KDE Ending Out November With UI Improvements, More Plasma Wayland Fixes

[piotrj3]

Recently one of the KDE devs made a video about the request to stop introducing new features in KDE and focus only on bug fixes. Basically, his main point was that if they'll completely stop working on features, that means their product will stop gaining attraction. Well, I'm not sure I completely agree on this because if we take MacOS as an example, OS X Snow Leopard released in 2009 had almost zero new features compared to Leopard that was released 2 years earlier. And guess what? It's considered the most successful version of MacOS by many. Why people like Snow Leopard so much? Because it's RELIABLE. People may not have such high opinion on newer versions of MacOS for various reasons, but also because some of them were notoriously buggy.

So you see, while some people do have hunger for more and more features, many simply want something reliable and don't really care about all the fancy features. I see KDE devs constantly talk about bug fixes, but with the current state of KDE, it's simply not enough. Also, I'm not saying they should completely stop working on features, but bug fixing should be their highest priority.

I would dare to say, Vista and windows 7 are essentially same situation. Vista is one that bringed features, 7 is basicly Vista service pack and yet 7 was loved while Vista wasn't.

[Drol]

KHamburgerMenu

KDE is getting both better and worse at the same time...

Changes that are optional I'm totally in favor, now as Gnome that took the button to clean the trash and you can't put it again I think it's an error

[user1]

I would dare to say, Vista and windows 7 are essentially same situation. Vista is one that bringed features, 7 is basicly Vista service pack and yet 7 was loved while Vista wasn't.

I don't remember Leopard having negative reception unlike Vista. Windows 7, while it's certainly a more modest update compared to other Windows versions, still had some new features. Snow Leopard on the other hand introduced almost zero new features. It mostly had under the hood improvements and fixes.

[slalomsk8er]

Recently one of the KDE devs made a video about the request to stop introducing new features in KDE and focus only on bug fixes. Basically, his main point was that if they'll completely stop working on features, that means their product will stop gaining attraction. Well, I'm not sure I completely agree on this because if we take MacOS as an example, OS X Snow Leopard released in 2009 had almost zero new features compared to Leopard that was released 2 years earlier. And guess what? It's considered the most successful version of MacOS by many. Why people like Snow Leopard so much? Because it's RELIABLE. People may not have such high opinion on newer versions of MacOS for various reasons, but also because some of them were notoriously buggy.

So you see, while some people do have hunger for more and more features, many simply want something reliable and don't really care about all the fancy features. I see KDE devs constantly talk about bug fixes, but with the current state of KDE, it's simply not enough. Also, I'm not saying they should completely stop working on features, but bug fixing should be their highest priority.

It's not like I'm a Mac user but I always had personal and professional contact in the role as personal and VIP supporter.

OS X Snow Leopard was the best in my opinion because the vision of OS X as successor of OS 9 and the switch from 32 to 64bit was completed and most if not all growing pains were ironed out. Sadly after that the appification started and Mac OS was getting dumbed down and "simplified" to be closer to IOS. I and a lot of others hated it and I gave up on it as a possible personal driver. Not even the M1 chips can tempt me as they did a coworker. Also command and control switch drives me nuts as I would still have to use the other 2 OS families and this sticks out like a sore thumb.

[slalomsk8er]

I would dare to say, Vista and windows 7 are essentially same situation. Vista is one that bringed features, 7 is basicly Vista service pack and yet 7 was loved while Vista wasn't.

As far as I remember, Vista was hated because of the instability the changed driver model brought. A lot of "old" hardware never got a Vista driver and if you could find one then it was pure luck if it ran stable or crashed the system. This was even true for systems that came preinstalled with Vista but to a lesser degree as Microsoft tried to catch the obvious errors in there driver certification program. In this regard is comperes to the growing pains of versions before OS X Leopard as it was more like early Windows 7 and Snow Leopard like late Windows 7. IMHO all the newer Mac OS versions feel more like Windows 8 & 11 to me

[user1]

It's not like I'm a Mac user but I always had personal and professional contact in the role as personal and VIP supporter.

OS X Snow Leopard was the best in my opinion because the vision of OS X as successor of OS 9 and the switch from 32 to 64bit was completed and most if not all growing pains were ironed out. Sadly after that the appification started and Mac OS was getting dumbed down and "simplified" to be closer to IOS. I and a lot of others hated it and I gave up on it as a possible personal driver. Not even the M1 chips can tempt me as they did a coworker. Also command and control switch drives me nuts as I would still have to use the other 2 OS families and this sticks out like a sore thumb.

Yeah, I know about these changes. I was just trying to make a point that if your product doesn't have many new features (or almost no new features) in a new version, doesn't mean users will lose interest in it or it will stop gaining attraction.

[stingray454]

I agree with most above comments - KDE is great and currently my daily driver, but there definitely are annoying bugs that makes it feel less polished. Some have been reported since years but not solved yet, and I discovered a few new ones after I did a clean manjaro install recently as well. Still I think it's the best DE by far right now, but would love to see a "Snow Leopard" / XP / Whatever release that felt rock solid. That said, it's come a long way in recent times and gotten a whole lot better, so it doesn't feel like an impossible task, I'm just hoping for a shift of focus to stability and less on new features.

[skeevy420]

Yeah, I know about these changes. I was just trying to make a point that if your product doesn't have many new features (or almost no new features) in a new version, doesn't mean users will lose interest in it or it will stop gaining attraction.

A lot of times new features for the sake of new features can make software worse. Look at Windows 11 when compared to 10. For me it's 1 step forward with two steps back. While some of the gaming features are better with 11 the overall desktop experience seriously went downhill.

[tildearrow]

I agree with most above comments - KDE is great and currently my daily driver, but there definitely are annoying bugs that makes it feel less polished. Some have been reported since years but not solved yet, and I discovered a few new ones after I did a clean manjaro install recently as well. Still I think it's the best DE by far right now, but would love to see a "Snow Leopard" / XP / Whatever release that felt rock solid. That said, it's come a long way in recent times and gotten a whole lot better, so it doesn't feel like an impossible task, I'm just hoping for a shift of focus to stability and less on new features.

Was XP rock solid? The amount of freezes and blue screens on Windows XP far exceeds 7...

[caligula]

Was XP rock solid? The amount of freezes and blue screens on Windows XP far exceeds 7...

It was rock solid compared to 95/98/ME crap. Also a bit faster than 2k thanks to prefetch stuff and optimizations. I remember maintaining Pentium 4 / 2k Dell workstations that were slow as hell.