I'm not sure what you're getting at. You're describing pretty much EVERY software development cycle out there. It seems like an odd expectation to have to expect the same feverish development pace once the current cycle has matured and stabilized. Any time you move the pegs in ANY software you risk regressions as well as the introduction of new bugs. The alternative is to stagnate and never change.

Personally, I like the change that has gone into kde5/plasma5.

Did I say that? Really? Putting KDE4 into low-maintenance mode for 5 or more years is not demanding a feverish development pace.

4 should not have been abandoned as soon as it reached a satisfactory state. If KDE lose all interest in their desktop as soon as that desktop is as good as they can get it then they shouldn't be surprised if people turn their backs on anything they come out with in future. Why on earth would anybody trust them? Why be a guinea pig for their software development cycle when you know that as soon as the goal of a perfect desktop environment has been reached they're going to completely abandon it and start all over again?

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But what should KDE devs expect to do when they find their development kit is EOL? Do they keep using it and developing against a kit that has no future? Should software developers keep developing for Windows XP since their software worked great on it, even though Microsoft has no plans to put out any updates for any bugs in Windows XP?

Yes, introducing software on a new development kit is going to introduce bugs or not contain all the features previous versions have. We can see this anywhere, whether software or hardware, both in computers and outside of them (how many times is it recommended to skip new revisions of cars to let them figure out the issues and fix them the next model year?).

QT4 is dead. There isn't going to be any more updates for it and there haven't been any for 4 years. How long should KDE devs keep developing against a dead toolkit before it's ok for them to move on?

So, they should then split their development teams to do both at the same time? Even though the KDE4 team would be developing against dead software? Do they have the manning for that? They are an open-source company and may not have resources to keep two versions developing side-by-side.

My writing is just from a technical standpoint. Right now, I don't really have a horse in the race, because I haven't used KDE5 and have no idea how it compares to KDE4... so I'm not writing this as some KDE fanboy and I hope it isn't coming across that way.

You don't sound like a fanboy at all. You've presented logical points. I have used both KDE4 and KDE5 and there is a performance improvement in KDE5. I prefer KDE-plasma compared to KDE4.

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Two Cliches that got to be cliches by being generally, if also ironically, true

It may be a pita for a time but generally getting some new things down and then moving on to newer things is a competitive necessity.

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You people discuss about the obsolescence of KDE4 compared with the modern Plasma5...

I am not a plasma-hater, rather I ignored it in the past, and right now I have an enough positive opinion about it, to invent my compressed-usr thing to do a recommended/full install with Plasma5 in a whooping 5GB space on hard drive. Also, being all honestly, this little invention improve the performances, specially when the drive is rather older and relative slow.

However, I have a question for you: we know that KDE4 is already abandoned (and after some, right on "buried"), but Plasma5 how much live still have until it will be shoot in head like a wounded horse?

I ask that because I read that the nex major version of Qt, the Qt6 will be released in 2020, and 2020 will be right on the next year from now.

Following your own arguments about the innocent KDE devs and that Qt is all at fault, there will follow the abandon of Plasma5 and starting from scratch the next KDE iteration, which probably we will name it with love: Plasma6 and we will enjoy all its brand new features and bugs.

Still, what will happen then with Plasma5?

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Probably the same thing that happened with KDE 3, KDE 2 and KDE 1 before it.

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I think (and hope) that what the developers did for Plasma5, will make future transition to the next major release of Qt a lot less invasive.
What they did was build a software layer between the desktop & applications and the GUI toolkit (Qt). They called that the KDE Frameworks and every KDE application developer was instructed to port his KDE4 code to KDE Frameworks. The result is that KDE desktop & applications have no strict dependency on the Qt API, Instead, they all interface with the Frameworks API which is stable. The Frameworks themselves need to make that translation of future Qt functionality to a Frameworks API.

As a result, the KDE software landscape is no longer this monolithic bulk of software that was KDE4 and earlier. Instead, KDE now has a modular approach in their software development which will in future become even more granular with respect to its applications. These discussions are ongoing right now in the developer mailing lists.

I think that KDE's development will become more evolutionary instead of revolutionary. Big leaps will still be made (compare for instance the functionality of Plasma 5.12 to
the upcoming 5.16 and you see that) but those will happen to just parts of the whole and no longer to the whole.
As a user of KDE Plasma that would mean less pain after upgrades.

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Scribus is still on QT4. They have a development QT5 stream but as far as I can determine no outlook on when the 1.6.x stable stream will see the light of day.

Like many others here, I can't understand the reluctance to switch to KDE5. I've been running AlienBob's implementation on top of -current for some time now, with no issues at all. Its perfectly stable.

And in my case, many of the applications I use most no longer support kde4 (kaffeine and kdenlive to name but two).

For me, its a no brainer. kde4 is dead. Long Live kde5!



--
Pete

I've different filling. I was try to do quick and dirty "knemo" port (unsuccessful) to Plasma. I see many KWorkerClass-es replaced by simpler QWorkerClass-es. Some KXXXClasses was entirely removed without any replacement. I thing that Plasma is more Qt dependent than KDE4 was.


Scribus isn't good example of Qt4 software. I'm look at it form time to time and it's development is stalled for years. So sticking with Qt4 in this case means nothing.



But in the topic.

I'm not very happy from Plasma5. It's looks cruder and be less configurable than KDE4. I don't like tendency to simply settings in some applications, "because user can hurt itself". And there are problems with some data and settings migrations. But KDE4 is dead, and Plasma5 is stable and consistent when fully migrated (in my case akonadi, kmail, kwallet make problems in migration). During 4 months I'm using Plasma5 I've no problems with it. For someone who never use KDE, plasma is ready. Old KDE user must agree with some simplifications, but they probably can live with it. For me, the biggest obstacle is migration; but in time, as plasma evolves, it will be, probably, harder and harder.

IMHO, if Pat wants to include Plasma5, in current, before 15.0, he should do it as fast he can (maybe in testing?). There will be a problems, but this is not avoidable in such big leap. "Power" current users will helps solving or avoiding them faster and better than, limited in resources, "internal development team".


BTW. No matter P.V. decide with KDE, 15.0 should be released soon. Such big gap as now between releases don't affect good for userbase size, and Slackware popularity.

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According to Google search auto completion suggestions, Slackware has been dead for the better part of a decade. Slackers know this is pure fud. I don't think anyone in this forum is worried. Everything is gonna be just fine.

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But to became Slacker you must know that Slackware still exists. I'm not concerned by old ones but by lack of no new ones.

As you can see in "Age of slackers" thread, average Slackware user have 40+ years old. This can mean that Slack is more attractive to old ones, but I'm afraid this show that Slackware have loyal for years users which became older and older, and almost no fresh blood.

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i still pine for KDE3.5.*

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https://www.trinitydesktop.org/

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