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Re: wow
by Jim on Wednesday 30/Apr/2008, @05:29
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You seem to be more eager to parrot the party line than to read the comment you are replying to.
> Dude, why don't you just wait until 4.1 is released?
Because the point is not that Plasma is currently unstable, the point is that after telling everybody that 4.0 was the broken release and 4.1 was for stabilisation, they did the exact opposite and went ahead with more major changes to Plasma.
Whether they pull it together and fix things before 4.1 is released is beside the point. Porting to new APIs while adding features does not increase stability, it does the opposite. The fact that they are willing to do that shows that the claims that 4.1 was the stabilisation release was just an excuse. The truth is that 4.0 was simply unfinished and moving to 4.1 is a case of completing all the development they wished they had done for 4.0.
If the development process continues at this rate, people will be complaining that 4.1 is unstable and they'll get told that 4.2 will stabilise things.
> 4.0 was and is a major undertaking of moving the project to a whole new foundation. And 4.0 achieved that. Is it functionally equivalent to 3.x? No. But 4.1 should take big steps in turning KDE4 in to a robust everyday desktop.
Jonathan pointed out that alphas are for risky development, and I pointed out that means little because betas and release candidates are also for risky development as far as KDE is concerned.
Your soundbite about KDE 4.0 being a major undertaking really has no relevance to that point, it's like a generic press blurb you copy & pasted.
> In short: Wait until the software is actually released, before whining about that software, OK?
I'm complaining about the development process, not the software. |
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Re: wow
by Antonio on Wednesday 30/Apr/2008, @07:38
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> I'm complaining about the development process, not the software.
Your complaint about the development process, while perhaps both entertaining for some and frustrating for others, is based on a terrible misreading of what has been said.
> Because the point is not that Plasma is currently unstable, the point is that
> after telling everybody that 4.0 was the broken release and 4.1 was for
> stabilisation, they did the exact opposite and went ahead with more major
> changes to Plasma.
Nobody said 4.1 was a `stabilization release'. They said Plasma would become what it was meant to be much more so in 4.1 than it had time to in 4.0. They also said that, since there will have been more testing, more bugs will have been found and fixed.
> If the development process continues at this rate, people will be complaining
> that 4.1 is unstable and they'll get told that 4.2 will stabilise things.
If the process continues at this rate, we'll be light-years ahead of the competition in just a few releases. The rate at which Plasma has been developed from nothing to a working, if not-as-featureful, replacement for KDesktop to what it is now is absolutely ridiculously awesome, for any company or community.
Software is continual stabilization. 3.5.9 is as stable as it is because it has had *6 years* of development on it at this point, 3 between 3.0 and 3.5. And that *wasn't* as major a re-architecting (the previous one having been KDE 2).
> Jonathan pointed out that alphas are for risky development, and I pointed out
> that means little because betas and release candidates are also for risky
> development as far as KDE is concerned.
>
> Your soundbite about KDE 4.0 being a major undertaking really has no
> relevance to that point, it's like a generic press blurb you copy & pasted.
It is a fact that a major re-architecting will introduce bugs. Amusingly, you make that same point earlier on. But now you say it is irrelevant to the fact that 4.0 was buggier than 3.5.9 that KDE 4 is a major re-architecting? Hopefully the paralleling there makes you see how silly that sounds. New platform releases are not for `risky' development, they are for total restructuring, which will, yes, introduce new bugs.
Finally, I've been using KDE4 on laptop and desktop for a few months (latter) and a few weeks (former), and while Plasma started out a little buggy, it's been doing fine for me recently. And yeah, it looks gorgeous. To the point where a Mac fanboy walked past the other day and went `wow, Linux is looking really good...'
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Re: wow
by Hans on Wednesday 30/Apr/2008, @08:11
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> I'm complaining about the development process, not the software.
How would you have preferred it?
Waiting three years until a perfect KDE 4.1 is released and all Plasma issues are fixed?
Wait with the porting of Plasma to Qt 4.4 and WoC sweetness?
Break the API between 4.1 and 4.2 instead, or don't review it at all?
Label this release "KDE 4.1 this-is-really-REALLY-pre-pre- -pre-unstable-not-for-users-KRASH-alpha-release" ?
KDE 4.1 isn't going to be perfect, nor absolutely stable, but it's one step in the progress of KDE4.
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Re: wow
by fred on Wednesday 30/Apr/2008, @08:39
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> Because the point is not that Plasma is currently unstable, the point is that after telling everybody that 4.0 was the broken release and 4.1 was for stabilisation, they did the exact opposite and went ahead with more major changes to Plasma.
> Whether they pull it together and fix things before 4.1 is released is beside the point. Porting to new APIs while adding features does not increase stability, it does the opposite. The fact that they are willing to do that shows that the claims that 4.1 was the stabilisation release was just an excuse. The truth is that 4.0 was simply unfinished and moving to 4.1 is a case of completing all the development they wished they had done for 4.0.
Dude, making a software stable is not only achieved by keeping all things in order and start bugfixing. Sometimes if the underlying tool offers something better, we need to replace our own implementation with better one.
With the new WoC on Qt 4.4, Plasma devs can get rid of tons of code in their own layouting and widgets code, and probably less bugs since they're now relying on Qt's layouting which is already proven. So the devs can spend their time fixing other bugs and issues rather than spending time fixing the layout issues. They can't use WoC for KDE 4.0.x simply because Qt 4.4 was not released (Qt 4.4 is to be released before KDE 4.1)
You can read here: http://vizzzion.org/?blogentry=812 And some more blogs about Widget on Canvas which I've forgotten.
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Re: wow
by Janne on Wednesday 30/Apr/2008, @11:29
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"Because the point is not that Plasma is currently unstable, the point is that after telling everybody that 4.0 was the broken release and 4.1 was for stabilisation, they did the exact opposite and went ahead with more major changes to Plasma."
Again: You are whining about alpha-software. That is: software that is nowhere near release. And in case you didn't know, major version-numbers (4.0 ==> 4.1 ==> 4.2 etc.) are for new features and functionality, besides bugfixes. And that is exactly what is happening here. New functionality often bring with it new bugs. But those get sorted out.
"Whether they pull it together and fix things before 4.1 is released is beside the point."
No it is not.
"I'm complaining about the development process, not the software."
Why? What matters is the software that gets developed. I don't care one bit if KDE-coders create 4.1 night before the release, what I care about is the quality of the software that gets released. And alpha-software is way too early to pass judgement regarding the quality of 4.1.0.
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