Well, I feel I have been too rude with my recent comment on the KDE4 transition, so I feel the need to clarify a bit. First, I must declare that I am, and have always been KDE-enthusiastic. Since the very begining of my linux experience, KDE has always been my favorite desktop environement. I have been trying others, but couldn't only but stick back to it. And, yes, I am still, and looking forward for KDE4. So, I enthusiastically decided few months ago to give it a try. This was long after the big release party organised at google's. Man, a desktop environement released at google's, I was really expecting something breaking new out of it ! Some apt-get wizardry later, invoking experimental stuff, and I was done. Yes, on that point, it has always been clear that KDE packagers do a great job. But the desktop experience was on the opposite completely disapointing. First of all I must admit that I don't like those "all is everything" theory. I have never been able to reduce everything to a single concept so far. Hence, the "all is widget" didn't really convinced me. I guess that the fact that files in the desktop are widgets "icons" that couldn't be draged and droped into an file navigator window nor deleted when the widget was removed was somehow ironic... But well, this is a desktop experience, it's mostly a matter of taste, and I don't pretend to have a more relevant one than anyone. And, so far, the discussions I've seen on the pro and cons for KDE4 against KDE 3.9 focused mainly on this desktop experience. Very well. But, I don't think KDE can be reduced to how to configure this panel or to add that fancy widget. In particular, KDE has always been very popular for the strong integration of the various applications available, and the variety of those. And that's where I'm concerned. Peter pointed out some limitations or bugs he has encoutered. I also pointed out one other about kopete not being able to connect to IRC anymore. A comment on the same blog explained that I was free to keep using kde 3.9. I would. But, from the actual packaging structure as available in experimental, it seems the new KDE4 packages are meant to replace KDE 3.9 packages. So, where is the choice then ? Besides, for the "unfinished" criticism, I didn't mean that KDE 4.1 is beta, but that KDE4 itself is not mature enough. When KDE4 went out and people started using it, they discovered several things that weren't finished. The release was done : 4.0 was out as the first stable release, but developers kept answering to the "missing feature" requests : "Well, the main change is inside the engine, we will make use of it very soon. Besides, we needed feedback and an inital release for helping external developers to port their applications." So, clearly, KDE 4.0 was not ready for common use. And even at this time, I could read "KDE is ready for daily usage" posts here and there. And, also again, this raised the question of the number of external applications ported to KDE 4.0... Ha, it was also claimed that "KDE 4.1 would be far more complete", indeed acknowledging that KDE 4.0, the first release, was in fact not a release ready for full consumption. Hence, I believe that all I said about KDE 4.0 above are might be fixed in KDE 4.1. But, why pushing now for KDE 4.1 whereas it's not even out, and we don't really know if everything that was promised will be ready ? I personally don't believe it is wise. We better wait for the actual release, and see what it worth. So, to sumarize my point, it would be :

• KDE rocks :-)
• KDE 4.0 is breaking new, and will compete with modern desktops for sure
• But it has not matured enough and the release cycle is not reliable enough to know if it will be worth the inclusion in lenny
• The scope of usage is large. And it does not only matter for kde enthusiastics, but for day-to-day users. That also shall need some concertation.

PS : I've finally done it.. A blog for a simple answer... I guess that was meant to be.. Anyway, hi to my fellow devels :)