KDE Responds To Misconceptions About KDE 4

Jiilik Oiolosse writes "PJ at Groklaw speaks with a member of the KDE team about some of the common myths circulating about KDE 4. 'There has been a bit of a dustup about KDE 4.0. A lot of opinions have been expressed, but I thought you might like to hear from KDE. So I wrote to them and asked if they'd be willing to explain their choices and answer the main complaints. They graciously agreed.' Among the topics discussed are: 'Releasing KDE 4.0 was a mistake,' 'I cannot put files on my desktop,' and 'KDE should just have ported KDE 3.5 to Qt 4 and not add all that other experimental stuff right away.'"

I heard...

that if you install a mirror plasmoid and say "goatse" three times, RMS will appear and strangle you with his beard.

Happy to wait

I've always preferred KDE over Gnome, but unlike many I didn't rush to install KDE 4.0 (what with it being an incomplete beta and all.) I didn't get XP until it had been out for years either, and by the time I'm considering Vista it'll be lying in a shallow grave from the sound of things.

Basically, I see KDE 4.x as something to play with alongside my regular desktop. I'll jump onboard properly when things calm down, but in the meantime I have work to do.

Re:Happy to wait

Yeah, I am in the same camp. I have been compiling SVN head since 4.0. I love what KDE is becoming. But stuff like what I am pasting below is where the UD (minus the F) is coming from. To say that the first release of Dolphin will be binary compatible with all future releases of KDE 4.X (which is what the quote is implying) just doesn't seem right. Doing svn update changes things constantly (including the base libs and the headers). KDE base libs stable and binary compatible until KDE 5? I can't see it.

From this point on, our libraries will remain binary compatible until 5.0. Not releasing 4.0 at that point means holding back hundreds of application developers from porting and releasing their applications. Not releasing would hurt these applications - they wouldn't receive the attention to detail they deserved. We're talking about core applications like Dolphin [...]

Re:Happy to wait

To say that the first release of Dolphin will be binary compatible with all future releases of KDE 4.X (which is what the quote is implying) just doesn't seem right.

What's wrong with it? All it means is that nothing that's in the API in 4.0.0 will be removed or changed in an incompatible way for the lifetime of 4.x. Plenty of new features will be added, but they won't break any existing code. Programming languages like Perl, Python, and PHP (usually) do this all the time.

KDE 4.0 as a beta

Wise words! Just wait patiently for the KDE developers to sort things out and make sure you have an alternative.

However I firmly believe that KDE really messed up when it comes to mamaging user expectations.

Call something KDE 4.0 and people will believe it's fully functional ready to roll. And find themselves sorely disappointed. Call it "KDE 4.0 Developer Release" and people will understand what it is and is not.

One thing that irks me in KDE's reply though is that they give the impression that they clearly communicated what KDE 4.0 was and was not. I disagree. I visited kde.org a few times to find precisely that information, and it simply wasn't there.

That's why I was so happy with SuSE's honest and up-front statement about KDE 4.0 (see http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=528652&cid=23135548 [slashdot.org] ) that told me everything KDE.org didn't. No amount of post-furor explanations will take that away.

I'm unhappy...

Just wait patiently for the KDE developers to sort things out and make sure you have an alternative.

But are they on the right path? From what I have seen in KDE4.0, it seems to me that everything they have done is a step backwards.

Basically, the problem is: if it's working fine, why change? For instance, I'm still using the KDE-classic icon set because I see no reason to get glossier icons, I recognize instantly the old icons and that's what matters.

The big point about KDE has always been its capability for personal configuration. I prefer to use just one desktop, so I don't have a desktop selector applet in my taskbar. I prefer not to put icons on my desktop, since the desktop is always covered by the windows I'm using, so I have my favorite apps icons in my taskbar and use konqueror in the file management mode to open documents. That's the way I prefer, other people think differently, but KDE3.5 lets everyone be happy with their choices.

I've never adapted to Gnome, because the philosophy is different there, it seems to be about making it easier to do things, at the expense of configurability. Well, for me the easiest way to do things is to do them the way I find easier, not the way someone else prefers.

I can hear people telling me, "OK, if you don't like things as they are, just go ahead and change them, the source code is there". Well, I have neither the time nor the inclination to start developing the KDE user interface. I'm not complaining, they were under no obligation to develop KDE for me anyhow, but let's say I'm lamenting the way things are going.

