Submitted by On Friday, KDE officially launched its version of Dell’s IdeaStorm – KDE Brainstorm. In less than 24 hours, over 100 new ideas were proposed. “Getting the non-developer and developer communities really communicating is often a challenge, and KDE’s approach is a great start. Developers now have an opportunity to hear what end-users want.”
Developers now have an opportunity to hear what end-users want.
Users have been screaming many things since pre KDE 4.0 and their answer is “Just drink my kool-aid”.
What is different this time?
I was thinking the same…when 4.0 was release almost all criticism were the same issues, and the answer was pretty much “f you. you should just be grateful or use something else”. Then when 4.1 was released it was still the same comments, and the same reply…and then again at 4.2.
To be serious though; I hope they actually listen this time around. But the sad truth is that the moment someone suggest the possibility to hide the peanut its going straight to the wontfix-bin.
What is different this time?
Edited 2009-03-25 20:45 UTC
This is what I thought too! How many of us have filed feature requests on the KDE bug tracking web site? How many of us have suggested cool ideas in mailing lists? How many times have these feature requests have been archived as “WONTFIX”?! I’m sick of it…
Simple, in real world, unless you pay developers by your own money, you can only suggest.
Sick of it? Try invest more.
I think it all goes back to 4.0 being a testing release. It didn’t make sense during the early, bug-fixing period of KDE4 to start thinking already about new features. The fact that they’re now asking for feature requests suggests that the desktop environment is now “ready”.
The website provides a forum where users and devs can get together to debate new features. This strikes me as being a more productive way of approaching the problem than the scattering of mailing list posts and bug reports.
I think you should give it a chance to fail rather than declaring it DOA.
This is more or less reasonable. The only other point to make is that, in an entirely similar fashion to KDE 4.0, both KDE 3.0 and GNOME 2.0 were “not ready”.
Well, now, at KDE 4.2.1, KDE4 has caught and passed KDE3 and GNOME. So lets forget the debate that tries to say that KDE 4.0 should not have been released to users (despite the fact that KDE 3.0 and GNOME 2.0 were both released to users) and just get on with the innovation and excitement that is KDE4.
The people who have been doing the screaming have very rarely been KDE ‘users’ and the screaming has not been constructive or contributed in any way to making things better. Indeed, most has been an attempt to muddy the waters as to what is needed from open source desktops to get ahead. The rest have been users who want feature X or feature Y, and there just hasn’t been the time or resources to implement them yet. What Brainstorm is is an attempt to provide a better forum for providing user feedback and ideas than just Bugzilla, and we can all agree that Bugzilla is pants for that.
A lot of people seemingly want to drag KDE 4 down for their own reasons because it’s trying to move open source desktops in general forwards, particularly in the face of the technology, functionality and especially applications that they are up against with OS X and Windows 7. The alternatives just can’t and there’s no way of covering that up. You’ve either got it or you haven’t. The alternative is stagnation and denial and they will leave us exactly where we started twenty years ago – nowhere, with an awful lot of hot air and the sad denial that CDE was a ‘standard’, the ‘default’ and was good enough.
Edited 2009-03-26 00:38 UTC
Sorry, but thats a lame comment. Sure there are some people that will not like KDE no matter what because its not Gnome, but I don’t agree at all that it has “very rarely been KDE users screaming”. Quite the opposite, almost everyone I have seen giving feedback were faithful KDE3 users. Although now it may very well be true that these people are no longer KDE users because I know quite a few that switched after KDE4.
I believe that most people don’t want revolution, but rather evolution when it comes to the desktop. KDE4 tried something and failed because they didn’t provide the basics but rather made a lot of half-assed bling. Giving the world the “KDE4 is not KDE4.0” speech is not working because we are now at 4.2 and still it not that much better.
