Essentially, KDE3.x is going away because Trolltech brought out Qt4 and sometime in the near future will no longer support Qt3..

Why not stay with Qt3 and KDE3.x? The KDE dev crew probably does not have the man power and resources to take on development and maintenance of both Qt3 AND KDE3.x. They cannot continue developing KDE3.x with what would become a static Qt3 widget set. As time progressed KDE3.x.y would fall farther and farther behind modern desktops because without using the Qt3 widget set as the building blocks developers would be forced to break with Qt3 and start adding rogue code to KDE3.x.y to obtain needed capabilities. Then one could ask, "Why use Qt at all?"

The whole purpose in using Qt3 in the first place was to avoid reinventing the wheel. Qt3 widgets link the hardware to the application controls. It allows a developer to write an app as C++ source and compile it on any platform that Qt3 supports without changing a line of code. At work the source for my Qt4 based apps could be compiled on either Linux or Windows without changing a line of source AND they would automatically switch between an Oracle or PostgreSQL database. I wrote and tested the apps on Linux using Kate as the editor and PostgreSQL as the back end and compiled them on my XP workstation against an Oracle database.


Why did Trolltech bring out Qt4? Qt4 represents a change in development paradigm AND a widget set that was created from scratch, sans legacy baggage which leads to bloat, to incorporate state of the art models in desktop graphics, documents, threading and other features. It would not have been practical to "paste" the new technology onto the old. Such a route would have led to bloat and bugs that would have made KDE as notorious as Windows and just as difficult to maintain or change.

I had never learned to code in C++ before I started using Qt3 and I almost gave the tool up because of the complexity of the Designer. I began using Qt3 in the last year of it's life cycle. It was difficult to learn and use because one had to manipulate text and combo boxes in the designer to add libraries and links to other forms. The Designer wrote its output to an xml file, which the User Interface Compiler (UIC) used as a source to create actual C++ code. I've heard that some developers could write UIC compatible xml files (forms) manually and I find that amazing since a form with, say, 4 tabs and 20+ controls per tab would be very complex and several thousand lines long!

But, when Qt4 came out it was like a breath of fresh air. Coding was done as described in the C++ tutorials and classes. Model-view-controller implementation was easier too. Development of applications using Qt4 was, IMO, MUCH simpler. The Designer is mainly was used just to design forms, although there still is some automatic stub generation for functions and connections, if one wants to use them. The developer creates the main.cpp, the appropriate header source files containing class declarations, the cpp files that call the headers, the resource files, and the project file.


So, it's only a matter of time before distros also have to stop supporting KDE 3.5.x because they do not have the man power or resources to do what the KDE dev crew doesn't have the man power and resources to do and IF they stay with KDE3.5.x as their DE then they would have to assume those duties but they can't.

Besides, staying with KDE3.5, as fine a DE as it currently is, would be like staying with a Tin Lizzy because you didn't want to drive over 40 mph, or you preferred the crank-start to the new battery starter, or you preferred wearing a trench coat and goggles in freezing rain to setting in an enclosed, aircondition cab that had windshield washers on the windows, or you have no use for a radio or cd/dvd player, or navigational GPS, or heated seats, or OnStar. Yup, you want to stay with the Lizzy because it "just works" and everything else is bloat.

Thank you very much, GreyGeek.

GreyGeek wrote:Besides, staying with KDE3.5, as fine a DE as it currently is, would be like staying with a Tin Lizzy because you didn't want to drive over 40 mph, or you preferred the crank-start to the new battery starter, or you preferred wearing a trench coat and goggles in freezing rain to setting in an enclosed, aircondition cab that had windshield washers on the windows, or you have no use for a radio or cd/dvd player, or navigational GPS, or heated seats, or OnStar. Yup, you want to stay with the Lizzy because it "just works" and everything else is bloat.

No thats not realy fair and apt.

if kde3.5* does have all the functions that you nead then you would be fine by using kde3.5* as DE.

Rather it is like listening to 77punk as you feal that modern punk dosent have the same feling and same format as 77punk ,but you listen some other bands that are playing mordern 77punk and some other artist that dosent play punk but you still se you self as a 77-punk.

I realy like the kde3.5* it has preatty mouch all the function that i nead from a DE and i personly prefer the qt3 visual looks before qt4 visual look.

But i keap an eye on kde4 -svn and are traying 2 configure it so that i can get the kde3.5* feal and visual style as my kde3.5* and important functionality until then i vil youse kde3.5* even if its outdated.

of_darkness wrote:if kde3.5* does have all the functions that you nead then you would be fine by using kde3.5* as DE.

For now. It is only a matter of time before user X will need/want feature Y that kde3.5* can't provide. Either because the framework can't provide it, or (more likely) there aren't enough developers working on the 3.x series to implement it.

