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KDE4
by Steven on Tuesday 06/Feb/2007, @16:03
When is KDE4 going to be released? Its appearing that the release is getting pushed back as much as Vista has been.
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Re: KDE4
by Robert Knight on Tuesday 06/Feb/2007, @17:01
Short answer: There is no official time period for release yet.

Long answer:

There has never been an official release period, so it cannot have been 'pushed back'. Unlike Microsoft, KDE has not published a roadmap for its next major release. The only previous answers to that question have been various people's personal thoughts on the issue, as opposed to a consensus amongst developers.

KDE 4 consists of several parts. The two principal parts are the platform ( the libraries which KDE applications use ), and the applications themselves. The platform absolutely must be completed before KDE 4.0 is released. The applications can be scaled up or down in terms of features for the release, depending on how much time the developers have. A lot of work has been done on the platform, and as this article discusses, much of it has been rolled into the main development branch. However there are still some items of work outstanding. Some developers feel uncomfortable committing themselves to a release period until this work is completed.

A release team has recently been formed, so a more concrete answer will probably be forthcoming in the next month or so.
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  • Re: KDE4
    by Steven on Tuesday 06/Feb/2007, @20:44
    Well fair enough but Microsoft did wait till the last minute to put a date on the release of Vista, but it (like many other stories have reported about KDE4) have said "it will be released sometime around early/mid/late 2004-2006 now 2007. I'm a fan of KDE (I use it primarily on my laptop) but KDE4 is looking like Netscape 6, and vista. Lots of pretty concept art and then a late schedule.

    In no way am I trying to push on development on the backend ... its better to ship with a stable core than to release crap, espically in this community (the open source/free software)
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    • Re: KDE4
      by Troy Unrau on Tuesday 06/Feb/2007, @21:08
      Well, as anyone who has been around in the KDE 1.1.2 -> KDE 2.0 series transition, backend changes can mean a long development cycle. In the KDE 2 series however, great KDE technologies like kio slaves, kparts, dcop, etc. were born, and it was worth the wait.

      (KDE 2->3 was less of a big deal, a lot more code cleanups, less huge structural changes...)

      KDE 4 is introducing many new great technologies, and like KDE 2.0 (or OS X 10.0), may lack a little polish when it's first released, but should be a precursor of great things to come. The downside is that the 4.0 transition cycle will be quite a lot longer than 3.0's transition cycle. Honestly, I think that we'd be lucky to see KDE 4.0 this year. However I'd wager we'll see our first alpha released this July for Akademy. As noted above, however, this is an opinion, and there is not an announced release schedule for 4.0 yet.

      Note also that 3.5.7 is likely also on its way, within 3 months if irc rumours are true.
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    • Re: KDE4
      by Thomas on Wednesday 07/Feb/2007, @02:33
      > be released sometime around early/mid/late 2004-2006 now 2007

      sorry, as far as I can recall 2004,2005 and 2006 were _never_ mentioned as possible release dates for KDE4. In the very beginning where QT4 came out and the libs were branched to work on the KDE4 target it was mid2007-end2007 and this still seems to be a good guess if you consider the process which has been made up to now. Really, the dates you mention have never ever been connected to a guessed KDE4 release-date.
      (duh, 2004/2005 .. how would that have been possible?)
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      • Re: KDE4
        by Nicolas on Wednesday 07/Feb/2007, @06:45
        I think Steven is talking about the release date of Vista, not KDE, as an exemple...
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    • Re: KDE4
      by Joergen Ramskov on Wednesday 07/Feb/2007, @04:52
      You should also remember that KDE don't have thousands of fulltime developers working on KDE 4. Considering how relatively few developers that are actually working on KDE, it is amazing how cool a desktop they have created.

      I don't really see how KDE 4 can be compared to Vista? There has been no official comment about when KDE 4 will be released and there is a lot more than just concept art available.

      I am certainly looking forward to KDE 4 and these articles just makes it worse ;) but KDE 4 will be ready when it's done.

      Besides, KDE 3 is already a great desktop :)
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      • Re: KDE4
        by Wim on Wednesday 07/Feb/2007, @10:27
        But that means that KDE failed to build the industry coalition. Why? Totally unnecessary. Now KDE 4 has to be ready, 3.5 is an old plattform. The question is if KDE 4 will be there in time.
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        • Re: KDE4
          by Troy Unrau on Wednesday 07/Feb/2007, @15:16
          Umm, it's free software, programmed by volunteers. Since when have any of these volunteers ever needed an industry coalition in order to contribute? These sorts of coalitions generally tend to be PR groups only. The Linux kernel exists without some sort of coalition, and would continue to do so even if no one in industry cared.
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        • Re: KDE4
          by Andre Somers on Thursday 08/Feb/2007, @11:09
          KDE 3.5 is an old platform? What are you talking about? KDE 3.5 was released november 29, 2005. That is just over a year old. It has seen six minor revisions since then, so it is actively maintained. All these releases have made the platform more stable, faster, and more polished. It is a very mature and stable platform, and probably the platform of choice for the less adventurous users for quite some time to come.

          Instead of bitching that KDE 4 is supposed to be ready, stop wasting time and actually start contributing to *getting* it ready.
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    • Re: KDE4
      by otherAC on Monday 12/Feb/2007, @06:20
      "Well fair enough but Microsoft did wait till the last minute to put a date on the release of Vista"

      Well, they did wait untill the last minute for the exact date of release.
      But after the release of WindowsXP they promised that the next version of Winodws would be released in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, late 2006, 2007..
      That is a delay of 5 years between the first estimated release date and the exact release date.
      And for the successor of Vista (Vienna), Microsoft has given an estimated release date of autumn 2009..
      Well see if they will make it or if Vienna will be released 5 years later..

      As for KDE4, KDE never mentioned an estimated release date...
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