On 13 February 2012 05:56, Aaron J. Seigo
<aseigo(a)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).
<snip>
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