Or for that matter: a question of time before a exploit is found that there aren't enough devs around to fix in a timely manner.

Kryten2X4B wrote:

of_darkness wrote:if kde3.5* does have all the functions that you nead then you would be fine by using kde3.5* as DE.

For now. It is only a matter of time before user X will need/want feature Y that kde3.5* can't provide. Either because the framework can't provide it, or (more likely) there aren't enough developers working on the 3.x series to implement it.

Or for that matter: a question of time before a exploit is found that there aren't enough devs around to fix in a timely manner.

Everyone has something wright. What is importan for myself? First stability which I have from FreeBSD. Second I use graphics programs too and because I started with KDE from version 1 I thnk, I am still using it but nowadays is to bloated and for me "modern" mean nothing. I like to use Xfce for example if will be possible to install Kmail and K3b without 90% of KDE. Oh I forgot, I use Opera too .

Kryten2X4B wrote:

of_darkness wrote:if kde3.5* does have all the functions that you nead then you would be fine by using kde3.5* as DE.

For now. It is only a matter of time before user X will need/want feature Y that kde3.5* can't provide. Either because the framework can't provide it, or (more likely) there aren't enough developers working on the 3.x series to implement it.

Or for that matter: a question of time before a exploit is found that there aren't enough devs around to fix in a timely manner.

Maybe, maybe not, im more betting ot that its gonna take some years before ther's some real revulution that would turn over those whom use kde3.5* today to kde4.

well that may be a possible reason but i deppends on the severity and what i may in reality do to your system.

that how im resoning.

actually I think that's just the plasma matures ( and 4.2 is matured ) and a few other apps,
K3b, Amarok (non beta =p ), Konversation, a good version of GTK-Qt engine (for Gimp and Inkscape , there's no need to rewrite those to use Qt, they are really good doing what they do using GTK, of course that they could use GraphicsView instead of cairo for speed (... somebody has just pointed me out that cairo overspeeds Arthur in some ways, anyone care to show me how? ) and stuff.

Tomaz wrote:actually I think that's just the plasma matures ( and 4.2 is matured ) and a few other apps,
K3b, Amarok (non beta =p ), Konversation, a good version of GTK-Qt engine (for Gimp and Inkscape , there's no need to rewrite those to use Qt, they are really good doing what they do using GTK, of course that they could use GraphicsView instead of cairo for speed (... somebody has just pointed me out that cairo overspeeds Arthur in some ways, anyone care to show me how? ) and stuff.

As long as I can get Inkscape and Gimp to use a proper file-selector I don't mind them using gtk...

BTW, am I the only one that Inkscape is *really* slow in starting up on KDE4? It takes about a minute for it to launch, and it doesn't seem to matter which distro I'm using. Granted, I've only used in in KDE4 with OpenSUSE (11.0 and 11.1 beta) and Kubuntu (Hardy and Intrepid) but the startup time is pretty consistent. Otherwise it works fine though.

Kryten2X4B wrote:

Tomaz wrote:actually I think that's just the plasma matures ( and 4.2 is matured ) and a few other apps,
K3b, Amarok (non beta =p ), Konversation, a good version of GTK-Qt engine (for Gimp and Inkscape , there's no need to rewrite those to use Qt, they are really good doing what they do using GTK, of course that they could use GraphicsView instead of cairo for speed (... somebody has just pointed me out that cairo overspeeds Arthur in some ways, anyone care to show me how? ) and stuff.

As long as I can get Inkscape and Gimp to use a proper file-selector I don't mind them using gtk...

BTW, am I the only one that Inkscape is *really* slow in starting up on KDE4? It takes about a minute for it to launch, and it doesn't seem to matter which distro I'm using. Granted, I've only used in in KDE4 with OpenSUSE (11.0 and 11.1 beta) and Kubuntu (Hardy and Intrepid) but the startup time is pretty consistent. Otherwise it works fine though.

On FreeBSD and KDE 3.5.10 and on KDE 4.1.1 Inkscape starting about 4 to 5 seconds (version 0.46), GIMP works very good too.

We (translations agency) use KDE4.x.x because this desktop is a productivity booster and because of the format versatilibilitty (is that a word?) of the linux desktop. It is a pity though, that the only decent CAT tool which runs on Linux is written in java rather than QT.
It is called Swordfish, and it is very, very effective.
It is a very effective tool (effective means filtering of proprietery formats and a very nice algorithm when it comes to term-translations - this is where it pays to buy a CAT-tool).

As Swordfish does not support various plural forms in po-files, I have used Lokalize on some occasionss. It is a great tool and it is fast as lightening, but it does not provide much help to the individual translator.