Re:Happy to wait

...by the time I'm considering Vista it'll be lying in a shallow grave from the sound of things.

Then you could probably install it by now.

KDE4.1 great for geeks, not ready for simple users

KDE 4 has great ideas, but kde 4.0 was not ready for use by the masses and was very buggy (I have a collegue using 4.0.5 and he's constantly having kwin crashes and other problematic behaviour especially with dual screens in either extend and clone mode).

While KDE 4.1 will be a lot better, again several important features have been moved to 4.2. For example with KDE 4.1, users will have a desktop where they can put desktop icons the a folderview widget or outside of that widget, on the plasma desktop itself. These two "desktop icon types" have very different behaviour, which will be extremely different to understand to non-geeks. This will be really fixed in 4.2 where it will be possible to set the folderview as the desktop itself. The number of plasma widgets shipped by default in KDE 4.2 is still rather limited (no good RSS reader, weather applet, system monitor etc). Phonon/xine/knotify4 as included in KDE 4.1 is not very friendly for your laptop's battery life. All of this will probably be fixed for KDE 4.2.

I heard the administrator mode in systemsettings is not working and that a migration to policykit to make this work, is planned for kde 4.2. GNOME is using policykit already since a year if I'm not mistaken.

So while KDE 4.1 is a great release for advanced users (I'm typing this from KDE 4.1 RC1 with nice desktop effects!), you don't want to migrate your average non-geek family member friend or collegue to it.

It's unfortunate that KDE developers still try to deny or at least greatly minimize the impact of these kind of problems. A little bit more understanding from both sides (developers and users) and a bit less technology hyping, would be a nice thing.

Re:KDE4.1 great for geeks, not ready for simple us

The developers are not denying anything (except comments like 'KDE is dying!'). They just didn't realize that calling the package that included the completed KDE4 libs "KDE 4.0" meant that distributions would start pushing it out to users, and publicizing it before it was objectively 'ready'.

Re:KDE4.1 great for geeks, not ready for simple us

That is pretty much it too. KDE 4 is changing everything about KDE's underlying structure with the hope of unifying things in ways that were literally hacks before. The concepts are great to the point of moving away from the "desktop" unfortunately they as you said finished up the libraries and hadn't finished up the front end.

Re:KDE4.1 great for geeks, not ready for simple us

Well, to be fair, calling it KDE 4.0 suggests it's relatively bug-free (else it would have been 4.0-beta), and feature-complete (else it would have been 4.0-alpha).

From what I've read it was neither of those...

Re:KDE4.1 great for geeks, not ready for simple us

Hmm, is that really the case?
I'm on gentoo. Kde-4.0 is hard masked which means it's not officially in the tree. You can unmask it if you really want to play with it but in order to do so you have to edit some config files which makes sure you know what you're doing. Kde-4.1 will eventually go into unstable (there you also find gnome-2.22, firefox-3, openoffice-4 etc).

Did other distros directly push kde-4.0 to stable?

Firing up ditrowatch I get 8 distributions with kde-4 and around 400 with kde-3. Among the 8 are Ubuntu, openSUSE, Feodora and PC-BSD.

Hmm, looking into the Ubuntu package database, I see kde4 is an extra package (no automatic update?) in Universe which has (I quote) no guarantee of security fixes and support.

It seems to be in Feodora-9, though. Is there a stable/unstable or whatsoever?

And it is in the just released openSUSE-11. Same here. Is it really in the default install?

Re:KDE4.1 great for geeks, not ready for simple us

They just didn't realize that calling the package that included the completed KDE4 libs "KDE 4.0" meant that distributions would start pushing it out to users, and publicizing it before it was objectively 'ready'.

Why, exactly, is it surprising that, when the product is announced to be "out of beta and released", it will be pushed out to end users?

If it's not "objectively ready", then it's not even beta, it's alpha. If the libs are ready but not the desktop itself, then release "kdelibs-4.0", and keep the version of the desktop itself at alpha until that part is finished.

Re:KDE4.1 great for geeks, not ready for simple us

This isnÂt true.

