HOWTO: Use KDE 3 from F8 on F10

[Michael Eager]

Kevin Kofler wrote:
> Roberto Ragusa wrote:
>>
>> I'm not writing all the details here now, but if anyone is
>> interested, I can do it (and publish the spec files if
>> someone wants to try).
> 
> Please don't. We don't want our users to run unsupported software, and we
> especially don't want you to make it easy for them to do that.

Roberto -- please do post the details.

Kevin --

While I'm sympathetic to moving forward to later version of
supported software, and I'm not interested in starting a flame
war, what I've found (and I think that I'm not alone) is that
KDE 4.x is far less usable than KDE 3.5.

I initially installed Fedora 9 with KDE 4.0 and had some
problems with the missing functionality of the desktop manager.
The explanation I heard was that KDE 4.0 was really not for
general use, that all of the problems would be fixed in the
next release.  I reverted to using Fedora 8.

In the past couple days, I installed Ubuntu 8.1 with KDE 4.1
on my laptop.  Here is how I described my first impressions on
another mailing list:

    Windows appear and disappear, sometimes apparently on their
    own, other times in ways which I didn't expect.  (Clicking on
    one of the buttons at the bottom of the screen makes everything
    disappear, replaced by a heading saying Plasma Dashboard.)  I no
    longer can put application icons on the desktop or add an
    application to the panel at the bottom of the screen, but
    have to step through a multi-tab application menu to search
    for the button to open a terminal window or open Firefox.

My out-of-box experience with KDE 4.1 is not good.  Where I found
KDE 3.5 reasonably intuitive, I find KDE 4.1 leaves me lost.

Perhaps there are ways to configure KDE 4.1 to allow me to work
as efficiently as I'm used to with KDE 3.5.  If that's the case,
then perhaps that should be the the default.  Or perhaps there
should be a KDE 3.5 compatibility mode.

I wiped the laptop and installed Fedora 10, with GNOME.  I've
used KDE since installing RedHat 7.2.  I'd prefer not to switch.
But the basic usability of KDE 4.x has to match that of KDE 3.5.

The suggestion that "you'll have to get used to KDE 4 sooner
or later. Better sooner (how about NOW)?" is reminiscent of a
certain Redmond-based software provider.  In the open source
world, "take it or leave it" usually results in the latter.  In
the ultimate version of "leave it", the result is a fork in the
development project.


-- 
Michael Eager	 eager at eagercon.com
1960 Park Blvd., Palo Alto, CA 94306  650-325-8077