Imagine an application with the speed of Localize and the features of Swordfish ..... dreaming, dreaming dreaming )

Grey Geek has made a pretty good argument for why KDE3 is doomed, so I think I need to switch to Gnome. I can see where it's nobody's fault. And I'm sorry for getting angry. Nobody has to care what I think, but what will bring me back to KDE is full functionality for Konqueror. (I mean Konqueror the amazing file manager, not the mediocre web browser.) That's not an impossible dream. It's just not a priority right now. It's not the default filemanager, so maybe they haven't gotten around to fixing it.[hr]

You know what? **** that.

You know, I'd never say that KDE4 sucks, right? Well Gnome really does suck. Loud and hard. Aand I used to use iut years ago. Clearly, I didn't know what I was doing. I really don't want to change distros, so I guess it's back to Hardy for for me.[hr]

blackbelt_jones wrote:You know what? **** that.

You know, I'd never say that KDE4 sucks, right? Well Gnome really does suck. Loud and hard. And I used to use it years ago. Clearly, I didn't know what I was doing. I really don't want to change distros, so I guess it's back to Hardy for me.

I note that a lot of the posts for Anti-KDE 4 in this thread that mention that "someday" KDE 3 will no longer be supported forget to consider that by the time it is unsupported KDE 4 will be much more mature. KDE 3 will still be around in a year; in one year we will have KDE 4.4, considering the massive amount of improvements between 4.0 and 4.2 you can pretty much assume the same amount will be made between 4.2 and 4.4. When KDE 3 is officially dropped (Use a real distro if they decide to drop KDE 3 before then) KDE 4 will have 99% of the missing features and be just as stable.

Also there is nothing stopping you from using KDE 4 apps in KDE 3, if one of your needed apps becomes usable you can also just use it on the KDE 3 desktop. You don't need KDE 4 to run KDE 4 apps. It's also valid the other way around, you can use KDE 3 apps in KDE 4.

Tomaz wrote:Robin: on the apps side, launch a few apps, for instance gwenview, and compare them with the 3.5x versions.
on the desktop side, try to configure your panel, or the screen, put a few plasmoids on the screen and see it`s shine.

you still failed to tell us what you did on 3.5 that you cant do in 4.x

Okay, I have to be frank.

You know, I've only seen a couple of widgets that can do anything that a panel applet can't do. There's very little enhanced function, but at the same time those widgets are annoying with all that adjusting, resizing, locking and unlocking. Those little handles or wings or whatever, those little tabs you grab the plasmoid by... well, maybe it's my old machine, but they have a way of eluding me, of flicking in and out as I try to grab them. I get that someday these plasmoid doo-dads may have some real functional advantage and certain things like the "notes" plasmoid demonstarate that now. But right now it's lots of annoyance, lots of frustration, and very little enhanced function. And it's all about eye candy.

Whenever I bring any of this up, I hear about how great it's going to be in the future. Great applications coming. I don't disbelieve this, but I don't believe it either. I don't have any opinion on technology that doesn't exist yet, and I don't make decisions based on, though apparently Kubuntu does.

Ubuntu is a real distro. Ubtunu is as real as it gets.

blackbelt_jones wrote:

Tomaz wrote:Robin: on the apps side, launch a few apps, for instance gwenview, and compare them with the 3.5x versions.
on the desktop side, try to configure your panel, or the screen, put a few plasmoids on the screen and see it`s shine.

you still failed to tell us what you did on 3.5 that you cant do in 4.x

Okay, I have to be frank.

You know, I've only seen a couple of widgets that can do anything that a panel applet can't do. There's very little enhanced function, but at the same time those widgets are annoying with all that adjusting, resizing, locking and unlocking. Those little handles or wings or whatever, those little tabs you grab the plasmoid by... well, maybe it's my old machine, but they have a way of eluding me, of flicking in and out as I try to grab them. I get that someday these plasmoid doo-dads may have some real functional advantage and certain things like the "notes" plasmoid demonstarate that now. But right now it's lots of annoyance, lots of frustration, and very little enhanced function. And it's all about eye candy.

Whenever I bring any of this up, I hear about how great it's going to be in the future. Great applications coming. I don't disbelieve this, but I don't believe it either. I don't have any opinion on technology that doesn't exist yet, and I don't make decisions based on, though apparently Kubuntu does.

Ubuntu is a real distro. Ubtunu is as real as it gets.

In kde3 you had karamba widgets where you can't change size, you also needed to lock them unlock them before you could place them, you needed to lock them 1 by one. You could not put them on kicker panel. Could you place kmenu on the dektop without writing a extra application for it?

And one of the plasma themes also follows system colors so you could make kde4 look like kde3 with that theme. And people just starting to make plasmoids some usefull some not.