KDE Does Its Second 4.7 Release Candidate

[phoronix]

Phoronix: KDE Does Its Second 4.7 Release Candidate

KDE.org has announced the release of the second release candidate for the forthcoming KDE SC 4.7 build. KDE SC 4.7 is set to be released later in the month, but this is one last chance to test this desktop environment update and catch any last-minute issues...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=OTY1OA

[mugginz]

And in true KDE form, they even include brokenness in their announcement in the form of a broken link.

Currently, http://kde.org/info/4.6.95.php goes nowhere

[Tsiolkovsky]

@mugginz: If you told this to KDE people insead of just here it would get fixed faster

[mugginz]

@mugginz: If you told this to KDE people insead of just here it would get fixed faster

The issue has been already noted before I posted here.

The issue was a bit on the amusing side to me, and a little bit annoying as well.

As a long time KDE user, suffering through the 4.0/4.1 debacle in the hope that a reliable desktop would be finally forthcoming at some point in the future, I waited patiently release after release, only to finally switch to Gnome in the 4.5 time frame. When I did, I was presented with a much more reliable day to day experience, however, compared to KDE, seemingly much less feature rich. After acclimatizing to Gnome, I found it was pretty much on par for the core stuff, and very much more robust.

I had noted to several people the various bugs/crashes/issues I was having with KDE only to be essentially told that it wasn't really KDE's fault at all, and that the real culprit were those pesky distro packagers. No, the bugs were being introduced by evil forces external to the KDE folks, and that I should swap to distro A, then B, then maybe even C, because that crash was the distros fault, and that all my stability answers were lying just around the corner, with that one blessed KDE based distro that did something that all the others didn't do, not crash. I was left to wonder why KDE was so non fault-tolerant as to be rendered unstable by the act of putting it into a Linux software suite that was complete enough to provide a fully functional environment.

I grew weary, and swapped to the "other guys'" desktop in the hope of finding a stable desktop, and indeed that's what I found.

When news of the 4.7RC2 was posted here, I thought to myself now might be a good time to test KDE again to see if it'd finally become stable enough for day to day usage only to run up against the linkage breakage in the official KDE statement. Obviously not a biggy, but perhaps indicative of the level of quality control in general practised by those over in KDE land. It was that simple issue that brought back vivid memories of some of those old crashers reminding me that no, maybe I'm just better off with what I have now.

[kraftman]

@Mugginz

I can't believe what you wrote is true for gnome3.

I had noted to several people the various bugs/crashes/issues I was having with KDE only to be essentially told that it wasn't really KDE's fault at all, and that the real culprit were those pesky distro packagers. No, the bugs were being introduced by evil forces external to the KDE folks, and that I should swap to distro A, then B

Sometimes it's not a DE fault, but broken drivers or some services like dbus etc. Like I said many times I had many problems with gnome2 and I found KDE4 to be much more robust and stable.

[mugginz]

@Mugginz

I can't believe what you wrote is true for gnome3.

What I wrote relates to my experience with the KDE 4 series, Gnome 2 series, and now with Ubuntu's Unity interface.

As someone who wanted KDE to be stable, I mean reeeeaaaalllly wanted it be because I liked its feature set and UI, I finally gave in.

Sometimes it's not a DE fault, but broken drivers or some services like dbus etc. Like I said many times I had many problems with gnome2 and I found KDE4 to be much more robust and stable.

Oh, I know drivers can be an issue, that's why I tested with varying hardware. Also, service sub-subsystems can also be culprits as well, hence my preparedness to initially trust those assuring me to swap distros, which I dutifully did, only to be again disappointed by a lack of stability.

I think it speaks to how hardened KDE is or should I say, how KDE lacks fault-tolerance in that it seems so improbable that it can be implemented or rolled out in a way that provides a stable solution for a desktop environment.

At this point I should acknowledge that Gnome isn't absolutely perfect from a stability perspective, but it almost is. But more importantly, when compared to KDE, I've found Gnome to be leaps and bounds more stable. That may be because it's less ambitious as a platform, but I can live without ambitious and grandiose software if it's stable and reliable.

[devsk]

The issue has been already noted before I posted here.

The issue was a bit on the amusing side to me, and a little bit annoying as well.

As a long time KDE user, suffering through the 4.0/4.1 debacle in the hope that a reliable desktop would be finally forthcoming at some point in the future, I waited patiently release after release, only to finally switch to Gnome in the 4.5 time frame. When I did, I was presented with a much more reliable day to day experience, however, compared to KDE, seemingly much less feature rich. After acclimatizing to Gnome, I found it was pretty much on par for the core stuff, and very much more robust.

I had noted to several people the various bugs/crashes/issues I was having with KDE only to be essentially told that it wasn't really KDE's fault at all, and that the real culprit were those pesky distro packagers. No, the bugs were being introduced by evil forces external to the KDE folks, and that I should swap to distro A, then B, then maybe even C, because that crash was the distros fault, and that all my stability answers were lying just around the corner, with that one blessed KDE based distro that did something that all the others didn't do, not crash. I was left to wonder why KDE was so non fault-tolerant as to be rendered unstable by the act of putting it into a Linux software suite that was complete enough to provide a fully functional environment.

I grew weary, and swapped to the "other guys'" desktop in the hope of finding a stable desktop, and indeed that's what I found.

When news of the 4.7RC2 was posted here, I thought to myself now might be a good time to test KDE again to see if it'd finally become stable enough for day to day usage only to run up against the linkage breakage in the official KDE statement. Obviously not a biggy, but perhaps indicative of the level of quality control in general practised by those over in KDE land. It was that simple issue that brought back vivid memories of some of those old crashers reminding me that no, maybe I'm just better off with what I have now.

Pretty good rant from a "long time KDE user"!

I moved to KDE 4 with KDE 4.1 and never ran into any issue which reduced my love for KDE.

Try 4.6.5 next time!

[mugginz]

Pretty good rant from a "long time KDE user"!

I moved to KDE 4 with KDE 4.1 and never ran into any issue which reduced my love for KDE.

Try 4.6.5 next time!

Wish I could say the same.

Edit: Been running KDE since Mandrake Linux 9.0. It was the first Linux desktop I ever ran. Ran 3.5 and had a 4.0 install on another machine for testing which was not suitable for day to day use for all the obvious reasons. The main machine went to the KDE 4 series with 4.1

Edit2: The reason the install's at 4.6.2 and not 4.6.5 is because I'd run out of patience with KDE.