On Monday 13 February 2012 12:20:36 Calvin Morrison wrote:
On 13 February 2012 05:56, Aaron J. Seigo aseigo@kde.org wrote:
On Saturday, February 11, 2012 23:42:31 Timothy Pearson wrote:
well. If they care about the users then they can use your insight to actually do something about KDE's flaws. If not, their desired direction will be clearer and we can safely ignore a good chunk of the criticism (as you said above).
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In regard to caring about users, I think it is important to note why many users felt like they were left in the dust. KDE 4.0 had a rocky start, and was not ready for usual consumption for some time by many users running into bugs. It was a beta release that wasn't beta. I think many users were forced to upgrade to 4.0 had a very difficult time understand what was going on, especially since the very loved 3.5 was totally out the window (when there could have been continued support for a short time, until a stable KDE4 was released). If KDE 4.8 was released exactly when 4.0 was, users would be more likely to have switched. KDE 4.8 is very stable and works great for almost all users. The problem is the past 8 releases that have driven everyone insane, and they are now biased against the KDE4 experience.
* Release date 4.0: 11.01.2008 * Relase date 4.1: 29.07.2008 * Release date 3.5.10: 26.08.2008
Nobody was forced to update. This was in most cases the result of distributions. E.g Kubuntu shipped alongside KDE 3.5.9 and 4.0 in their 8.04 release. Debian continued to support 3.5 till just a month ago. The only distribution I am aware of switching instantly to 4.0 was Fedora. Yes I agree with everyone that they should have known better :-) It is unfortunate that the things happened the way they happened, but we are now four years into the 4.x series and it just doesn't matter any more how bumby the 4.0 ride was. It's btw a very good way to annoy KDE developers (especially those who joined after 4.0).
Cheers Martin