KDE No Longer Competitive? Developer Calls It Quits

[gedgon]

He also leaves users without any bug fixes? [...] Why hi didn't get other people some time to start continuing his work, and when it's stable situation, then leave KDE? I think that's not OK.

Seriously, first paragraph:

[...] I'll be forwarding the maintainership to Frank Reininghaus. Frank did a great job during the last years to improve Dolphin and I'm really glad that he accepted the maintainership.

[RealNC]

I've also posted this on the site, but I really do feel the same thing.

Although I haven't found a replacement, I feel less and less love for KDE and all its microbugs/quirks/general unpolishedness. Honestly, I still use KDE for work and home, but I'm finding it harder and harder to honestly recommend it as a credible option to other systems.

And yes I've filed bugs, and yes I've even wrote small and simple patches that were ignored because "well, we're planning a rewrite of that anyway... sometime... so let's leave the multi-year bug there, it's not visible on my machine anyway".

+1

The KDE devs, at least those who comment on the bugtracker, seem to not give a shit about KDE anymore.

[hooluupog]

He goes on to explain how the user interfaces are becoming simpler while the functionality of the applications are increasing without an effective UI, increasing complexity of non-UI elements of applications, etc. "Working on the non-user-interface parts of applications can be challenging and this is not something that most freetime-contributors are striving for. But if there are not enough contributors for the complex stuff behind the scenes and if no company is willing to invest fulltime-developers to work on this... - well then we are losing ground. And even if Gnome seems to get more support from companies, I don't see a big difference to KDE here.

This makes me think of the differences between facebook and google. At Facebook, one had checked in code his first day there, and it was pushed to the live site on the next day. At google, employees make incremental changes to existing complex systems to improve stability, performance, or add minor features.Consequently,google has made some wonderful products (e.g.,chrome browser,android,map,etc.) but the developers in background is somewhat neglected,facebook has less sucessful products but get deverlopers' preference. Similarly, freetime-contributors unconsciously prefer to implement new features rather than fix old bugs. Because people like to hear compliments, longing to be recognized,feel appreciated person especially for those contributors without being paid and working on the user-interface parts of applications will help them to achieve those more easily.Therefore,working on the non-user-interface parts of applications is not something that most freetime-contributors are striving for though it is so important.

[e8hffff]

I hope he (Peter Penz) realises there are people that use KDE and appreciate it. I for one. I wont be changing to another desktop environment any time soon.

I can understand where he's coming from and the problem lay in lack of management.

Open source software needs Figures that pull project in different directions. Mark Shuttleworth is a prime example of this. He has swayed Debian and Gnome, images to his design and form, and made a success of it. Someone simply needs to do that with KDE, or even an OS with custom version of KDE. Peter Penz maybe you can step up to a new KDE mirror project? Become a star of the Linux stage.

Regarding new UI, well the direction is touch screen and projection interaction, interfaces. How applications talk between each other and interoperate metadata and general data, is another innovative area. I thought KDE was moving in these fields? Can Peter be more specific with what's lacking?

[d2kx]

Canonical should hire Martin Gr??lin and let him work on Compiz. Compiz is already getting a lot better now thanks to the work of Daniel Van Vugt and others.

[schmidtbag]

There's a lot about KDE that I think is the best of all DEs, but there's also a lot about it that is very unappealing. Thankfully, most of what is unappealing about it can be disabled or avoided entirely if you just spend the time to mess with it. Dolphin is actually one of my favorite aspects about KDE and it is definitely my favorite file browser on any OS. For people who complain about KDE's glitchyness, use the latest releases - they tend to fix a lot. KDE is one of the only group of packages where you should use the bleeding edge releases. They tend to release more bugfixes and translation updates than anything.

My gripes with KDE is:
* I'd like to remove the plasmoid icons from panels and the desktop
* It is extremely slow to start up the desktop
* The System Settings program could be a little better organized
* Nepomuk should not be integrated to the point where you can't remove it
* While KDE has the most accessible features, it doesn't seem to be the best in anything; its kind of a jack-of-all-trades.

Today, it seems like KDE's unpopularity is due to it's wildly negative first impression from versions 4.3 and earlier. Those versions were terrible and I myself absolutely hated it at that time, but now KDE (along with LXDE) are my favorites.

I wonder if this developer will decide to go for that other Qt based DE, I forget what its called but it basically seems like a really stripped down KDE.

[Druedain]

Seriously, first paragraph:

Sorry, my fault.

[Serafean]

KDE people took on too much. They have great ideas, but not ennough manpower. Akonadi, nepomuk, plasma. All great concepts, of which a good implementation is extremely hard. Nepomuk has mostly been a one man show, AFAIK akonadi has 5 people behind it (who are also expected to take care of applications). I love kde for all the great ideas that are there, and am willing to put up with microbugs.
In kde there are always hundreds of things happening at once (Frameworks, QT5, finishing akonadi, nepomuk, wayland in kwin, qtquick2...), no wonder they're always chasing something...

IMO another thing that happened is that way too much effort is going into user interfaces (don't get me wrong, I acknowledge their importance). It's easier to become an UX developer than a behind the scenes dev, if only for the satisfaction of being able to see the result...

Serafean

[markg85]

+1

The KDE devs, at least those who comment on the bugtracker, seem to not give a shit about KDE anymore.

-1000

I really have to go against that. From time to time i also do some bug triaging on KDE (recently on plasma) and that helped fix a few, close a few invalid ones and more overall progress in those areas. The people doing bug triaging are certainly not people who don't give a shit about KDE. Why would they do bughunting if your statement is true.

[Rallos Zek]

What a Trollish headline.