If you went to kde.org after KDE 4.0 was released, looked in the "download" section and selected the current stable release, you got KDE 4.0. The old 3.5.* was called legacy or something. If the developers didnÂt expect distributions to start pushing it out, they shouldnÂt have said it was the current stable release.

I notice its changed now.

Re:KDE4.1 great for geeks, not ready for simple us

It's unfortunate that KDE developers still try to deny or at least greatly minimize the impact of these kind of problems.

Problems with what? You're running around like a geek trying to run a piece of software that hasn't been out for even a few months and you're complaining it has shortcomings and some things missing? Stop press, news at 11.

Meanwhile, back on planet Earth people are still using KDE 3.5.x, they will probably use successive versions of it as well, and when the general consensus is that KDE 4.x looks OK then you'll start to see a natural move to it. That's what naturally tends to happen with these things. You just......................stop worrying. If you're an early adopter then that's exactly what you are. I hear that people actually pay for licenses for that privilege, and they complain less than the furore we've had with KDE 4. Go figure.

Version number intentions and perceptions

I have tested KDE4 on my Mandriva install as well as on a few LiveCDs and am very positive about it. It is aesthetically pleasing, offers wonderful functionality, enormous flexibility and extensibility, and gorgeous eye candy not on the expense of usability or ergonomics.

Many people uphold OSX or Vista as the pinnacles of desktop beauty, and in the case of Mac, usability and user experience, yet the beauty possible on modern Linuxen desktops is not only equal to that of the Big Two, but in fact far surpassing them. Yes, I am talking a lot about "beauty" and "aesthetics", terms that programmers and techheads usually spurn or dismiss as irrelevant or superfluous. However, because it is not in the front of many geeks' minds does not mean it is irrelevant (especially considered I being a programmer myself) - beauty is important! In KDE, in particular KDE4, and especially coupled with technologies such as Compiz-Fusion and/or Metisse, the Linux desktop is far ahead any competition in presentation aesthetics, a fact seldom recognised.

That said, I am not using it on my production system and will not until release 4.2.

The problem as I see it, and the mistake made by the KDE dev team, lies in using a version numbering system that makes great sense for them but has little relation to how it will be interpreted and understood outside the development circles. For the devs, according to TFA, the "4.0" in KDE 4.0 means

is just the beginning. KDE 4.0 has the beginnings of a publicly usable desktop and applications. KDE 4.0 also marks the stability of the libraries and their programming interfaces so application developers can actively start using them in their application. The new features and frameworks need some time to be implemented in a user-visible way. In that light, KDE 4.0 marks the beginning of the availability of KDE4-technology-based applications.

For most of the world, the release of a new major version means both something new and exiting, which KDE4.0 certainly delivers, but also a finished and usable system that will be refined, embellished and updated. The KDE devs, on the other hand, means it as a platform on which a functioning system can and will be built. Their mistake lies in not realising that public perception of "4.0" would differ from their intention.

That said, this is a very common mistake in all human communication. Seldom indeed does intention transmit perfectly into perception.

Re:Everybody RTFA?

Wow, 7 minutes after the article was posted, and STILL no postings! Could this be my first FP? COULD IT???

You're entering a realm which is, unusual, the vicinity of an area adjacent to a location.......

Re:Everybody RTFA?

The fact that you replied tells us what about you having a life...? ;-)

Re:Everybody RTFA?

It is afterall, between 0500 and 0200 for most of the Western Hemisphere.

I'm in Europe, you insensitive clod!

Re:OS X vs. KDE and others

I have both mac os/x and linux here and I *far* prefer KDE (3) over os/x, I just can't seem to get used to the main menu switching all the time depending on what has focus. I prefer 'stateless' designs over state any time.

Re:OS X vs. KDE and others

I've been using Debian's experimental KDE 4.1 alpha/beta packages for a few weeks now, and my impression is that it's still KDE, and still too buggy to recommend to other users. Debian is probably several weeks after SVN, though.

My main problem right now is that most of the hotkeys have disappeared (a bug, not a design decision, I assume), and that I can't move plasmoids in the panel (supposed to be fixed by now, but not in Debian's packages). I don't miss the desktop-as-folder paradigm, but I do miss good information on how to create one's own plasmoids. Also, Kmail/Kontact crashes a lot.