I can not speak for everyone that have tried to request some simple “features” (perhaps not even features, but tweaks), but for those I actually have spoken to, the most difficult issue accept was not the fact that KDE4 was different or didn’t implement their feature of choice, but rather the arrogance among certain developers. Once people made a comment they would be attacked by certain developers yelling “be grateful”. The developers made a wall between themselves and the users pretty much saying “we are right, you are wrong, deal with it, not our problem!”. Immediately the whole “KDE is ours” campaign running before the release was destroyed when the developers made it rather clear that KDE was theirs and not “ours”. Even Microsoft listens to feedback from the users because they know that if they alienate the users they will loose them. Whats the point of KDE anyway if its not built to be usable for…the users. The problem is not to get people interested in your software, but rather to get them to keep using it. That means sometimes actually listen to user feedback, which KDE failed horrible at so far. Being a developer and throwing shit towards the users on your blog does NOT help matters either. Its really simple; users don’t forget, and if their are not happy they take their business elsewhere. At least start treating the users with respect and perhaps the damage can be mitigated.
You don’t have to search any further than this very thread to get this confirmed. Keep telling us that “those that disagree doesn’t use KDE anyway” or that “people misunderstand what KDE4 is” and see how many users you are left with in a couple of years. Saying it out loud several times doesn’t make it true. Wake up!
But it’s simply not true that the KDE dev’s didn’t listen to the users. What were the most requested features for KDE 4.0 and 4.1? Autohide for the panel? Icons on the desktop? Option for a ‘old style’ menu? They have all been fixed. Especially the plasma developers have put aside all the cool ideas they had after 4.1, and have focused on these much requested features to re-implement them for 4.2. And what was the result? People complained that there was a lack of new, innovative features! No wonder many developers concluded you can never satisfy the users…
I’m not saying KDE or KDE developers are perfect, but saying they don’t listen to users is just dishonest and mean.
That is not my experience. I for one have been a KDE user since the beginning, and I have tried every KDE4 release, since the RCs.
While it is true that KDE4.2.1 is a lot better than KDE4.0, it still can’t hold a candle to KDE3.5, at least regarding usability.
Sounds a bit like alot of opensource projects. I put together a 100 plus page redesign of GIMP to address user interface issues and all I got in return from GIMP developers was to “f–k off and die”. Its going to be a cold day in hell for me along with many other former ‘excited users’ to actually tell them what we’d like to see. They abused us when we were excited and interested – we’ve now left the community; they had their chance but decided to shit on their user base than listen to them when they were making the noise earlier on.
Edited 2009-03-26 04:54 UTC
Did you participate in the design stages, or did you just pipe up when they were trying to implement it and get the early releases out?
Very early on (2006 timeframe) they were actively asking for user input.
http://usability.kde.org/hig/
http://usability.kde.org/information/faq.php/communication/mailingl…
http://usability.kde.org/activity/reports/2006/hig-information-desi…
http://liquidat.wordpress.com/2007/11/30/kde-4-some-reasons-for-des…
http://liquidat.wordpress.com/2007/03/05/dolphin-vs-konqueror-discu…
After numerous surveys, design meetings, solicitation of user input, discussions and debate, then they said they wanted to get the base version out and working (no more new features, design freeze).
Now they have got that initial design working properly, they are apparently once again soliciting end-user input.
Perhaps your timing in relation to the open source development processes is just very, very off.
Edited 2009-03-26 06:16 UTC
If you took the time, my experience was with the GIMP developers. I used my experience with the GIMP developers as what is wrong with opensource projects in general.
Edited 2009-03-26 07:11 UTC
Then you have apparently decided that all projects are tarred with the same brush. Certainly I can see where a default assumption of “the developers won’t listen to me” can originate, given the closed-source nature of most commonly-found software.
Demonstrably however, that is not the case with all opensource projects, since the very topic of this thread is about the KDE project doing the exact thing (that is, actively soliciting end-user input) that you blasted GIMP developers for not doing.
Edited 2009-03-26 22:13 UTC
After using Linux as my primary desktop for four years, I switched back to Windows because of KDE 4.1. (I had been a happy KDE 3.5 user.) There were just too many things that didn’t work. The last straw was when I put in a CD or USB drive and the session would bomb. How can Linux be 15 years old and still not handle this?
At this point, the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) went negative and my acceptance factor was indistinguishable from zero.
