[gentoo-desktop] Re: KDE Sunset Amarok

[Duncan]

Alex Schuster posted on Thu, 02 Aug 2012 20:44:16 +0200 as excerpted:

> Duncan writes:
>
>> Alex Schuster posted on Thu, 02 Aug 2012 14:19:23 +0200 as excerpted:
>>
>> > I still use Konqueror... not really sure why. I like it, yes, it
>> > looks more KDEish than Firefox, and it opens in a new window instead
>> > as a new tab in an existing Firefox window, which probably could be
>> > changed anyway... but a problem are the bookmarks, moving multiple
>> > top-level bookmarks to a folder makes keditbookmarks crash, sometimes
>> > losing some of those bookmarks, and sometimes it will additionally
>> > delete the very first folder. Happened at least three times for me,
>> > and guess what, the first bookmark folder is named 'Accounts' and is
>> > the most important one for me. Then I will have to get an old version
>> > of bookmarks.xml from a backup and merge it with the current file.

>> but I've /never/ (to my recollection) had that issue.  I moved to
>> firefox for other reasons, and gripe a bit to myself when I have to
>> create a new bookmark in kde semi- manually since it's not
>> kde-integrated like konqueror, but I've never had problems with kde's
>> bookmarks.
>
> In early KDE4 keditbookmarks was totally unusable, I think it was not
> even possible to move bookmarks around. This has been fixed, but it
> still crashes often, and the problem I mentioned is quite reproducible.
> It does not happen every time, but it happens a lot. And that it
> additionally deletes the very first folder completely is especially
> annoying, because I did not realize this until much later, when  needed
> the bookmark. Here's a report:
> https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=255611

After thinking about it a bit, the fact that I haven't run into the issue 
may well be because I've simply never moved whole folders around since 
the bug originated (likely with kde4).  Since I've been using the same 
general setup since kde2 era, I long since had my bookmarks arranged in 
general as I want them.  I do add new bookmarks occasionally, and delete 
old ones, and /very/ occasionally create a new folder and move a few 
bookmarks into it, but I don't normally move folders around as I've had 
the general arrangement setup how I wanted it "forever".  ("Forever" is 
in this case defined as pretty much since I originally set it up when I 
switched from MS over a decade ago, now, "I don't remember changing it 
since I switched to Linux" type "forever", thus the quotes.)

> And I think this is a big problem with KDE4. Such bugs exist for years,
> and noone seems to care much. Could you imagine Firefox's bookmark
> editor to be buggy for two years, or Internet Explorer? No, this sort of
> problems exists in KDE4 only I think.

The major problem here is that even most kde devs don't use konqueror for 
anything "serious".  To them, it's simply a toy, not a browser that's 
their primary means of paying bills (epay via the bank), etc.

That's why bugs such as this go years without fixing; it's why the 
infamous double-form-submit bug in kde 4.6.2 had to wait two full months 
(4.6.4) to be fixed for users even tho they knew the problem right away, 
but didn't quite get the patch in before 4.6.3's code-freeze, instead of 
either never being full-version released (that's what betas are for, yet 
this happened in a bugfix only stable update!) in the first place, or the 
error having happened, expediting a fixed 4.6.2.1 update within a week, 
two at the outside, as would have happened with any browser product where 
its own devs are serious about it.  It's why in an era of entire 
certificate authorities having their entire collection of certs revoked, 
kde4/konqueror had no GUI for certificate management for YEARS after kde4
was declared "ready for ordinary use", etc.

The only conclusion possible is that kde devs including the konqueror 
devs themselves consider konqueror it no more than a toy by said 
"ordinary users" -- DEFINITELY not something people are going to rely on 
for banking, since it was declared ready for ordinary use, yet even with 
certificates being revoked left and right, there was no way for a user to 
tell konqueror not to actually USE those certs.  DEFINITELY not something 
people are going to be using for transacting money, since the double-
submit bug was allowed to sit without a critical update for two full 
months.

But if it's only a toy, not actually used for anything important, then 
such fixes are as trivial as the use of the product, and can be allowed 
to sit for months and years, even after the product has been declared 
ready for ordinary users.

So that's why I use firefox for my major web browsing, including banking, 
etc, now.

And... if it's only a toy, and security and double-submit issues can wait 
for months and years /because/ it's only a toy, then it's certainly no 
big deal if the toy's bookmark editor is a bit buggy, as well...

> Sorry for the ranting, I know this is free software and so on, but these
> are the things that make it hard for me to recommend KDE4 to others.
> People just expect simple things like bookmark editors to work. But
> instead they crash, and they delete data when doing so. I'm, still a big
> fan of KDE4, and would not like to change, but I do not recommend it to
> others. And of course my mom's Laptup runs Gnome, not KDE.

I recommend kde to others, but only the core desktop (with semantic-
desktop disabled at compile time for best results, tho unfortunately I 
don't know of a binary distro that's doing that, but of course it's 
possible with gentoo), games, etc.  Firefox or chromium for a browser.  
Something non-kmail/non-kdepim/non-akonadi for mail/news/feeds/etc.  Just 
let kde be the desktop environment and provide a few games, gui file 
management, etc.  That's all.  And kde4's actually reasonably good at 
that... once it's built without semantic-desktop, at least, and with a 
bit of care taken to keep backups of one particular vital plasma file 
(plasma-desktop-appletsrc) in particular.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman