Interview with Sebastian Kuegler, KDE Developer 125
invisibastard writes "Linux Tech Daily has an interview with KDE's Sebastian Kuegler. Sebastian talks about the KDE 4.0 release event, goes into detail about how KDE has improved its processes and much more. '[...] there are many easy ways to help. The most obvious is helping people installing KDE, answering questions on forums, IRC and other media. Lately, we're getting also an increased amount of requests for speakers. Often local LUGs are interested in talks by KDE knowledgeable people. It might sound a bit scary, representing KDE in your local LUG, but it's really what KDE is about. Everybody comes from a local community, that is where our grassroots are. People often don't think that they are entitled to represent KDE, but that's just not the case at all. In fact, the marketing and promo team have a hard time finding enough speakers for all events. Slides are usually available, so it doesn't need all that much preparation.'
point oh (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless your userbase consists of no one but fanboys, I would expect the userbase to define "stable" as not crashing every 20 minutes. Shame on KDE for redefining the meaning of a point oh release. I realize they want more people to test their beloved product, but misleading them into doing it was a mistake. In fact, the tradition in open source is in the opposite direction - not calling it a point oh until it's acquired the targeted features and destroys no data.
Re:One thing that bugs me about KDE (Score:0, Insightful)
and that's a KDE problem?!
ffs. seriously.
Re:One thing that bugs me about KDE (Score:3, Insightful)
Well... KDE isn't an entire OS, as big as it may be. Besides that however... the bug may be of the kind that was likely fixed
Besides that however, have you ever submitted a ticket and got that as a response? This wouldn't be a good thing, but not specific to KDE either
Re:New processes (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:New processes (Score:3, Insightful)
Or do you want them to follow enlightenment release cycle instead? "Until everything is finished" - tada! They even have different release cycles for libraries and applications. And they have yet to release 0.17. I mean, at this rate, even Duke Nukem Forever will get released before they reach 1.00
Re:point oh (Score:5, Insightful)
This gets tiring quickly. Gnome 2.0, PHP 5.0, Apache 2.0, Linux Kernel 2.6.0, etc, etc
None of those releases were completely stable or polished, or had all features from the previous series. That's how
That doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to do better, but it's not like KDE 4.0 is an exception.
Re:New processes (Score:2, Insightful)
The KDE developers themselves have flat out stated that KDE 4.0 is not intended for end users as it is incomplete.
Or do you want them to follow enlightenment release cycle instead?
No, I expect them to be honest with their release processes. The reasons stated for releasing KDE 4.0 in an incomplete state was that the framework was complete and that it gave developers an opportunity to complete development of their code on the new frameworks. If that is the case, why not have separate version numbers and releases for the "Framework" and "Environment" components? They could have released "KDE Framework 4.0" while "KDE Environment 4.0" waited until it was complete. No confusion, no problem, no mucking with version numbers and endless rubbish where they bluff and try to redefine the words "stable", "release" and "Beta". It isn't that hard.
Enlightenment is a strawman. It's problems stem from lack of manpower and an anal retentive development model. Why is it so hard to understand that perhaps a middle-ground between the KDE and E release processes might be best?
Re:New processes (Score:2, Insightful)
KDE 4.0 can better be compared with KDE 2.0 and GNOME 2.0.
Re:New processes (Score:5, Insightful)
The full quote is "Release early. Release often. And listen to your customers.", it's directed at getting code out there in the open rather than waiting until it is perfect before letting anybody see it. It doesn't mean that you should label anything you can compile as a stable release, just that you shouldn't do all your work behind closed doors until it's perfect. Not to mention the fact that the advice was garnered from the Linux kernel, something significantly smaller than KDE and not anywhere near as directly exposed to end-users. And if that advice is so useful, how come the KDE project doesn't follow two-thirds of it? They have very long release cycles, ignored anybody who told them that it wasn't ready to be called 4.0 and told anybody asking where the missing features were to wait until 4.1.
