So I'm relatively new to Linux, or at least the idea of running it as my main OS and I was reading up on XFCE. I just did the KDE 4.4 update and LooooooooooOOOooooOve the little tweaks. I think the new KDE rocks IMHO but some people don't feel the same or even remotely close to say the least.

I am quoting this from a website I stumbled across and to give you a little background the post is located here
http://www.therussellfamily.org/~doug/?p=52

Basically this guy through the post goes on to say how close minded the developers are for KDE and how arrogant they are. Here is an excerpt

I continued to use KDE 4 on my desktop, but the experience was becoming less enjoyable. KDE 4 began to feel bloated compared to XFCE and those minor annoyances were becoming harder and harder to overlook. Then one day, while searching for a workaround to a particular annoyance, I stumbled across a blog posting from a certain KDE developer making the tired and arrogant claim that the developer knows best. This kind of talk infuriates me. I work as a developer in my day job and have never come across this argument professionally. I think it is because professional developers know that this kind of **** won’t fly. My customers look to me for my experience and expertise, but in the end, on certain things, they know what they want and what they like and it is my job to make it happen. This is how I get paid.

OK is it just me or is this guy oblivious???? Note how he voices his opinion but then goes on to compare KDE's customer relationship with his own. I see one major flaw with that comparison and he says it best "this is how I get paid".
Maybe he forgot he wasn't paying KDE, and he says KDE devs are arrogant........pfffffft

KDE developers do pour their soul into their work, so arrogance is needed; mainly because there is always going to be a small subset of users who HATE IT AND WANT IT TO DIE!

*ahem*

Of course, it's a bit silly for a developer to create software and not listen to his 'customors' be they paying or not. There's no point developing software for something like KDE if your not prepared to enhance it through feedback. Only diffrence is, that guy gets his money from it and is thus dependant on his customors, KDE devs (and others in the F/OSS ecosystem) Don't and could easily walk away if they are met with disdain and helplessness....

Anyway, back to my point, due to said subset of users, the only way to get a dev working for free is being helpful and polite. It'll drive them away if you let people hurt their feelings... :/

I agree, Maybe if the guy took less of a DB attitude and said "Hey I'm Old school and hate change and new things I have to learn. Can you please make an option that I can click to get all my old school settings that I'm familiar with back?". I think he would have had a better chance with that.

Or he could just stick his head in the sand and wait for everything to blow over (which it won't)...

Seriously, there are enough distros out there which haven't adapted KDE4 yet and anyway, if he likes KDE3 so what is stopping him to not upgrade?

Some people are just really bizarre.

Likewise, there is something we have called 'Choice'. Considering most desktop enviroments work on an increasingly large set of standards...

This isn't Microsoft, we don't lock-in, people...

"becoming less enjoyable", "began to feel bloated". KDE 4.4 is the best release ever! It's so pretty and smooth! I love it

There's a reason sometimes the developers just put their foot down. Sometimes, the requests of the user (or even other developers!) are just stupid. One example: someone submitted a patch to kdelibs that gave you an option to not highlight text boxes when you click on them. Why would ANYBODY want that?!

Another example: from 3.5-->4.4, GWenview removed the option to show the loading cursor when the application is busy. Yes. That just makes sense. When the application is busy, show a loading cursor. Why would a user want to switch that off? That got itself quite a bit of critisism as well. Good grief.

I've been a KDE user for a long time. KDE has its strengths and it has its faults. All in all, it is GENERALLY a good solid desktop environment. Because of its completeness there is some heaviness, also. Can't get away from that; mitigate, yes, get away from, no.

XFCE is a a whole 'nother breed and while it has some attributes of other DEs, it simply is designed differently. I have used XFCE, and it is (or at least was) a good product. I was able to use and to, in effect, integrate many disparate apps into its environment to good productivity and utility.

I have to wonder, if the ones who complain about this DE or that app, this environment or that, truly understand what Linux is all about. First of all, if there is a way in software to do something, you can count a hundred ways or more to do it in Linux; many of them good solid ways. One user's requirements are another's stumbling blocks, it's ever that way in software development, but not worthy of calling any user stupid, or any developer worse!!

I have two fairly old IBM laptops. My everyday laptop is the one in my sig. Not an awesome machine by any means or measure. But it works, and has worked for several years under Linux, and for a few brief periods, under various *BSDs. My other one is an IBM ThinkPad 365XD (P120, 72MB, 3.2GB). Neither machine will run a modern Windows environment, yet each will run an appropriate Linux or *BSD OS with no problem. For the 365XD finding wifi radios is not much fun, but in a wired environment it's just another machine on the Internet.

So let's not get too worked up, or paranoid-sounding about other people's choices and desires. Let 'em be, and let's not point fingers back at them; that's worse than pointing at each other on the same forum, because they can't defend themselves. Talking behind someone's back is a very bad habit.

jglen, out of interest, can modern DE's run on those machines?

Thanks for the question. The IBM 365XD can run something very light such a D*** Small Liunx or Puppy, but I have managed to get OO.o (at least an old version) to run, but that's a stretch. Essentially, running multiple apps is not a good thing, unless they are the light apps that work with DSL and Puppy. But neither of those use actual "desktop environment" type GUIs.

The IBM T20, my everyday machine, runs KDE 4.4.3 as found in Kubuntu 10.04 LTE, and runs it just fine. Quite honestly, it takes a little while to boot completely to the desktop (~1.5 minutes), but once there it works reasonably well. Running multiple apps (i.e., mplayer with streaming radio music, Firefox, Thunderbird, OO.o ), is quite possible, and reliable. I play music most of the time while on-line, and even fetching/installing updates with apt-get doesn't cause any interruptions to the music stream.

So all in all, while the T20 is probably at the low-end of a satisfying Linux experience, it is satisfying

Nowadays i just ignore those comments on how bad kde4 is. I mean, i also posted that i will leave kde forever because of kde4, but when kde 4.3 came out, i tried it once again (i tried all kde4 releases) and it was kinda hard to navigate. But then i thought why not install it, i dont have anything better to do. And i removed gnome, and after few days of using kde4 i have got totally into it. Now i cant leave it - its smooth, nice, shiny, feature rich. Now when i think on how ugly kde3 looked, i dont miss it at all. And when i remember all those konqueror issues, i start to understand that kde4 is a big improvement. And talking about stability, kde 4.4.5 is much more stable than 3.5.10. Just remember how many problems qt3 had. kde4 is the BEST desktop yet. And those who say its not stable, should forget how bad kde 4.0 was, because im sick of these complains.

Well, I wouldn't disagree completely with them: there are fringe cases that 3.5 handled better than 4.4 does, like multiple screens, but for everday use it's pretty much fine.

Madman wrote:Well, I wouldn't disagree completely with them: there are fringe cases that 3.5 handled better than 4.4 does, like multiple screens, but for everday use it's pretty much fine.

Really? I have had a lot more trouble with multiple screens on KDE 3 than I do on KDE 4, although that may in part be due to Nvidia improving their multi-screen support in the meantime.

I don't get how people think they have a right to treat FOSS devs the way they do sometimes. File a bug report or a feature request and then leave it alone.

I have a neighbor who sometimes mows my lawn after he mows his. I don't go pointing out all the spots he missed or complain that he didn't trim the hedges too. He's doing me a favor. It'd be different story if I paid him to do it but I don't.