So why didn’t you keep using KDE 3.5? You could have kept using your KDE 3.5 distribution. Or if you wanted a newer distribution, Debian, Slackware, and OpenSUSE continue to offer KDE 3.5. I understand switching distributions is a pain, but no more painful than switching back to a different platform entirely.
It’s not as though the KDE 3.5 code is taken away from you. You can still use it. (Contrast this with the vendors of other, proprietary operating systems, who deem the old versions obsolete and refuse to keep selling them.)
How many years do you think people will keep KDE 3.x around? 6 or 7? QT 3.x was end of lifed two years ago.
That said, does 3.5 no longer work?
Will 3.5 stop working before 4.x meets your requirements?
Let’s see how fast my post will go down…
Isn’t that obvious? Let me express my input. “Because KDE 3.5 isn’t perfect” and no one wants to live in the past. KDE 3.5 isn’t perfect and is not being developed any more. I used to use 3.5 too but when 4.x came out I switched to GNOME and a month later I switched to Windows and it has nothing to do with installing programs or hardware detection. It has to do with the way the whole desktop behaves and the way the GUI looks.
1. Click on an icon and then click on the label, a rename operation does *not* get started. You have to right click and select Properties in order to rename a file
2. No Drag/Drop within the menus. With Windows you can drag/drop menu entries within the Programs menu to re-arrange them with right click support etc.
3. With GNOME, right clicking + properties to rename a file, hitting “Enter” after you’ve edited the text does *not* close the dialog. WTF?
4. With GNOME, clicking “Create New Folder” within the Open/Save dialog, a new folder gets created with the label “Type New Name for your folder” or something like that….rather then “New Folder”
5. The panel icons in GNOME are ridiculous. The icon size aren’t even, the spacing doesn’t look all the same and when you re-arrange icons you have to create the space for the new icon yourself.
6. Toolbars aren’t neat, they are too tall, just looks plain ugly. Compare AbiWord 2009 and MS Word 97 for example. MS Word 97 still looks superior and professional to gNumeric and AbiWord.
7. Dialog boxes are just huge even with a few controls (widgets) in them.
I don’t know what’s wrong with OSS developers really It seems like they either don’t have the grasp of how things are supposed to be and what 80% of the users are used to or they are simply lazy and can’t be bothered making thigs better because it works “well enough” to perform the desired operation.
I have used, tried so many Linux distributions in the past since KDE 1.x days and GNOME 1.x with GTK 1.x. Not even once I have been happy with what they have presented us so far. They all suck hence I keep going back to Windows because it just works the way you’d expect it! You can right click, drag, move things in so many ways. The whole desktop experience just works coherently and consistently.
I don’t care if it’s MS or not, I don’t care what people say, I just want something that’s flexible and won’t have to use a separate application to perform simple operations such as creating and re-arranging menu entries….
Feel free to disagree with me. It’s your right and it is my right to express my frustration in relation to the current stage of “desktop Linux”….oh wait it is not “Linux” it’s called “linux”
Edited 2009-03-28 06:15 UTC
This sounds like the opposite of “the problem of too many choices”, frequently touted as the downfall of Linux. Too many distros, too many packaging systems, too many Desktop managers and widget sets, etc.
If you are loyal to the KDE interface to the point of not being willing to use other GUIs then, as pointed out, you may still use 3.5.
Optionally, presuming that options are acceptable, you may want to try WindowMaker, XFce, Enlightenment or GNOME. These are the most commonly available and relatively graphics-hardware independent options, [unfortunately] several others are available.
http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Desktops
Edited 2009-03-25 22:05 UTC
“”The last straw was when I put in a CD or USB drive and the session would bomb. How can Linux be 15 years old and still not handle this?””
What does KDE flaking out have to do with Linux? It was not Linux that Bombed out it was KDE.
Correct. I should have said KDE not Linux. Does it change my point? Is KDE flaking out is acceptable behavior after 13 years of development?
KDE 4.0 didn’t have 13 years of development.
