Linux Orbit: KDE and the Problem with Upgrades

[ Thanks to John
Gowin for this link. ]

“What prompted this editorial was what I recently read in an
article on ZDNet that reviewed some of the big news at the recent
LinuxWorld conference in New York City. The focus of the article
was mostly GNOME oriented, with special attention paid to Eazel and
their final pre-release of Nautilus and Ximian’s upcoming release
of the Red Carpet package manager. In the article, the author
voiced a small complaint about stability in GNOME, and although it
wasn’t the focus of the article, the users commenting on the
article took it up as the the main point. The first response to the
article was something along the lines of

“

If you want stability, you should have gone to the

KDE booth. KDE is years ahead of GNOME in features and stability,

just try it and see.

”

“And other replies chimed in with similar sentiments, albeit
maybe less eloquently put. (“KDE rulez!” is hardly an editorial
response.) But after reading a few of these comments, I started
thinking about my KDE 2.0 upgrade experience, and scratching my
head in bewilderment.”

“I remember when Helix Code, now Ximian was formed and they
released the first version of their tools packaged with GNOME 1.2.
This was back in March of 2000, and I was truly impressed with how
soothly the installation went. In fact, I wrote an article to that
effect, that this was the way things should work when you upgrade
software.”

“We’ve now gotten to mid-February 2001, more than 11 months
later, and my question is this: is KDE paying any attention?”

Complete
Story