KDE 4 revisited

Back in January I wrote about the newly-released KDE 4.0, and what a disappointment it was.

Since then, and particularly in recent weeks, the FOSS community has been raging with discussions about the perceived issues with KDE4.

On the one hand you’ve had people calling for a KDE fork to occur, on the other you’ve had some KDE folk stamping their feet and getting unhappy (and then calming down a little later). And vaguely in the middle some “commentators” have been trying to finesse it all away (for example here and here ) by saying that it’s the fault of the users for not knowing what they were getting in to.

On all sides, an awful lot of nonsense has spewed forth. Which is a shame. I’m a long-time KDE user, and suspect always will be. And, in the fullness of time, I am sure I will one day move to KDE4 and enjoy it greatly.

All these commentators seem to try and explain things away in such a complex manner, when the truth is so much simpler. KDE4 is not yet ready for day to day use by most people. It shows great promise and improves almost daily. When released, despite the frantic back-pedaling that is now occurring, the KDE team simply failed to communicate what they were releasing. Looking at the original release statement, there’s no trace of the fact that it was bug-ridden and lacked vast numbers of key features. And that’s fine, as it was actually an early alpha-release. It’s just that they failed to mention that small but important fact…

Once the heat has died down we will see that the KDE team, in their understandable enthusiasm, simply mis-communicated information. No malice at all was intended. It was just once of those things. Learn a lesson. Move on. And look forward to the release of a real KDE4 in the coming months. I am.







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