090810 Tomáš Chvátal wrote:
> Hello guys,

Hopefully, there are 1 or 2 gals using Gentoo desktops too (smile).

> With this e-mail I hope to convince a few of you to step up and help us 
> maintain kde3 packages. But first things first, current state:

-- current state well described, but snipped --

I was using KDE 3.5.x happily, but one look at 4.2.1 was enough:
I'm not interested in bling, rotating cubes, widgets or the rest of it.
What was I to do ?  Assuming KDE 3 will disappear sometime in 2010 ,
what could I use instead ?

First, I updated Fluxbox to 1.1.1 & found it does everything I want
& is on balance slightly better than KDE 3.5.10 , let alone KDE 4 .

Then I dropped Kjots in favor of a simple text file,
which is much easier to edit (with Gvim) & back up.

Then I found that Xfce's Thunar is an excellent file manager,
less powerful than Krusader, but far better than Dolphin 4.2.1
(I prefer the CLI for everyday file management, but sometimes need more).
Also, I discovered Xfce's Terminal (by the same hardnosed developer),
which is an adequate replacement for Konsole for simple use:
it doesn't yet have session management, but hopefully will soon,
while it does offer a much wider choice of fonts (incl Luxi Mono ! ).

So that leaves Kmahjongg, whose 4.2.1 version lacked user-edited layouts;
Konqueror, which is sometimes a useful alternative to Firefox;
Kpdf, which is much better (3.5.10) than was Ocular 4.2.1 .
Gwenview & Krusader are independently developed & sb usable with Qt 4 .

So realistically, KDE 3 devotees have to accept it's going to disappear
unless someone does a fork, of which there is no sign,
& have to find alternatives, which seem to be available or almost.

I do plan to have a look at 4.3.1 in October or so
& can only hope Konqueror, Ocular & Kmahjongg will pass muster,
but I am very unlikely to change my view of the new desktop.

As usual, my thanks for the dedicated volunteer labor of all the KDE devs.

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