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The only reason I dislike the big changes from 3.5.x series to 4.x is the breakage of a huge number of useful and working applications in KDE 3.5. Quanta Plus is one. KRegexpeditor is another. Rosegarden for another. I'm sure everybody has a small but useful list like this.
I miss a few other very useful utils in KDE 3.5.x.
I am somewhat surprised that Slackware has adopted KDE 4.2 so quickly. I hoped that both Debian and Slackware would lag behind the times a bit so that we could still have the option of 3.5.x. Bad luck...
I now feel as though I have nowhere to turn to if I want KDE 3.5.x back. I know that we need to move with the times, but with these major upgrades there are too many things being reinvented and time wasted in porting apps that already work fine and are polished and mature.
Last edited by vharishankar; 07-12-2009 at 06:50 AM.
I now feel as though I have nowhere to turn to if I want KDE 3.5.x back. I know that we need to move with the times, but with these major upgrades there are too many things being reinvented and time wasted in porting apps that already work fine and are polished and mature.
Slackware 12.2 is still a modern release so you don't have to move from it anytime soon. Even if you do upgrade, you could use kde 3.5 instead of 4.x on Slackware 13. Woodsman has been exploring this issue for some time in another thread.
Slackware 12.2 is still a modern release so you don't have to move from it anytime soon. Even if you do upgrade, you could use kde 3.5 instead of 4.x on Slackware 13. Woodsman has been exploring this issue for some time in another thread.
It's not a question of us not upgrading. It's not exactly a distribution problem either. Yes, Slackware 12.2 will remain modern for a while. So will Debian Lenny or Squeeze. As for modernity, so was Slackware 8.0 at some point. So was Debian Woody or Sarge. But how many of us are using old, unsupported software? What I feel is that there should be a commitment to maintaining well polished and well tested software like KDE 3.5.x series upstream. It's a huge waste to see that it has all but been abandoned.
You will say: it's open source. Why don't I do something about it? Because practically I (and 99% of us end users for that matter) don't have the time, the resources or the technical know-how to manage projects of that scale. Neither can we abandon our regular jobs or studies to pursue something like this.
Ultimately nobody has a choice in a practical sense because even good software become abandoned and unsupported over time. When software becomes obsoleted or abandoned there are a host of issues that a user faces: lack of security patches for one - and then inability to add any new software to the system without having to upgrade essential libraries and so on which requires one to upgrade the whole system in any case.
This, whether open source or otherwise. I feel it's a big problem because so much past effort is wasted when there is a reinvention of the wheel for no big advantage. KDE 3.5.x to KDE 4.2.x is a prime example of that. I've not noticed a single increase in my productivity because of that. I did a lot of useful work on KDE 3.5.x series and I notice a drop in that when I shift to KDE 4.2.x because upstream development of allied software always has to keep catching up.
Last edited by vharishankar; 07-12-2009 at 08:57 AM.
That is the unfortunate side of things. Regardless of whether or not Slackware supports 3.5.x KDE, KDE 3.5.x does not appear to be supported upstream any (or for much) longer.
Perhaps you should consider maintaining KDE 3.whatever.suits.you, since you
seem to be gathering a following. And then you could do what the KDE project
never seemed interested in doing ... fixing existing bugs. If you did that,
before you like KDE 4.whatever.we.use maybe you'd have something to release
to us that would be "mo' betta", as we say in Mississippi.
I'm still using KDE 3.5.10 with a few mods. Below is a hack job for upgrading to the latest packages but keeping your old Slack 12.2 box. I guess you could say 12.3 now. Has anyone considered maybe two version of Slackware?
Say 12 series sticks with Kde 3.5 adn the 13 series goes to Kde 4.
Anyway its like Radeon going to the 10,000. They got too ambitious with the numbering.
----------------------------------------------
1. Install Slackware 12.2.
2. Build linux 2.6.30 using the config from 2.6.27 as a primer ie. copy /boot/config*huge*smp /usr/src/linux/.config
2. Build xz and tar from slackware-current sources.
3. Install all the l series and x series; acpid and hald from the a series, all from slackware-current.
4. Intel Graphics? You'll need to get 2.7.99 of the xf86-intel driver or better.
Problems:
1. KdeInit fails to load, havn't fixed this yet. (lazy)
2. There was a glitch in 2.6.30 that causes failures on my dvd-r burners and cd-r. I disabled a few kernel options somewhere around the processor section. But I don't remember why it started working again.
3. glxgear reports a rate that isn't consistent with the quality of my games. Which run rather good under the new xorg.
Distribution: Slackware64 current multilib, Gentoo
Posts: 43
Rep:
Working with slack 13, and must say that kde4 is getting better than in the beginning. It's indeed still incomplete: for example: you can't change the transparency or colors from the task-bar.
Dolphin is also incomplete comparing to konqueror: when you hoover with your mouse over a folder or file you don't get a text-balloon with extra info like ownership, date created etc... In Dolphin you can't change the colors, background, styles etc. (and I don't like the style of Dolphin, so I still use Konqueror: here I can make my own style.)
BUT: Kde 3.2.x was also quite incomplete; kde3.5.x is almost complete and "almost" bug free. Maybe when there's a kde 4.5.x the story will repeat: a new desktop is created called kde 5.x.x, and it won't be complete in the beginning again, and there will be also a lot of resistance... (something new gives always resistance )
I would say: just give it a try, it isn't so bad anymore and: the world is always changing.
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