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----- Original Message ---- |
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|
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> From: Neil Bothwick <neil@××××××××××.uk> |
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> On Thu, 12 May 2011 16:44:21 -0500, Dale wrote: |
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> > Your questions don't disprove what me and others have posted. As I |
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> > have said on the KDE mailing list, KDE made a serious mistake dropping |
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> > KDE3 before KDE4 was ready. |
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> How exactly did they "drop" it? It's still available from |
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> ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/3.5.10 even now and some distros still |
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> have packages for it. It never went away, you can still use it if you |
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> wish. |
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> |
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|
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Ok, so personally I very much like KDE4 - been using it since 4.3 was stabilized |
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on Gentoo and love it. |
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That said... |
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|
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KDE did seem to drop the ball a bit with their management of the transition from |
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KDE3 to KDE4. |
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|
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To start with, look at the reason why Gentoo dropped KDE3 from Portage - KDE |
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stopped maintaining it and the builds started breaking as underlying library |
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dependencies changed. |
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So, sure you may be able to pull a binary build from KDE and use it; or (more |
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likely) you'll spend hours and hours getting everything setup right - with all |
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the correct versions of the dependencies, etc - to get it up and running. |
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|
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In other words, when KDE decided to move on to KDE4 full time they left the |
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release as it was and it has since gotten harder to use by those that want to |
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use it. |
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Okay - that's not entirely KDE's problem; though it would have helped a long way |
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with the KDE4 transition if they kept a few people working on those issues. |
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|
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The big issue is that in moving to sole development of KDE4, distros started to |
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drop KDE3 and replace it with KDE4. For example, Kubuntu 8.04 TLS dropped KDE3 |
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and used KDE4 long before KDE4 was really user worthy - long before KDE was |
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calling it user worthy. But KDEs actions of moving sole development to KDE4 |
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prompted most distributions to do likewise. As a result, KDE got a lot of flack |
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for KDE4 not being ready for users b/c it wasn't - which KDE readily recognized |
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and admitted. |
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|
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Had they kept a small team working on at least the build issues until KDE4 |
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reached 4.3 then the transition would have likely gone a lot smoother. The |
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userbase for KDE4 would have been smaller, so it may have taken a little longer |
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to get some of the user feedback; but it would have greatly helped with aiding |
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distributions and users making the transition instead of feeling like they were |
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dumped from KDE 3.5.10 into KDE 4.0.1. |
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|
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> |
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> So install a distro that still supports KDE3 if that's what you want or |
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> need. KDE 3.5.10 is still there, it hasn't been withdrawn from the |
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> shelves. You're hardly likely to use Gentoo for such users, so lack of |
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> core support for 3.5 in Gentoo is not an issue either. |
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> |
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|
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While I am not personally interested in it, please name one. |
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|
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Gentoo doesn't support KDE3 any more. You have to go to Trinity to get the |
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newer, forked KDE3 series. Last I heard they were equivalent to a 3.5.12 or so; |
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but I haven't seen anything on the Desktop list for a while about Trinity. |
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Needless to say, you may be very hard pressed to find a modern, up-to-date |
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distribution that offers KDE3 support. |
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|
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Ben |