Posted on February 1, 2008 - by jono
Canonical and KDE
Recently, Aaron Seigo, a good friend of mine and well known KDE member did an interview with ComputerWorld. In the interview, Aaron said “What I find unfortunate is that some companies dig into technologies. Canonical did not communicate well about long-term support and therefore neglected 35 percent of their user base. A user base they routinely neglect, but at KDE we ignore a lot of this“.
I find this very disappointing, and that we are alleged to routinely neglect our KDE user base. I want to make a few things clear here:
- Canonical invests in Kubuntu – Jonathan Riddell is paid full-time to work on Kubuntu and Canonical provides the hosting and resources to help Kubuntu development happen. Kubuntu is a community distribution, and has an excellent inclusive community, in which Jonathan does excellent work alongside the many other excellent Kubuntu contributors.
- Canonical pays for thousands of free Kubuntu CDs to be produced, all via ShipIt. Not only this, but we pay for the postage too. This has helped to get a professionally produced CD with KDE and Kubuntu in the hands of many users all around the world.
- Kubuntu is commercially supported by our commercial support service and Kubuntu 8.04 will get the same level of commercial support as Kubuntu 7.10, Kubuntu 7.04 and Kubuntu 6.10. Nothing changes with the commercial support commitment.
- I have had many phone calls and discussions with Aaron to discuss and settle concerns, as well as other members of the KDE project. I have also specifically actioned Jorge Castro on my team to regularly liaise with Aaron and report back concerns and methods we can fix them.
- In terms of investment in GNOME vs. investment in KDE, right now we have Jonathan working on KDE, and 2 developers working on GNOME. The vast majority of Canonical developers who work on Ubuntu, work on other areas.
- We select when to do an LTS based on a number of factors, one of which is the stability/maturity of upstream platforms. KDE 4.0, which is clearly one of the most exciting KDE releases in a long time, has openly acknowledged that it has rough edges and should be treated as such. With Kubuntu we are keen to include the KDE project’s best work, in the same way we want to include the best work of many upstream projects, and by including this work, it helps get it exposed to users and improve. So then, it comes down to this – do we make Kubuntu 8.04 an LTS and only include KDE 3.x (annoying users who can’t get 4.0) or include KDE 4.0 (annoying people who want an LTS). Well, we figured it would be better to provide users with the latest, greatest KDE.
I am, frankly, surprised that despite the above points, Aaron feels that we routinely neglecting Kubuntu users.
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February 4, 2008
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“We don’t have full KDE support for compiz yet?”
Ha, ha, ha, ha.
Didn’t you guys decide to make your own WM? Why not stick with that all th way through then?
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February 5, 2008
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Soooo, Canonical pays all of one developer to work on Kubuntu, and pays for the projects joke of a website. The reasoning for not providing LTS support would make an M$ PR shill proud, and the last Kubuntu LTS release remains horribly neglected (why I went and put a Kubuntu LTS machine in my server room I’ll never know).
Second class citizen all the way.
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February 5, 2008
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Well… it’s getting ugly, but from what I’ve seen especially for 7.10, I think aseigo is right.
Kubuntu 3.5.8 shipped with a tentative Dolphin (spit the view in 2 column and look at the size of the right one), nonworking bluetooth obex support (the bug is closed in 8.04 but still no fix for 7.10, and this for a PACKAGING ERROR!?), hosed printing system (one of the last patches just scaled every print at 50%)… do I need to go on? On launchpad the people are “a little disappointed”, to say the least.
And now, the nice 8.04 not-so-LTS release. What if I want to install 200 Kubuntu desktops? How long will support lasts for 3.5.x in 8.04? I couldn’t care less for 4.0.0 as you say Mr Jono, but do you or mr Riddell care to tell a system integrator what to do if I want to do a KDE deployment in the next months? Will I be able to use a LTS 3.5.x? Will K8.10 be released as LTS? Will 4.1 be released as a LTS addon to 8.04? Will I be better off using Debian or Opensuse?
Good luck, Roberto Maurizzi, Italy
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February 5, 2008
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For various reasons I am still on dial up internet & am a very grateful recipient/user of a free Kubuntu CD as my main OS. Thank you canonical & the Kubuntu community.
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February 5, 2008
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After reading the numerous comments on this Kubuntu/KDE matter, and as a long time GNU/Linux user and technology professional with good experience of both (Gnome + KDE) desktops on *Buntu, I can honestly say that a serious problem exists, whether by inference or in reality.
My impression is that Canonical needs to be “completely, and unequivocably clear” about their support for KDE and how it differs/is same as compared to Gnome. This will cover “their reasons and thinking” from both business and technical perspectives.
If “it is clear” that Gnome has a decided preference, then I feel KDE users will be disappointed, maybe angry but not confused and felt misled.
Honesty and clarity are and always be the best approach – especially with any large and diverse population like that comprising the Free Software/Open Source Community.
Only then can we all go forward, with a “clear” vision of what is next for each of us.
W. Anderson wanderson@nac.net
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February 6, 2008
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Canonical is putting a mask. In Gutsy, an update to libxine1 either tried to pull a bunch of gnome packages. Or gave a broken update.
This is in spite of the fact that Kubuntu apps use Xine by default while Ubuntu apps don’t.
It is a big joke if someone from Canonical says they give equal care for Kubuntu, when they don’t even test on kubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xine-lib/+bug/164801
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February 15, 2008
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One paid developer is hardly adequate support. Don’t get me wrong, I like Canonical’s software base (courtesy of Debian) and the release cycle is great, but there’s no avoiding the fact that KDE is the ugly stepchild in down in Ubuntuville.
I’m hoping for better in the future, but in the meantime I’m experimenting with Mepis, Mandriva, and other distros that place a priority on KDE. GNOME just isn’t an option for me.
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April 7, 2008
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Everyone using Kubuntu, Save yourselves! Migrate immediately to Slackware as soon as 12.1 comes out in a week or so.
It’s the only logical thing to do…
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September 9, 2008
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I switched to kubuntu from mandriva, because it was thet distro that best supported suspending in my laptop.
Then I switched from kubuntu to ubuntu, only because, from my point of view, KDE is considered as second class desktop in ubuntu, and it’s implementation is not so polished as GNOME’s, so I decided to use the well supported desktop, instead