KDE 4 problems highlight shift from community users to consumers
Posted by: Anonymous
[ip: 67.213.101.95]
on July 17, 2008 03:36 AM
The previous poster is correct when he gives the link to the much-hyped announcement at KDE about 4.0. Nowhere does it say "developer preview", "beta", unstable, or vastly feature-incomplete.
Moreso, the exact wording/information for KDE4 when selecting to choose kde 3.5 or 4 in openSuse 11 is:
"KDE (4) is the most recent evolution of KDE. It comes with many new KDE technologies, but is less mature than the other desktops".
Does this scream "feature incomplete"? Or "unstable". Or "not ready for prime time"? I think not.
So KDE got the media to over-hype a feature-incomplete, buggy and unstable alpha (beta at best) as the Second Coming. OpenSuse was certainly complicit also, other distributions may have been too.
Then, when ordinary users expressed their dismay, what did we hear?
- "Just wait till 4.1"; if that's the case, Microsoft would be considered a sooth-sayer compared to the entrail-reading and false hope of KDE developers. It will be KDE 4.2 or 4.3 (most likely) before this schmozzle becomes usable and comparable in functionality and usefulness as 3.5.9.
- We have to move to KDE 4 because 3.5 is "dead" ... no more work will be done on it. Followed by furious back-tracking and denials that the "dead" statement ever meant that.
No, KDE fumbled this one in a major way, their reaction was to treat ordinary users as dummies and 3.5 clingers, and they may also have not realized that, in the end, it's the adopting masses that use their product (or reject it).
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KDE 4 problems highlight shift from community users to consumers
Posted by: Anonymous [ip: 67.213.101.95] on July 17, 2008 03:36 AMMoreso, the exact wording/information for KDE4 when selecting to choose kde 3.5 or 4 in openSuse 11 is:
"KDE (4) is the most recent evolution of KDE. It comes with many new KDE technologies, but is less mature than the other desktops".
Does this scream "feature incomplete"? Or "unstable". Or "not ready for prime time"? I think not.
So KDE got the media to over-hype a feature-incomplete, buggy and unstable alpha (beta at best) as the Second Coming. OpenSuse was certainly complicit also, other distributions may have been too.
Then, when ordinary users expressed their dismay, what did we hear?
- "Just wait till 4.1"; if that's the case, Microsoft would be considered a sooth-sayer compared to the entrail-reading and false hope of KDE developers. It will be KDE 4.2 or 4.3 (most likely) before this schmozzle becomes usable and comparable in functionality and usefulness as 3.5.9.
- We have to move to KDE 4 because 3.5 is "dead" ... no more work will be done on it. Followed by furious back-tracking and denials that the "dead" statement ever meant that.
No, KDE fumbled this one in a major way, their reaction was to treat ordinary users as dummies and 3.5 clingers, and they may also have not realized that, in the end, it's the adopting masses that use their product (or reject it).
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