Re:OS X vs. KDE and others

I'am not so sure if the Apple GUI experience can be described as superior. I have a Mac Mini with dual boot into OS X and Linux with KDE 3.5 on top. Overall I think OS X looks cooler and more professional designed, but from a usage and efficiency point of view into the KDE environment better fits my needs.

For instance:
o The Alt+Tab vs. Alt+Tilde thing - I understand the technical difference between switching applications and multiple "documents". Still I often have the case where I have 2 Terminals and 1 Firefox open and need to constantly switch between them. Here I don't want to think about if it's another application or document I want to switch between. I just want to do it and I can with KDE, Gnome, Windows, OS/2 but not OS X. Ok there is an extra tool (forgot the name), but that one didn't work flawless eather.
o Virtual Desktops - Well that something a lot of Nerds seemed to miss, something which the OSS community had in their products for years. Not having it can result in considerable clutter on the screen which is exactly how my OS X screen looks like. Great to see that Apple finally came around and introduced it in it's latest version.
o Zoom vs. Maximize - One IMHO really strange thing in OS X is the Maximize button which actually is a Zoom button. The window size gets proportionally increased until it reaches the horizontal or vertical limits - whatever comes first. It's not possible to really maximize a window to cover the entire screen. Exception to that being that applications can alter this behavior and e.g. Aparature is doing so - showing the same behavior as this botton does in KDE, Gnome, Windows, OS/2,...
o Resizing a Window - To resize a window you have to drag the lower right corner and only the lower right corner. Why can't I use the left side border of the window if I choose to? Also something that's possible nearly everywhere else.
o Focus follows mouse - ...
o Rename a file - You can do tons of things (like copy, move to trash,...) within the context menu of a file. But still you can't rename it. Instead you have to click on it once and then again on the name below the icon. I find this quite inconsequent and also not very intuitive - actually I had to google it.
o Consistent UI appearance - It's true that Qt, GTK etc. based applications look different. But so do OS X applications where you have the white style, this brushed metal style and another one which escapes me right now.

So don't get me wrong, I didn't want to rant about OS X. It's my favorite UI from a design and "looking at" point of view. But if it's about daily work with it, then points like the mentioned above are really in my way. With KDE it's vice versa for me. It doesn't look that good, but I lets me do the job and it's more consistent with what you would expect coming from other UI's.

Re:Misconceptions?

If KDE4 is not finished, why announcing it as a deliverable product?

What distribution ships with KDE4 as the desktop by default? I'm not aware of any.

What everyone expects from a new major release is no less features and stability than the older ones.

I didn't expect a feature complete KDE4.0, but that is because I actually read the announcements by the KDE team.

Whenever this is not the case, a flop is waiting at the corner (as a lot of people learned from Vista).

How does Vista have less features than XP and where does it lack functionality where XP has?

Re:Just in time for K Pride Week...

No, the O in gnome stands for goatse !

I will never be able to look at the word GNOME again.

Ah, the language barrier...

Please extend some tolerance to these people - they're clearly making a credible effort to emulate the commercial software sector by communicating in marketing bullspeak (which is especially difficult for native speakers of Ancient Geek) - so the occasional misunderstanding is inevitable.

E.g. when the TFA says:

Many of the official release announcements posted on kde.org contained the following text: "The aim of the KDE project for the 4.0 release is to put the foundations in place for future innovations on the Free Desktop. The many newly introduced technologies incorporated in the KDE libraries will make it easier for developers to add rich functionality to their applications, combining and connecting different components in any way they want."

What they are trying to say is "KDE 4.0 doesn't have all the user features in it yet - we're only releasing it so that developers can start working with the new libraries - users should stick with 3.5 for a while yet".

However, due to their inexperience with the subtleties of Bullspeak they've inadvertently used the "future speculative masturbatory" tense (by conjoining the word "innovation" with hyperbolic capitalization of "Free Desktop") thus indicating that the entire paragraph is intended to be glossed over and treated as a general endorsement - so its unsurprising that people have gone ahead and used 4.0 in user-facing systems.

The KDE developers should be praised for their attempt to attain synergy with the wider enterprise by leveraging the didactic techniques of content-neutral intercourse, and the community should exhibit greater empathy when this initiative leads to non-positive communication outcomes.