GNOME 2.0 was equally buggy as KDE 4.0 was … so would you argue that GNOME developemnt should have kept on with the GNOME 1.x and GTK+ series?
http://www.osnews.com/story/1280
If you would argue so, then we wouldn’t have GNOME 2.26 and GTK+ 2 now.
http://www.osnews.com/story/21157/GNOME_2_26_Released
If you would argue otherwise … then why the inconsistency of your arguement applied to KDE versus applied to GNOME?
After a couple of releases, GNOME 2.4 and later were quite useable.
http://www.osnews.com/story/6662
Same with KDE 4.2 and later. What exactly is your problem?
Edited 2009-03-26 01:21 UTC
I’ve never mentioned Gnome. I’m just saying that the quality of KDE 4.1 was awful. You can say your 4.1 when what you mean is 4.0 alpha.
Of course you never mentioned GNOME, because the quality of GNOME 2.0 and of GNOME 2.2 was likewise awful. GNOME 2.0 or GNOME 2.2 were not called GNOME 2.0 alpha.
Edited 2009-03-26 02:28 UTC
Is it acceptable behavior to blame KDE for the bad packaging that some Distros have done?
I think not. The main problem with the KDE 4.x series was it getting pushed too fast, with too little testing to users.
Heh. True. If it fails on Slackware it’s KDE’s fault, most other distros it’s the distros’ fault
In this case, yes. It was advertised as 4.0. Not 4.0 alpha, beta, release candidate or anything like that. If 4.0 wasn’t ready for prime time, they shouldn’t have given it a real release number. Isn’t that the usual criticism of commercial software?
Oh, the ubiquitous “It’s just bad packaging of KDE4 by the distros!” meme. Why does this plague of packaging incompetence not affect the other DEs? Why doesn’t it affect KDE 3.x? I rarely hear this claim outside of KDE4 discussions. Especially since the reason given by maintainers of low-manpower distros like Patrick Volkerding of Slackware, is that KDE is easier to package.
However, if the KDE project honestly feels that this is an issue, I suggest that they stop saying “It’s not our job” and start making some packages. After all, we’ve seen several posts right here under this story claiming that end users should be happy to alpha and beta test KDE’s supposedly gold releases, even though it’s pretty clear those things are hardly in their job description.
Edited 2009-03-26 22:32 UTC
That is a totally dishonest statement from you, and a deliberate twisting of truth to aid your poor anti KDE4 trolling. You have been around for a long time, and even commented on articles where discussions also have covered things like distributions with sub-par KDE3(and perhaps even KDE2) packaging.
As you are fully aware of Kubuntu usually fared rather badly, and was never praised for it’s KDE3 packaging. Another source of less than stellar packages are Red Hat/Fedora, a well known 3rd party project have existed for years working on delivering a decent KDE desktop.
“Another source of less than stellar packages are Red Hat/Fedora, a well known 3rd party project have existed for years working on delivering a decent KDE desktop.”
Sorry but that is completely incorrect information. Rex Dieter and others who used to the run the kde-redhat repository are the same people who are co-maintaining the official Fedora KDE packages and Rex Dieter was even a Fedora Board member and continues to be part of the release engineering team in Fedora.
http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/dot-stories/2006-January/000748.html
The KDE Red Hat repository still exists but it is used for prototyping updates and experimental changes by the Fedora KDE team.
And which part of “a 3rd party project having delivering KDE packages for years” is incorrect? Even your link to the interview of Rex Dieter confirms it, so calling it incorrect are rather far fetched.
That he on some point in time was a official Fedora packager does not change it, the kde-redhat project had already delivered for years at that time. Current status does not change those facts, or make them any less correct. But it’s positive the situation is improving in the RH/fedora land.
Yes, it was a third party repo many years back and no, it was not because the official sources were not “stellar” which was the OP’s main point.
You went all the way back to Windows?
Why didn’t you use GNOME, or continue using your existing setup?
stop to use kubuntu… you know the linux distribution who don’t contribute to linux… and use a real kde distribution…
I think it is a wise decision to let KDE-devel community to shrink and remain little within a group of german users/developers. Software is to satisfy users needs. If they feel they’re doing this for them, it’s good that they are best left alone. Of course, not all of the devs think like that. But it is a shame how big KDE was, and how much the 4 series has been rejected for its poor egocentric usability.
