Re: [gentoo-user] Re: How's the openrc update going for everyone?

[Indi <thebeelzebubtrigger@gmail.com>]

On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 11:10:03PM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> Apparently, though unproven, at 17:06 on Thursday 12 May 2011, Indi did opine 
> thusly:
> 
> > On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 04:40:02PM +0200, Alan McKinnon wrote:
> > > Apparently, though unproven, at 16:00 on Thursday 12 May 2011, Indi did
> > > opine
> > > 
> > > thusly:
> > > > I had 8 users on kde before 3 was deprecated in 2009.
> > > > Now I have zero. It was a harrowing time, switching
> > > > everyone to gnome, finding that is not so hot, finally
> > > > putting them on xfce. If xfce gets a wild hair and changes
> > > > my plan is to dumb down the fluxbox or openbox
> > > > configs I have for my own use, add some scripting and call
> > > > it a day.
> > > 
> > > So why didn't you just leave the users on KDE3?
> > 
> > For the same reason I didn't leave them on windows 98 se.
> > Yes, it technically "still works" but is far less useful
> > than it was when it was enthusiastically supported by its
> > creators and still considered one of two default choices
> > for DE duty.
> > 
> > I'm sorry if this discussion has offended you, Alan.
> > That was certainly not my intent.
> 
> No, you didn't offend me. I usually talk and type like that.
> 
> > However, admins with stories like mine are not at all uncommon,
> > and the bottom line is that kde4 lost a lot of users to other
> > DEs. The kde devs clearly bit off more than could chew, but
> > obviously that's water under the bridge now. But to deny it or
> > make excuses now does no service to anyone. "Oops, better not do
> > that again", is what we all hope they learned. We all make mistakes,
> > just don't make the same ones repeatedly! :)
> 
> Your first three sentences above contain huge sweeping generalities disguised 
> as facts, but all they really are is "what Indi thinks". If you are going to 
> make comments like that, you have to back them up with some kind of 
> independant unbiased metrics, otherwise you are talking through a hole in your 
> ass.
> 
> I have what I think might be an interesting exercise. One of the machines I 
> admin is an enormous ftp server that serves an entire continent. It hosts 
> every major (and many minor) distros, including gentoo and it's distfiles. One 
> day when I'm motivated enough to do it, I might just draw download stats per 
> distro for packages with kde in the name and plot this going back to before 
> KDE-4.0.0 was released. I feel the numbers might prove very interesting.
> 
> I won't be doing it today though, the motivation is not there (in the same way 
> that the authors of KDE didn't have the motivation to maintain kde3 anymore).
> 

You might be correct, but I very much doubt it.
I will say though that it's almost a certainty 
the *type* of user who uses kde4 is probably 
different from those who used kde3. 
As I mentioned before, IMO the forte of kde3 was 
making migration to linux easy for windows users.
I don't think anyone can say that about kde4 with a 
straight face. On this list we constantly see pretty 
advanced users having trouble keeping kde4 running.
My own experiments with it were extremely frustrating.

-- 
caveat utilitor 
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