I'm a KDE user myself, but I would not go so far as to say that. KDE is for power users, and almost all the distributions default to GNOME, which is quite a bit simpler.
The problem is that they are too much like the enlightenment release cycle. KDE tried to do too much in one go. I remember when KDE 4 was supposed to be a short release cycle that was nothing but a straight port to Qt 4. Somehow they decided to totally rewrite everything important and invent major new subsystems that everything critical is based upon — while porting to Qt 4 at the same time! There is simply no way a step that large is compatible with "Release often" or "Listen to your customers", because it's an incredible amount of work just to remain where you are.
Re:New processes (Score:2, Insightful)
4.0 to port, 4.1, 4.2 to stabilize, 4.3 major rework, 4.4 -4.6 to stabilize
For end user products it makes more sense to have a change, and stabilize model (what kde have done) than a constant change model (kernel), so given that big changes are a must its best to fit them into this model instead of wedge them in to produce a never finishing product.
Re:point oh (Score:1, Insightful)
Also can someone tell me what is with those cartoonish windows around every icon?
Is there any way to get rid of this butt ugly "improvement"?
Re:New processes (Score:4, Insightful)
... which is why many people here bitch about them releasing the 4.0 version.
While I do understand the sentiment, I feel this release was kind of jumping in the cold water — not very pleasant, but now it's done, it had to be done either way, and let's please move on. The product is here, bugs are being taken care of, features are being added, just keep swimming... You had been warned anyway.
Re:Too bad (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:New processes (Score:2, Insightful)
I used to love KDE (v3 this is) but I found myself constantly redesigning and reworking my desktop layout, themes etc. because I could be happy with what I had.
After a while I figured out that KDE itself just lacks any artistic style at all, and no matter how much work you put into it, it doesn't look good.
There are a few reasons for this:
1) Everything is too big. Way too big. GNOME is the master of unobtrusive interfaces (which is exactly what an interface should be), but KDE give me a 64 pixel high bar at the bottom with all sorts of gizmos attached. When you shrink these down to a sane size, you quickly discover that KDE does not scale well to small sizes, and many of the applets begin to look cramped or strange. Fonts, buttons, widgets and icons are also, by default, too big. When I have a 1280x1024 screen I don't want most of it taken up with non-application content.
2) Menus, menus, menus, menus - Practically all the functions for an application can be found in huge menus that take up most of your screen. A couple of additional toolbars or maybe some dialogs would help in the application design.
3) Widget Spacing - No GNOME app ever seems to have difficulty with this, but KDE seems to fail horribly. GTK has default settings that allow you to space widgets not only evenly, but also with decent amounts of padding and spacing that remain even across the application. Qt must lack this sort of thing because Dolphin, Konqueror and amaroK (for example) lacks sufficient widget spacing.
4) Whoever made their icon theme was on crack - Everaldo's Crystal theme was (in my opinion) ugly as hell, and shiny for the sake of it (I much prefer matte icons), but at least it was consistent. Oxygen just sucks.
5) All the Qt skins suck, and I think we should be blaming Qt itself for this - hell, even Klearlook doesn't look as good as GNOME's Clearlooks, despite the obvious thematic similarity.
GNOME offers clearlooks (and its derivatives), tango icons, and a decent set of theming. Post-2.0 it has become alot more configurable (in fact there is little that I can't change in GNOME that I can in KDE3, and my GNOME is more customizable than KDE4)
Remember: I want my computer to be good and functional, and its interface needs to unobtrusively shift into the background while I'm working - I don't want to be distracted by this cool new skin or these fancy icons or desktop widgets. KDE had this simplicity in 2.0, and they've gone downhill ever since.
It is, as a friend of mine called it, "programmer's work". They have taken a perfectly decent looking DE and turned it into something only a programmer can produce.
GNOME is a dream by comparison.
Re:point oh (Score:2, Insightful)
TFA mentions the reason, too. But you'll keep saying, that your fucking keybinding is broken.
Please, oh please go back to 3.5.x and shut the fuck up already.