The future of KDE4 in arch

dienadel · 2007-08-03 06:21:41

Hello,

Just another question about the future, so, it can't be resolved ;-) Let take away about when will KDE4 enter in testing-unstable. In fact, as i only use current-extra-community, that isn't really important question for me.

What i was asking myself, was how will KDE4 enter in Arch. I've been using Arch for 1,5 years, and, i haven't lived a major change like this for a DE. I know that with the kernel change, from 2.4 from 2.6, they were living together for a while. But, the kernel is the kernel ;-)

Will something similar happen with KDE? so, for example, during 6 months, will KDE3 and KDE4 stay both in extra?

With the Arch philosophy, i don't think so, but, i'd like that, during one month, at least, KDE3 and KDE4 would live together. But, this is only my opinion. I don't know the thecnical issues.

What do you think, hope, like...?

Bye!!

PD: By the way, on sunday morning, Arch web was very funny ;-) I forgot taking an screenshot :-(

JGC · 2007-08-03 06:25:15

I guess qt and kdelibs will stay as kdelibs3 and qt3 for old apps that haven't been ported yet and KDE will become the new desktop. No reason to have two major versions of these, for the end user there's not a big difference between KDE 3.5 and KDE 4.0 compared to the differences between gnome 1.4 and 2.0 for example.

dienadel · 2007-08-03 06:40:21

JGC wrote:

I guess qt and kdelibs will stay as kdelibs3 and qt3 for old apps that haven't been ported yet and KDE will become the new desktop.

that's sound good, as many kde3 apps taht i use won't be ready for KDE4 at the begining

By the way, do you know if KDE4-Qt4, have any kind of back-compatibility for KDE3 apps?

Bye!

High|ander · 2007-08-03 07:18:27

I know that qt4 has compile options to support qt3 code. So maybe that is possible for KDE to.

STiAT · 2007-08-03 07:29:58

They don't.
That was one of the major point in KDE4, cleaning up the whole API. Therefore, they got different references, meaning you won't be able to run a kde3 app with kde4 libs. You'll need the parts of kde3 still, for old applications.

A new major release number means changes in the base code and functionality, or that the application was a complete re-write.

Probably some kind of wrapper will be released. There are no plans on this yet, so i bet they want to "force" developers to switch to kde4.

I think most applications will be ported quite fast. A lot of them already will be ported with the start of KDE4.

I doubt, that applications as TOra will be ported in the near and far future, so i at least hope that qt3 will stay for some time.

Yours,
Georg

lloeki · 2007-08-03 12:08:32

- I think that (upstream) kde 3.5 will not be left to rot the day kde4.0 is out: it will certainly be maintained the way it is now and ever since the very beginning of 3.90 dev cycle: bugfixes&al+no new features, at least until kde reaches some maturity and has most third party apps ported to it (e.g kde4.1). then 3.x will be dropped completely.
- I think till then they can be made to live side by side, just like gnome and kde3 (or kde3.4 and 3.5 for that matter) and that you will be able to start kde3 apps in kde4 and the other way around.
- I think Arch devs+kdemod guy(s) will come with a brilliant idea on how to handle that. I trust them on it.

funkyou · 2007-08-03 13:38:47

JGC wrote:

I guess qt and kdelibs will stay as kdelibs3 and qt3 for old apps that haven't been ported yet and KDE will become the new desktop.

STiAT wrote:

Probably some kind of wrapper will be released. There are no plans on this yet, so i bet they want to "force" developers to switch to kde4.

AFAIK there is the kde3support module in kdelibs4 that will do exactly that - providing a compatibility layer for kde3 apps and stuff. Together with QT's QT3support it should be possible to run KDE3/QT3 apps on KDE4. Its mainly meant for porting, but with a little patching it should be possible. Its only a temporary solution, and its recommended to switch to the new stuff as soon as possible, so they can get rid of the compatibility stuff...

As for KDEmod, i think we will stay mainly with KDE 3.5.x until KDE 4.1 or 4.2 is out. The reason is that KDE 4.0 seems like a tech-demo for me (anyone remember KDE 3.0? ), and most of the cool stuff under the hood will not be used. Akonadi (pim backend) will not be used until 4.1 at the earliest, so KMail will store mails etc by itself, just as in KDE3... Also decibel will not be used for kopete for example... This means that they have the infrastructure available, but the apps will need some time to fully support it. And i dont want to migrate my mails and stuff twice for example...

There will be a splitted 4.0 when its out, at least we have started working on it. But as said, we will not put as much work in it in the beginning as for the 3.5 releases, because they are much more mature (and probably stable) for now. Ofcourse this can still change in the next months, but if KDE 4.0 is just a sort of "more blinky desktop update with some enhancements" like it seems now, we will stay mainly with 3.5.x until its more mature...

Last edited by funkyou (2007-08-03 14:49:09)

JaDa · 2007-08-03 18:54:18

I am using KDE4 beta1 with openSUSE factory on one of mt test computers. Tell you the truth, I don't think KDE4 will release this year. There are a lot of problems, stability and compatible issues what have to be fixed first.

If someone like to play around with it, here you can get the KDE4 Live CD based on openSUSE factory (10.3 alpha).

mucknert · 2007-08-04 05:51:25

JaDa wrote:

I am using KDE4 beta1 with openSUSE factory on one of mt test computers. Tell you the truth, I don't think KDE4 will release this year. There are a lot of problems, stability and compatible issues what have to be fixed first.
If someone like to play around with it, here you can get the KDE4 Live CD based on openSUSE factory (10.3 alpha).

I don't know about that. I've seen a lot of problems in the KDE 2 and KDE 3 Betas that still made it into the final Products to stay on schedule. It is my sad experience that the KDE-Project releases early and fixes Bugs in the minor Versions. So I really think they will release KDE 4.0 this year but it might be far from perfect. However, this is just an Opinion, based on subjective Impressions. YMMV.

Arch Linux

#1 2007-08-03 06:21:41

The future of KDE4 in arch

#2 2007-08-03 06:25:15

Re: The future of KDE4 in arch

#3 2007-08-03 06:40:21

Re: The future of KDE4 in arch

#4 2007-08-03 07:18:27

Re: The future of KDE4 in arch

#5 2007-08-03 07:29:58

Re: The future of KDE4 in arch

#6 2007-08-03 12:08:32

Re: The future of KDE4 in arch

#7 2007-08-03 13:38:47

Re: The future of KDE4 in arch

#8 2007-08-03 18:54:18

Re: The future of KDE4 in arch

#9 2007-08-04 05:51:25

Re: The future of KDE4 in arch

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