Agreed. Perhaps one of the developers can email Bruce? Ask him to better describe the events and if repeatable copy those statements into a bug report? Darrell

You da man! :) Darrell

I think we identify those points in our proposed draft About/FAQ page in etherpad. Please review the page and feel welcomed to help. I don't think people resist change as popular as that adage might be. :) I think people resist change they did not ask for or resist when timetables for the changes are unrealistic. People want to move forward incrementally, comfortably. Changes like those in KDE and GNOME are unwelcome by many because most users did not have a meaningful vote and the changes are too dramatic without providing fallbacks to familiar territory. Same thing is happening in the Windows market, by the way. Some people love the new interfaces and work flows and that is expected. Many others could adapt if they had been treated with respect and compassion rather than as objects. This is much like the frog in boiling water parable. If features are changed incrementally most users never object. They adapt. Change too many features at once with no forewarning and training and the frog jumps out of the water. :) Darrell

hi... i picked this email to reply to since it was the one i landed on last while reading the thread, but it could have been a reply to any number of emails here. note that i write this both as the person who wrote the features that gave Trinity it's edge in the one category Byfield felt it was better in (panel configurability), as well as one of the developers working on KDE's new offerings ... On Tuesday, November 15, 2011 21:01:55 Keith Daniels wrote: just as you would probably appreciate others not misrepresenting Trinity or speaking on your behalf as to what your motivations are, i would graciously request you pay the same respect to others, particularly those in closely related projects (e.g. those working on Plasma Desktop and other 4.x software). in this case, you are absolutely incorrect in your assesment, and it is disconcerting that we face the specter of dealing with FUD from within the borders of the broader KDE / Trinity community. i'd rather see us support each other than get annoyed at each other. of COURSE people are going to write comparisons of Trinity and KDE's 4.x software: they want to figure out which to use. and of COURSE people are going to write them with some level of struggle between the two because the people who are using 3.5 / Trinity have made it a *highly contentious* issue where the quoted bit above is the norm rather than the exception. so, in part, you brought this on us all. but also in part, expect comparisons. that's fine. it isn't a threat. focus on what you can improve, enjoy the accolades given and avoid the temptation to fall into attacking others. then maybe Trinity's community will be able to shake the "den of hate" reputation that it has earned, properly or not, in significant parts of the KDE community. now, just so it's very clear: it pains me to see the stability of the 3.5 series diminish. every release made after our last official release (3.5.9 iirc was the last i was involved in...) has seen, imho, questionable choices in patch inclusion. but i understood, or at least have tried to, the motivation: to keep the code moving forward and keep it fresh and usable on new Linux OSes. so, as someone not directly involved in that code base anymore and as someone who has no desire to see people fail with KDE's code and efforts, i really haven't made a big deal of that point in public. even as i have had to deal with the claims of KDE 3.5's continued, obvious and unnassailable superiority to everything before or since. i hope that can be appreciated and perhaps mirrored in the Trinity community. please consider that if the intention is to put forth a marketing effort that paints Plasma or other KDE software in a bad light, that this will effectively and quickly put an end to any cooperative spirit we may have been able to build. the moment you get into "comparison shopping" marketing is the moment you start creating rivalry and that often leads to bare-knuckle competition. you would, for instance, find that the last dot.kde.org article (which i went to the wall for so it would be published, btw) likely to be Trinity's last. this is how one builds a situation where people end up ripping each other down so that everyone's progress is impaired. look up "crabs in a bucket" if you aren't familiar with that phrase. i would suggest that instead of focussing on what you are not and playing on what you believe to be people's negative feelings about other products, focus on Trinity's positives and what Trinity is. yes, the topic may end up being the same ("traditional desktop values", "performance on older hardware", etc) but it goes from being a message based on the negatives of others to one that is about the positives of Trinity. -- Aaron J. Seigo humru othro a kohnu se GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43 KDE core developer sponsored by Qt Development Frameworks

Let's. We are moving in that direction. Our reorganized web site and new About/FAQ page will help much too. Darrell

+1 from me! Remember that different, especially in FOSS projects, is NOT bad... Tim

