The State Of The Wayland Display Server

[deanjo]

True, except their making that testing release and calling it "4.0" was false advertising. As such, it's fair to criticize it for not living up to what a 4.0 release is expected to be (it's expected to build on 3.x...).

They should have come up with a new name so that it could be version 1.0. KDE: Awesomeness Edition, version 1.0. Ok I admit my name is lousy, but at least it would have been more honest.

I wouldn't say it was false advertising. If you bothered to read the release announcement you knew full well what was ahead.

[kraftman]

I wouldn't say it was false advertising. If you bothered to read the release announcement you knew full well what was ahead.

However, Linus was taken in, because he thought 4.0 is stable release

[susikala]

Shush your mouths about it. It's history. KDE released something that most people didn't find useful. Live with it. There is nothing that they could of done to avoid it. It is simply the fundamental reality of what happens with software and rewrites.

It's as obvious as it is blameless.

It's a trade off. A bit of pain for a couple years until the software gets up to speed, then hopefully they'll have something modern and better then what you can get from other places.

Or you just go Debian and release it when it's _ready_?

These whole Ubuntu-driven set timed releases are in that respect a plague and lead to disasters such as KDE 4.0 and the Intel drivers in Jaunty. I see it less acutely with a distro (since it's usually just a collection of code and less its development), but a project doing that sort of thing is an evidence of immense stupidity. One shouldn't really trust KDE after that sort of thing.

I don't see anywhere written '*.0 are testing, unstable releases'. A release is the moment you should tag your development branch stable enough to be used by the majority of people + however long you need to squash normal-high bugs. Even Fedora, as we just noticed this week, takes matters more seriously than KDE. It's ridiculous.

Just follow GNOME's efficient and slow phasing out (look at the roadmap) and moving to 3.0. This is how you should move, even if it takes longer.

[curaga]

I don't find the KDE devs at fault for picking a differing versioning style from what people are used to. After all, the only place who cares about 1.0 is the proprietary world, and even they because it's "just always been that way".

A lot of free software projects don't go with the "usual" versioning style. And it doesn't matter if one project's 1.0 is not what another project would tag with the same number.

I read the release announcement, and decided not to try it at that time. It took less than a minute, and it's not too much to ask to read a short notice is it.

[deanjo]

However, Linus was taken in, because he thought 4.0 is stable release

It's not the first time I'm sure Linus has blindly leaped without looking.

[kraftman]

@susikala

Just follow GNOME's efficient and slow phasing out (look at the roadmap) and moving to 3.0. This is how you should move, even if it takes longer.

I can dispute a lot about this 'efficiency', but I won't in this thread. Moving from QT3 to QT4 is like moving from Gtk* to QT4 (ok, maybe in some, but probably in big part), so in my opinion Gnomes way is not the best in this case.

[elanthis]

What does GTK vs Qt have to do with Wayland? Oh, right. Nothing.

I look forward to seeing Wayland backends for both toolkits, not to mention Firefox and OOo and Cairo. I look forward to seeing if Wayland is actually usable as the actual desktop display server and not just as an X multiplexer, or to see if X just gets those same features and obviates Wayland. For all the complaints against X, it has kept up just fine so far, especially since the X.org rejuvenation. Time will tell, I suppose.

[susikala]

Moving from QT3 to QT4 is like moving from Gtk* to QT4 (ok, maybe in some, but probably in big part), so in my opinion Gnomes way is not the best in this case.

Sorry I'm pressing here, but why would you use the same name for two versions of a product that have (according to you) as little to do with each other as one of them compared to a wholly different undertaking? Isn't that more like forking, or creating a whole new project? Then it should also be advertised as such ("KDE done right") and not be called "KDE x".

[kraftman]

Sorry I'm pressing here, but why would you use the same name for two versions of a product that have (according to you) as little to do with each other as one of them compared to a wholly different undertaking? Isn't that more like forking, or creating a whole new project? Then it should also be advertised as such ("KDE done right") and not be called "KDE x".

I would use same name, because it's already well known and both are made by same people. Another reason is to not confusing users. I'm not sure if they differ in such level I mentioned before. I was just guessing why KDE devs chose to rewrite every application.

@Elanthis

What does GTK vs Qt have to do with Wayland? Oh, right. Nothing.

If there will be only one toolkit Wayland dev/devs will have less work to do The same about graphic cards drivers developers.

[DeepDayze]

In an ideal world there'd be a stable API that all driver writers (both opensource and proprietary) can write to to ensure their drivers will perform. Sadly that is not the case now...API keeps changing and causing all kinds of headaches for graphics driver writers...

Desktop environments/window managers should also have a stable API too