Chris Jones wrote:
I did this on my third machine. IT went through without a hitch I am
very satisfied. However I have been a bit quizy to do this on my main
desktop, as I fear loosing it for any amount of time right now. I did
this move to kde-redhat out of pure fustration as some apps I wanted
were giving hell to complie without KDE 3.4
Whilst I am a Fedora and KDE junky myself, and always look for the lastest release, I have to say I think Fedoras approach on this is correct.
Fair enough
Fedora has to stick to a single release - to go from KDE 3.3.x to 3.4.x as a normal update is too big a jump for most people. It is not 100% painless (For me for example, its was mostly smooth using the kde-redhat repository, apart from the fact the kmilo went mad... A quick web search showed this was a common problem and kmilo should be disabled. after doing this kde 3.4 is fine).
I did this on a test machine, and have been extremely satisfied thus far.
Whilst I wanted to go to 3.4 to see what it is all about, I accepted the fact that things might break. Many users don't want this and thus to do so as a "standard" update would be wrong. Fedora should stick to the version frozen at release and only release important updates (security etc.) which can be back-ported from the current release to that used by Fedora.Well in that case I stand corrected. I was of the apperently incorrect understanding that cutting edge, almost test distro.
The current kopete problem is an example of something which is in the grey area - The fix to get it working again is in CVS, but I presume will only be in the next KDE 3.4.x release - Do you consider MSN messaging essential that Fedora should back-port it to 3.3.x ? Personally I think not...Well that's true. I don't expect a fix just for that. But there was the other problem I have been patiently waiting for a fix for kNotes, an application which I fell in love with only to find out that it did not save. On checking bugs.kde.org, i found out that this bug had been fixed.
To be quite honest I would be happy with a way to circumvent the need for an official upgrade. I was prepared to go ahead and patch it myself, until I found out that the patch was available via subversion, which was not part of FC. But then I found out that the patch as it is may not work 100% against the KDE 3.3.1 libs.
I would add though, despite what I say above I do get the impression that KDE is not as well tested as gnome within Fedora. I accept they have to have a default - but I think that Fedora should aim to be desktop neutral, and give the same level of support to KDE (and XFCE and so on...) as it does gnome.Again fair enough. For any who may think XFCE is useless, it's a love GUI to have for a server.
Chris