Hehe, weird thing is, the KDE development is growing like never before, while Gnome has almost come to a standstill in that regard years ago.
I’m not even going to discuss the reasons for the 4.0 and 4.1 releases, if you read OSnews you’ve seen why we did that, but considering the amount of work the devs put into the most requested features esp for the 4.2 release, I’d say it’s simply dishonest to say they don’t listen.
Maybe it’s just me, but I haven’t gotten that feeling of arrogance from the KDE dev team like apparently everyone else has. We knew from the start that KDE 4 would not be usable until 4.2 or 4.3.
I got the feeling that while everyone is screaming for feature X and feature Y, they’re saying “let us finish the base, dammit!”
Now that 4.3 is coming, they open up a brainstorm forum, and have thus far been pretty active and supportive of new user ideas. Check out the “wontfix” section – as of right now there are only 7 posts moved into there, and hundreds of others that the devs and mods have commented on, promoted and added their own suggestions to.
I won’t argue that they could have handled the 4.x series better, but the project is coming along very nicely, and now that it’s a nearly 100% usable base, they’re starting to take user suggestions.
IMO rather than being arrogant, they were simply trying not to let the cart get ahead of the yaak…
I think the problem was that a lot of people never got the “KDE4 != KDE4.0” idea around their heads and a lot of confusion arised from that. Unfortunately, that confusion also affected some distro makers who jumped to the KDE4 bandwagon when it clearly wasn’t ready for that. Of course, KDE gets all the flak, not the distro.
But we’re at 4.2.1 now, I’m amazed to see people still bitching about a product that they don’t use anymore (or so they say). I mean, you got burned with 4.0 and decided to drop KDE, fine. Why keep whining months later?
This is getting like the MS bashing, they do it because everyone is doing it.
If they jumped to KDE4, you wonder what else is not being tested before packaged and released.
I think we should just all admit, we are continually beta testing, because the platform is always evolving.
User testing is part of the way that open source is developed. It is an integral part of the whole FOSS scene.
If you don’t want to be involved in the initial testing and bug shakeout of new cutting-edge functionality, then don’t use .0 versions but instead use the stable, older versions.
In the case of KDE, here are a couple of very nice distributions (with liveCDs to trial them before you commit) that allow you to do precisely that:
http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=05372
http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=05344
However, given that Kubuntu 9.04 and Mandriva 2009.1 are both just around the corner, and KDE4 has now passed through its early testing stages, you would have to question if those two distributions had perhaps been a little too conservative.
I think there is more of an agenda here than meets they eye.
It possibly has something to do with the fact that KDE 4.2.1 (and presumably later) is faster than GNOME, at least as functional as GNOME, the underlying library (Qt 4.5) is licensed under LGPL, it doesn’t include Mono at all, and it is way sexier and more innovative than than GNOME.
I can see where certain parties (perhaps who have made deals with other desktop vendors) possibly wouldn’t like that at all. Who knows? There may even be a desire in some circles to unfairly smear the reputation of a new and innovative competing desktop software.
I guess anything is possible, but it’s pretty childish, and doesn’t seem to be coming from the Gnome guys themselves.
http://jasondclinton.livejournal.com/71412.html
Jason D. Clinton, devloper of the Gnome games modules, says
Based on my own personal experiences, I’m guessing that these pundits played with KDE 4.0.x or 4.1.x, and the system didn’t like their machine very much (it was pretty finicky about hardware), and therefore decided that it was garbage.
I have KDE 4 installed on four computers, three of which work flawlessly. One of them has a crummy SiS card and presumably because of its drivers, Plasma has a severe memory leak where after 24 hours its using 512 megs of RAM. A friend of mine asked me to put KDE 4 on his machine, replacing Gnome, but after countless glitches and random lockups, he decided that while KDE 4 is brimming with promise, it just isn’t there yet, for him. He grudgingly asked me to put Gnome back after the 4.2 upgrade didn’t solve any of his problems.
It’s entirely possible that for these people, KDE 4 simply doesn’t work right, and they haven’t had the pleasure of seeing it when it’s working the way it’s supposed to.
