KDE vs Gnome – who cares

So apparently Linus doesn’t like KDE anymore and here we go again. Apparently for people who LOVE KDE 3.5 the only choice if they don’t like KDE4 (yet anyway) is to switch to gnome. I’m writing this post on a KDE 3.5 installation and a big WTF floats in my head. If KDE4 doesn’t suit you, then why do you HAVE to move to gnome? People are raving about how good 3.5 was. Then don’t upgrade! It’s just stupid. Linus was apparently forced to “upgrade” from 3.5 to 4.0 which is fucked up. Fedora is obviously a distribution which suck nuts. KDE 4.0 was utter crap, and not recommended for average users, and for Fedora to force this upgrade and take away KDE 3.5 is just nuts. Actually a lot of other distros followed like sheeps, Kubuntu forced this upgrade with KDE 4.1, which is still a bad and not-yet-ready release in my book.

But all this poor handling and storm around KDE 4.0 just means what I (and many others) was thinking all along: releasing a major new version (4.0) and calling it a developer release is just stupid. Apparently they HAD TO DO IT in order to gain widespread adoption, all the while saying that this was NOT for endusers, and distributions should not include it. Sounds like a paradox to me. “KDE4: Developer Preview” or something sounds more like it. I’ve never heard of a .0 release not being intended for anyone except developers (sans all Microsoft software ofcourse), and KDE can’t just coin a new convention and excect it to work out flawlessly. I don’t like the convention either, it means that the average user will have no idea which version is intended for widespread release – it might be .1, might be .4, might be .129. Version numbering is pointless but if you are going to use it, .0 should be usable by anybody. KDE4.2 really is the first 4.0 for regular people. I still don’t think it is better than 3.5 though.

But, 4.2 really is starting to make KDE4 rise again. I never used kontact on KDE 3.5, but for some reason in 4.2 it just appeals more to me. Might be that it just looks better on 4.2, I d’no. Personally I am waiting eagerly for opensync 0.4 to stabalize and the kde4-pim plugin to be released. Nepomuk, when it is more integrated than in 4.2, will also bring lots of coolness to the desktop.