Aaron, thanks for writing. I speak for myself and do not necessarily represent anybody else or their opinion. Regarding the instability issues, we started a conversation about that topic last night. We are aware of the claims. Much more attention will be provided toward quality assurance with the next release. I don't believe we who are involved directly in the Trinity project have earned any den of hate reputation. Most everybody here just minds the shop. The den of hate of which you speak is maintained by reviewers and forum zealots. Why they insist on almost always comparing Trinity to KDE4 is for them to answer. We don't write those reviews. :) If you are following this list then you know many of us are working together to keep us all focused on Trinity and not get involved in spitting contests. We had a chat session yesterday and discussed that very topic. We are reorganizing our web site, which will include a new About page with an FAQ. In our FAQ (the draft is in our etherpad) we address the issue of Trinity and KDE4 because we too are weary of the comparisons. We present facts and a statement that both desktops are beneficial to various people with different wants and needs. With that said, there are always new people joining the list. Some people join because they are dissatisfied with what they perceive is the general direction of recent releases of desktop environments. When they join they share their opinions. This is human nature. People are social creatures and they want to belong. People tend to share opinions that help them feel they belong. Part of that belonging process is comparing "us" vs. "them." This is a human conditioning problem that permeates deep into our social fabric all around the world in every facet of life. Much conflict in our world is caused by this process of social conditioning to compare "us" vs. "them." As a species we do not teach each other to view ourselves as a single species struggling to survive in a hostile universe. Instead we all have been conditioned to think narrowly about "us" vs. "them." That conditioning continues at this very moment. Read the headlines and watch the spin doctors on TV to see this process in action. Who knows how long we need to change that aspect of our species. I long have seen in free/libre software the potential to break some of that social conditioning. That does not mean those attitudes evaporate through wishful thinking. They don't. :( Yet we can continue educating one another that this struggle called life is not about "us" vs. "them" but about humans surviving together. Despite the puny size of our planet in a incomprehensibly large universe, there is nonetheless plenty of room here for numerous opinions about how we go about making our world a better place. The KDE4 people have their opinion how to do that, the Trinity people have theirs, the GNOME people theirs, the Unity people theirs, and on and on. That several hundred distros exist is an example of how this process succeeds. Most of us here want to live in harmony with others in the free/libre software world. Yet Trinity exists because we want to maintain the older KDE3 desktop style. We want to promote healthy exchanges among everybody in all camps of free/libre software, but by golly we like Trinity and that opinion will surface in this list. :) As will similar opinions in any KDE4 discussion list. :) The trick for all of us to learn is to express those opinions and enthusiasm without harassing people in the other groups. :) Every day every one of us has to look into the mirror, literally and figuratively. Every day we have to think about who we are. We change in increments but we change. This is a process. One day we all will get there. :) Darrell

We are in the process of reorganizing our web site. There will be time for peer reviews and commentary. I agree some kind of statement is needed to encourage people to submit bug reports. We need to write such statements in a positive manner. For example: with a statement and link to the bugzilla: Add a simple statement such as "Thanks for helping!" shows respect for others and hopefully provides encouragement. Yet many people do not want to join a bugzilla to file the occasional bug report. Basic human nature to complain and take little action for only a bug or two. Therefore in addition to a link to the bugzilla, I think we should consider a simple form box where users can submit bug reports without joining the bugzilla. The form submission would get forwarded to selected individuals in the group and one of them would post a bug report if the problem can be verified in any way. The form submission should require posters to include an email address so respondents can discuss further information. Darrell

Le Tue, 15 Nov 2011 22:59:53 -0500, Katheryne Draven &lt;borgqueen4(a)gmail.com&gt; a écrit : Some people *really* don't experience KDE4 crashes; it really seems to be good or bad luck/drivers. The only crashes I experienced with KDE4 are some Intel driver crashes (for example, with Lucid-era Intel drivers on my hardware, Xv + OpenGL game == Crash at the exit of OpenGL with high probability: I can't blame KDE4 here); I never ever had a KDE4 crash with ATI graphics hardware, let the KDE4 version be 4.2 or 4.4, KWin effects be enabled or not and the propietary or the FOSS driver be used. The best way to avoid crashing KDE4 with bad drivers is just to disable KWin effects. Anyway KWin effects are too slow for the versions of KDE4 I use (<= 4.5.5), and according to what Martin Gräßlin is saying on his blog we'll have to wait KDE 4.8 for good KWin performance.