The thing everyone needs to remember is this isn’t an Us vs Them battle, it’s different strokes for different folks, and we’re all one big community looking for software that works the way we do.
If this machine has a nvidia card, check the version of the driver. If the driver is the nvidia proprietary driver version 17x.xx or earlier, then update to the latest driver. Nvidia have been furiously releasing new versions of their Linux driver of late (sometimes as frequently as four days interval).
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzE2OA
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzE1NQ
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzE0NA
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzEyNg
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzA5MQ
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzA1Nw
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NzAyMg
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia_18025&num…
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Njk3OA
Trust me, I’m well aware. My main machine has a 7900GTX, my workstation has a GeForce 4 MX, and my HTPC has a 7300LE. The 7900 works best with the 180.22 driver, the 7300 likes the 185 beta driver best so far. The legacy driver does the job quite well for the GeForce 4.
His machine has an embedded 6100, and no driver seemed to make that much of an improvement, beyond making desktop effects smoother and fixing the system tray graphic corruptions. The plan is to try again with each point release until it works, either from improvements to drivers or KDE itself. For now though, Gnome is just more robust on his hardware.
I can imagine the issues of your friend, there are a huge amount of corner-issues left, only affecting some ppl and not others. We have had KDE 4.x out for a little over a year now, so it’s most likely gonna take at least another year before most of those are fixed. I’ve experienced the very same – on my desktop, KDE 4.3SVN easily uses 1.5 gig of ram (!) while on my laptop (same distro and svn version!) 512 is more than enough for running KDE. Finding the culprit is very hard – I’m afraid we just have to wait until more of those bugs are squashed. And the KDE community needs input from users to be able to find them, obviously. That’s a big part of the reason for the 4.0 release – much DID work for the devs and they needed input to fix the weird issues they themselves did not experience.
And this coming from an actual KDE dev, over 14 months after the 4.0 release. “Disgraceful” is the only word that really fits. I remember when KDE 1.0 was released. Rock solid in the tradition of FOSS projects of the time, which tended to remain at 0.9x in perpetuity. If you’re going to use this deceptive release numbering scheme, KDE.org really needs to be shouting “This isn’t ready yet!” from the hills, rather than all this ongoing “4.x+1 is really gonna be it this time!” disinformation.
Edited 2009-03-26 22:21 UTC
Nope, not the only one. There’s also honest, straightforward, clear and open.
BUt to each his own. Now if I told you what word I would fit your post, I would have to wash my mouth with soap.
You misundersood me, I think. “Disgraceful” does not apply to Superstoned’s post here (which is, indeed, refreshingly honest for a KDE dev) but to the release management of KDE4 by the team over the last 14 months. Unless you seriously meant to apply the terms “honest, straightforward, clear and open” to that?
Edited 2009-03-27 01:34 UTC
There was nothing dishonest about our communiciation. I can’t say we never made mistakes, but for every enthousiastic post or message you will find from around the 4.0 or 4.1 release saying 4.0 will rock, you can find 10 that tell you to be careful and not expect too much.
If that’s still dishonest to you, well, there is no reasonable way to do better. Apparently, even if I screamed in your ear for the whole 3 years time of development leading up to 4.0 that it wouldn’t be enduser ready – you still wouldn’t be happy. Some users are impossible to satisfy, and frankly, I’m getting tired of that (and believe me, it takes a LOT for ME to get tired of anyone).
I was here at OSNews watching closely in January 2008, July 2008, and January 2009. And what you say is technically true. Problem is that all the enthusiastic posts seemed to be coming from the KDE camp, and all the numerous honest viewpoints came from outside. And in March of 2009, I don’t see that much has changed, except that finally, at this late date, a lone KDE dev has admitted that there might be a problem, but has now retreated back to the standard KDE4 party line of “It’s OK to release broken, alpha quality software as a finished product”.
Edited 2009-03-27 17:39 UTC
…the Kart ahead of the yaK..!
🙂 yes, my bad. There’s a town near where I live called Yaak (kootenai indian word for arrow), so by habit I added the extra a.