If this happens to dolphin(which I have no doubt it will because even at 4.4.2 I don't believe they have even learned from the mistake).
the features MISSING shoved off as NEW features . Think hard about that since you need to so far. Missing is not new its a bug that needs fixed. But I noticed all this gets a "WONTFIX" , dirty f..g trick so people wont show them that it does need to be brought back. Making people walk away because its closed. But since they are slowly coming back its because people wanted it so bad they ignored the 'WONTFIX' konq right clicking features and the many more now that are back . But still more missing. Classic menu was one at the beginning, setting menu . But still even though they get fixed finally its still proof that they never really learned from it. Because there is still more. Anyway I'd make a bet if the dolphin and other app people were fed the same garbage they would **** too. I have no doubt about that .
I don't care if dolphin is here but it truly sucks that it made such an impact on a great app as all the rest are doing.

Riinse wrote:konqueror never had a places plugin similar to dolphin.

Thats true but it did have the media mounted under Services but dolphin gets what we had . I know its because it used some other way to show them. But hey this is really dolphin disguised as konq(file,web node) so why its it still not functioning. Thats not a NEW wish thats just common sense that people in the file manager would still want that . Because it was a feature
that worked and now its broke which needs a fix.
It not our fault it was totally rewritten. Its not just that, its the fact too before I and others tried kde4 , we asked and were told we wouldn't lose konq. Then when we started using it finding out "WONTFIX" etc . not good .
Anyway yes more has been brought back But it took a long time and one-sidedness .

one4all wrote:Yes and that because all of a sudden what used to work in konq was killed . So people are proving it need to be brought back. If this happens to dolphin(which I have no doubt it will because even at 4.4.2 I don't believe they have even learned from the mistake).
the features MISSING shoved off as NEW features . Think hard about that since you need to so far. Missing is not new its a bug that needs fixed.

You aren't listening. The move from Qt3 to Qt4 was a major change. These things were not removed, they are features that need to be completely re-programed from scratch before they can exist at all. So yes, from a programming standpoint those are new features, features that developers simply have not had the time to do yet.

Let me re-iterate: this feature was not removed. It has to be totally re-done from scratch, and that has not happened yet.

Please remember, just because a feature happens to be important to you does not mean it is automatically important to everyone else.

one4all wrote:But I noticed all this gets a "WONTFIX" , dirty f..g trick so people wont show them that it does need to be brought back. Making people walk away because its closed.

This is not constructive. You are expected to adhere to the and KDE code of conduct and this does neither. There is not conspiracy to suppress your ideas, and accusing the forums moderators of such a thing is not helpful. Things that are in wontfix are there for specific reasons that are described in the comments. They are still visible to anyone, they are not hidden, and comments are still allowed. Comments are not allowed for duplicate ideas because comments for duplicate ideas should go in the original idea. They can still be reported if the author disagrees with the move.

one4all wrote:Anyway I'd make a bet if the dolphin and other app people were fed the same garbage they would **** too. I have no doubt about that .

I would hope that if there were problems people would be polite and constructive to the countless people who are working hard at developing the software and maintaining these forums for free in their spare time, rather than ranting, insulting people, and throwing around baseless conspiracy theories.

Lots of people have lots of features that are really important to them, but very few people are throwing tantrums about it. I would hope this is because most people realize that not everyone shares their own opinions about what features are most important and they recognize that the whole KDE community will not bend to their every whim. That is just the reality of working with a community, everybody has their own ideas and those may not agree with yours.

one4all wrote:It not our fault it was totally rewritten.

It wasn't the fault of the developers, either, it was the fault of Qt. That doesn't stop you from criticizing the developers for it.

one4all wrote:Its not just that, its the fact too before I and others tried kde4 , we asked and were told we wouldn't lose konq. Then when we started using it finding out "WONTFIX" etc . not good .

You haven't lost konqueror. It still exists. Not every feature that originally existed in konqueror has been re-implemented yet, but that is not even remotely the same as losing the program. And I am not even sure what idea you are complaining about being marked wontfix.