The problem with promises is they are not real. But you can bet the current PIM suit is going to betray you as soon as you need a desaster recovery.

I find that quite unlikely. The PIM team took the deliberate decision to not release alongside KDE 4.5 to avoid causing harm to the users, and to release the Akonadi ports in the best possible condition. They also use their own software, so will likely work out the majority of the severe bugs.

Akonadi is simply a cache of data, the default resources shipped with KDE are not known to cause data loss as far as I know.

I started this discussion more than half a year ago. What happened? I assume a lot! Many developpers work hard on this for sure!

But the question of "product management" still is open, isn't it? Meanwhile I switched to Kubuntu (10.10) just to be a bit more save from arguments like: "Never complain because what you use is a test version of Debian with KDE 4!"

What is my subjective opinion on the change of situation?

0. Ubuntu is as far away from being software that should be used productively as my former native Debian version! In some areas it is even worse. In my opinion this is a big lie to say people should avoid Debian Testing and use Ubuntu instead!

1. A lot of the problems (with bug reports I wrote!) are not solved!

2. My feeling is that even more new problems appear.

3. KDE 4 still looks very interesting but the real improvements for users are something far away on the horizon.

4. After more than 10 years Linux and KDE I was so offended of the interdependencies of bugs within KDE 4 that I had to write down a bug report story in my own blog, wondering what would be "the final straw" before I switched to Windoof 7 or Mac OS X

http://mynewkde4.wordpress.com/2011/01/06/never-ending-story/

Or as a summary: KDE PIM as the part of KDE that propably most of the people out there use productively did not improve in a way that really would be significant. This really is a pity!

Regards, Martin

mhl wrote:"Never complain because what you use is a test version of Debian with KDE 4!"

That depends: if it's a bug due to debian modifications...

What is my subjective opinion on the change of situation?

0. Ubuntu is as far away from being software that should be used productively as my former native Debian version! In some areas it is even worse. In my opinion this is a big lie to say people should avoid Debian Testing and use Ubuntu instead!

As far as I know, kubuntu is far from a polished KDE distro :S

1. A lot of the problems (with bug reports I wrote!) are not solved!

Would you mind naming a few of those?

2. My feeling is that even more new problems appear.

You can have whatever feeling you want, that's not very useful though. In fact, my feeling is exactly the opposite: KDE is improving *a lot*. Then... what now?

3. KDE 4 still looks very interesting but the real improvements for users are something far away on the horizon.

To me the improvements are there:
- Activities
- Tiling on kwin
- Tabbing on kwin
- NEPOMUK!!! <--- I don't know where to start here
- Idle imap on kmail ( that's thanks to your hated akonadi software...)

And I could go on and on and on for a loooong time.

4. After more than 10 years Linux and KDE I was so offended of the interdependencies of bugs within KDE 4 that I had to write down a bug report story in my own blog, wondering what would be "the final straw" before I switched to Windoof 7 or Mac OS X

You are free to move to another platform if you feel up to it. However... what does KDE have to do with Windows or Mac? Don't you know that other DE exist? Have you heard of gnome? xfce? Enlightenment?

Or as a summary: KDE PIM as the part of KDE that propably most of the people out there use productively did not improve in a way that really would be significant. This really is a pity!

I'll admit it took a long time to KDE PIM to get to the improvements point but it is almost here: I'm running KDE PIM 4.6 beta 3 here and I'm *very* happy with it

Regards

Damnshock wrote:

mhl wrote:"Never complain because what you use is a test version of Debian with KDE 4!"

That depends: if it's a bug due to debian modifications...

What is my subjective opinion on the change of situation?

0. Ubuntu is as far away from being software that should be used productively as my former native Debian version! In some areas it is even worse. In my opinion this is a big lie to say people should avoid Debian Testing and use Ubuntu instead!

As far as I know, kubuntu is far from a polished KDE distro :S

1. A lot of the problems (with bug reports I wrote!) are not solved!

Would you mind naming a few of those?

Can you see this list? https://bugs.kde.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=UNCONFIRMED&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&emailassigned_to1=1&emailreporter1=1&emailtype1=exact&email1=Heinrich20%40gmx.de&field0-0-0=bug_status&type0-0-0=notequals&value0-0-0=UNCONFIRMED&field0-0-1=reporter&type0-0-1=equals&value0-0-1=Heinrich20%40gmx.de

Yes, I know, that this list shows more than only KDE PIM bug reports. What I see is, that a lot of errors are errors that appear in different applications or that have to do with the interfaces!

2. My feeling is that even more new problems appear.

You can have whatever feeling you want, that's not very useful though. In fact, my feeling is exactly the opposite: KDE is improving *a lot*. Then... what now?

3. KDE 4 still looks very interesting but the real improvements for users are something far away on the horizon.

To me the improvements are there:
- Activities
- Tiling on kwin
- Tabbing on kwin
- NEPOMUK!!! <--- I don't know where to start here
- Idle imap on kmail ( that's thanks to your hated akonadi software...)

And I could go on and on and on for a loooong time.

As long as most of these options are

- instable
- not usable (depending HMI)

this is not more than a glance at the horizon!

For sure sometimes something nice appears but with the first problem of activating a new option the positive effects dissapear.

