Tag Archives: KDE

Annoying fork talks

Now even the (once respected) Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols is jumping on the bandwagon of Plasma haters. With a rather uninformed and rant-ish entry that just advocates a fork, like some other people said on the kde-devel mailinglist a week or two ago.

The entry is rather dismissive of everything in KDE 4 save Plasma (and a mention on Dolphin’s single click icon), and also gets some facts and links wrong (yes, the Plasma web site is outdated, but since the developers are busy coding, someone else should step up and help). I wanted to point out a link to the Plasma FAQ, but apparently I can’t (I assume it’s because of my ISP, as usual).

In any case, I didn’t find mention of specific problems, save the fact that apparently SJVN doesn’t like Plasma. But why? Why didn’t he point out the specific problems? My question is, was he really interested in having problems fixed, or he just wanted to advocate a fork for the sake of some unspecified reason? I think the latter.

I’m no developer, but I’m liking where Plasma is doing. I already set up three different activities on my computer here at home, which uses nightly Kubuntu packages. I switch between general, writing and coding activities, which have different plasmoids loaded. The difference in layout and the like are the bigger advantage over traditional virtual desktops.

Fork talks like the aforementioned blog entry are no good, they only want to kindle more flames, just as the behavior of trolls on the Dot reached the point of no return. Not a good sign.

Be free.

be free.

The word is official: KDE 4.0.0 has been released. Make sure to check out the Dot story, or the nicely done visual guide. And if you’re new to Plasma, have a look at the FAQ as well.

Congratulations to all the KDE developers, translators, and coordinators for pushing forward our favorite desktop environment. Rock on!

KDE 4.0.0 tagging

Today is the tagging day for KDE 4.0.0. I think it speaks for itself. I have checked out the 4.0 branch and I’m going to use it in a full session real soon (so far I used nested X sessions with Xephyr). Aaron Seigo hasĀ  a nice writeup on the release, some of the memes floating around and the future of KDE 4.

Plasma FAQ

I’ve started working on a FAQ related to Plasma, in order to ease the transition for the early adopters of Plasma when KDE 4.0 is released. That, coupled with another idea I had (offering video tutorials of operations) should make the gap smaller.

Currently the FAQ is a work in progress (still a lot of TODOs, I hope to have a look after Friday as I’m really busy now) and resides in KDE’s TechBase until a more suitable solution is found. If you think you can help, feel free to contribute!

Last but not least, big thanks go to Aaron for the encouragement, andĀ  to Joseph M Gaffney for volounteering to help.