Installed it and yes, I also suddenly have a new wallpaper when logging in. Is that the change we were waiting for? I didn't.

Dolphin: still no variable icons in the places menu. Yes, they can be set to one of 4 fixed values but that is not the same. Why was it changed? Why??
Renaming files and folders: still not back to the way it was: a separate small window where the name could be changed. So totally different from all other DE's, making KDE stand out, far above the others. Now it is just one of the others. "In-line" renaming is the new thing! Lose it, cause it looks terrible.

No, the developers did find something to change. Wow, great change. Only one in the totally wrong direction. When copying a file, at the right side of the lower panel you see a circle being filled up. It used to be, and I loved that since it was very clear, a circle which was filled up in a circular movement. Now the circle is filled up from left to right.
Are these the kind of changes we are waiting for? Is that all the developers do? Breaking down what was good, breaking down the looks and feel of KDE? Don't have they other things to do? 4.8 was good, then the developers started to lose interest in what they were doing, didn't know anymore what to change so they came up with these nonsense.
I hate Gnome since version 3 so I don't want to go back there, but staying here using KDE is something which gets harder and harder since, just as with Gnome who killed Gnome 2, KDE is killing KDE 4. Breaking it down stone by stone.
Shame. It was so good.
DeMus
Level 2


Posts: 95
Joined: 15 Aug 2009 22:11

First, please remember the , especially the KDE Code of Conduct. While I can understand your frustration, your post is hardly constructive.

Now to your points:

Installed it and yes, I also suddenly have a new wallpaper when logging in. Is that the change we were waiting for? I didn't.

I only got a new wallpaper for the screen locker (see viewtopic.php?f=66&t=110039&p=259184).

Dolphin: still no variable icons in the places menu. Yes, they can be set to one of 4 fixed values but that is not the same. Why was it changed? Why??

Because a lot of users found it annoying: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=182089
So now you can set the icon size you want. What do you miss about the automatic resize feature?

Renaming files and folders: still not back to the way it was: a separate small window where the name could be changed. So totally different from all other DE's, making KDE stand out, far above the others. Now it is just one of the others. "In-line" renaming is the new thing! Lose it, cause it looks terrible.

I don't see what's bad about being similar to other file managers. Anyway, if you don't want inline renaming, the Dolphin maintainer was actually nice enough to add the dialog window back: Dolphin Menu -> Configure Dolphin... -> General -> Rename inline. (Personally I see this option as unnecessary and wouldn't have included it.)

Now the circle is filled up from left to right.

Is that really such a big deal? Anyway, I think I read somewhere that it was clearer this way, but I can't find a link at the moment (probably was in the plasma-devel mailing list).

Are these the kind of changes we are waiting for? Is that all the developers do? Breaking down what was good, breaking down the looks and feel of KDE? Don't have they other things to do? 4.8 was good, then the developers started to lose interest in what they were doing, didn't know anymore what to change so they came up with these nonsense.

This is very disrespectful to KDE developers. They are normal people, just like you, many are students or have jobs and family. They contribute to KDE in their free time just because they enjoy it. (There are some who are paid for working on KDE software, but they are few.) So to answer your question: yes, they have many other things to do. I for one am happy that there are people who are willing to contribute to KDE despite that.

KDE is not a company, the developers are not a unit all moving in the same direction. Sometimes there will be changes that you don't like. But remember that KDE mostly consist of volunteers, and remember that you can benefit from all their work for free - free as in free beer, as well as free speech.

I recommend that you try to get involved and read a bit about the improvements made. Here are for example some examples from Dolphin, Nepomuk, and KWin:
http://freininghaus.wordpress.com/2012/ ... lphin-2-2/ (same link as the one above)
http://freininghaus.wordpress.com/2013/ ... -is-there/
http://vhanda.in/blog/2013/01/what-new- ... omuk-4-10/
http://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/k ... k-in-kwin/

Maybe you'll become interested in contributing yourself. Remember that it doesn't have to involve coding (http://community.kde.org/Getinvolved).

I know I sound too harsh and I shouldn't. I apologize for that.
It's just that it seems to me, the only things developers are interested in, is changing the looks of programs. There are so many more important things to change. Some years ago I wrote a small article on the Mint blog stating, what I call, the 3 S'es.
S for Speed
S for Stability
S for Safety
According to me these are the items developers should concentrate about, not about constantly changing the looks of a program, especially when it was so good already.

I loved the variable icon size in the Places panel in Dolphin, now it is gone. I loved the file and folder renaming window, now it is gone., I loved the way the circle was filled up when copying something, now it is gone. Why? Leave it alone. Please.

I missed the new setting for the inline renaming. Thank you for pointing that out to me.

I started using KDE because it was different than other DE's. When making it the same, there is no need anymore to use. And that is a shame.
But that is my way of looking at things.

Once again I apologize if I wrote disrespectful things, it was not my intention. Of course I know many of the developers are volunteers and they do a good job. It's just that I wonder where do the ideas to change looks come from?

The minor changes are really annoying sometimes. But KDE has been improving on quality/stability a lot. Really appreciate the stability now

DeMus wrote:I know I sound too harsh and I shouldn't. I apologize for that.
It's just that it seems to me, the only things developers are interested in, is changing the looks of programs. There are so many more important things to change. Some years ago I wrote a small article on the Mint blog stating, what I call, the 3 S'es.
S for Speed
S for Stability
S for Safety
According to me these are the items developers should concentrate about, not about constantly changing the looks of a program, especially when it was so good already.

Well, if you look at the links I posted, you'll see that have been several "under the hood" fixes for 4.10. For the workspace (Plasma Desktop), the largest change was probably the porting of many plasmoids to QML - something, if everything went right, shouldn't be immediate obvious to users. Still, that involved a lot of work.

Many of the changes you mentioned can also be seen as improvements:

Variable icon sizes in Dolphin: A lot of users complained about that and wanted fixed sizes. They've got what they want now, but then there are other users who miss the old dynamic resizing.
So why not have both? Because that would be yet another configuration option that has to be presented to the user and maintained by developers. Do we really need dynamic icon sizes if the user can choose their preferred size?

Progress "circle" filling from left to right: As said, I think it was done because it's clearer this way. This is actually something that can be quantified by studies, so it's not entirely subjective.

When you change something, there will always be users who don't like the change (relevant comic), and sometimes an improvement may seem like a step backwards at first. For example, the new screen locker has issues with keyboard focus on my system, and the new Nepomuk indexer crashes from time to time. But once those issues are ironed out, I'm sure they'll be better in the long run.

The problem I have with your original post is that 1. you lumped every KDE developer together, 2. you attacked those who actually contributed to the project, and 3. you seemed to indicate that their work was useless and that they should have worked on something else, simply because you didn't like the changes. Instead it's far more productive to report bugs, and if a change really bothers you, you could file a report and state why the old way was better. If enough users agree the developers may change their minds. (Personally I'm a fan of e.g. Dolphin and KWin partly because of how responsive their maintainers are to user suggestions.)

Nayar wrote:The minor changes are really annoying sometimes. But KDE has been improving on quality/stability a lot. Really appreciate the stability now

Personally I like the minor changes and yes the stability of KDE has greatly improved.

Reboots and restarts of the DE are usually necessary because I'm running a Kubuntu development release that requires a reboot or restart for the update to complete and not because KDE has become unstable. When I was using KDE 4.7.x or may be 4.8.x, I was seeing the crash dialogue pop nearly every day. Not now, I rarely see it at all.