Maybe you can tell me where to find a good and understandable description of how to use activities within plasma. I would be happy to find out that this really works.

On the other hand I would like to talk about examples of how annoying it can be when functionality in KDE simply dissapear or errors occur that never existed before:

1. Up to now categories within the new addressbook functionality remain dissapeared. (We discussed this around here!) This is NOTthe only problem of this module and for me this is a central part of KDE PIM!

2. In KDE 3.x we had no problem with drag-and-drop within KMail now there are a lot of problems! Now you have to use cut-and-paste instead of this to get mails or folders moved.

3. Spell checking does not work any more in KMail.

4. In KDE 3.x konqueror was a great file manager with ftp functionality and very interesting webbrowsing features. Now we do have

a. a broken konqueror
b. Rekonq which is alpha
c. Dolphin that is beta

And every one tells me how much they like firefox. If I can avoid to use firefox I do this because of the good integration of the konqueror but nowadays I am the fool telling people that I like(d) konqueror.

5. Print Preview

This was a standard functionality in KDE 3.x, now it is gone!

More examples? IMAP functionality within KMail still is buggy. Try to wake up your system and look at KMails imap processes! And so on...

4. After more than 10 years Linux and KDE I was so offended of the interdependencies of bugs within KDE 4 that I had to write down a bug report story in my own blog, wondering what would be "the final straw" before I switched to Windoof 7 or Mac OS X

You are free to move to another platform if you feel up to it. However... what does KDE have to do with Windows or Mac? Don't you know that other DE exist? Have you heard of gnome? xfce? Enlightenment?

Are you joking? Have you heard of MOTIF? Have you heard of the desktop of Interleaf (under MOTIF)? I have never seen a better way to handle files on a desktop!

Anyway! I know that my argument is offending people working on KDE 4 but my point is:

There should be better KDE "product management" and more interaction with users.(sic!)

Or as a summary: KDE PIM as the part of KDE that propably most of the people out there use productively did not improve in a way that really would be significant. This really is a pity!

I'll admit it took a long time to KDE PIM to get to the improvements point but it is almost here: I'm running KDE PIM 4.6 beta 3 here and I'm *very* happy with it

This seems to be 4.4.6 and I cannot remember anything that improved since KDE 3.x and a lot that now is slower, instable or applications with gone functionality - sorry!

For me KDE PIM is the central groupware framework of KDE and it should be highly integrated with the rest but especially in this area there are too many problems.

Regards, Martin

mhl wrote:As long as most of these options are

- instable
- not usable (depending HMI)

On your own perception. KDE is pretty much rock solid for me (konqueror sometimes crashes due to flash plugin which is not much of a problem as I usually use firefox).

this is not more than a glance at the horizon!

For sure sometimes something nice appears but with the first problem of activating a new option the positive effects dissapear.

Again, that's your perception. I agree sometimes bugs appear (tell me a software without them) but the improvements, to *me*, are worth the little annoys

Maybe you can tell me where to find a good and understandable description of how to use activities within plasma. I would be happy to find out that this really works.

Maybe this video will help:

http://www.mefeedia.com/watch/34190828

1. Up to now categories within the new addressbook functionality remain dissapeared. (We discussed this around here!) This is NOTthe only problem of this module and for me this is a central part of KDE PIM!

Never used this but I'll give you that.

2. In KDE 3.x we had no problem with drag-and-drop within KMail now there are a lot of problems! Now you have to use cut-and-paste instead of this to get mails or folders moved.

Haven't even noticed this problem existed :S

3. Spell checking does not work any more in KMail.

True. The problem is not kmail related but KDE itself.However if you truelly need a spellchecker you can use another program to compose your emails (openoffice, vim... whichever you preferr).

4. In KDE 3.x konqueror was a great file manager with ftp functionality and very interesting webbrowsing features.

I still use all of those features without problems.

Now we do have
a. a broken konqueror
b. Rekonq which is alpha
c. Dolphin that is beta

a- broken?
b- rekonq is not part of KDE
c- beta? what's not working for you on dolphin?

And every one tells me how much they like firefox. If I can avoid to use firefox I do this because of the good integration of the konqueror but nowadays I am the fool telling people that I like(d) konqueror.

Use whatever software you prefer

5. Print Preview

This was a standard functionality in KDE 3.x, now it is gone!

I sometimes miss that too

More examples? IMAP functionality within KMail still is buggy. Try to wake up your system and look at KMails imap processes! And so on...

I wouldn't call that a bug but a lack of functionality. Although I admit it will be great if I could wake up the laptop and have the imap resources reconnect to the imap server

Are you joking? Have you heard of MOTIF? Have you heard of the desktop of Interleaf (under MOTIF)? I have never seen a better way to handle files on a desktop!

Your point being?

There should be better KDE "product management" and more interaction with users.(sic!)

Says who? you?

Anyway, the only thing you could have solved with this is the "print preview" thing if any

For me KDE PIM is the central groupware framework of KDE and it should be highly integrated with the rest but especially in this area there are too many problems.

For me as well. And the integration is amazing just with little annoyances such as the default identity problem or the spellchecking thing. The program itself runs pretty much perfectly.

Regards