About updating to latest newest version - my thoughts

[David Lang]

On Tue, 12 May 2015, O. Sinclair wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> from my point of view Plasma/KDE5 is not mature enough for production
> use. That is how I see it and feel free to disagree.
>
> I have one computer and I use to make a living. There is a degree to how
> much I can surrender a working stable environment to "new and shiny".
>
> This is not meant as an offense to the developers who have spent
> countless hours on the "5" environment.

I agree with all of the above.

> What I dont get/understand is how many just seem to jump on to this
> upgrade and did not expect serious breakages? Then go on to use XCFE or
> Lubuntu instead of, to me, simply staying where you are?

Because KDE is not the only software that's upgraded between the two releases.

If Plasma5 isn't ready, then it shouldn't have been the default in 15.04, and 
there should be a way to downgrade to the prior software (build on the ubuntu 
15.04 base)

> Use 14.04 or 14.10. If you want a newer kernel go mainline kernel ppa (as I 
> type this I am on kernel 4.1.rc2), for graphics there are several ppa for 
> Libreoffice again the same.

so instead of running a supported distro release, I should frankenstein a system 
that nobody will support by installing a bunch of upgraded packages myself? If 
I'm going to do that, why bother running Kubuntu at all?

> If you choose to go Plasma5 then EXPECT breakages and lack of functions.
> It is still in development (sorry devs but that is the truth) and you
> are likely to hit snags for at least 2 releases of Kubuntu.

I didn't choose to go Plasma5, I chose to upgrade to the next stable release of 
Kubuntu. And if you are telling me that I should not expect Kubuntu to be stable 
for the next two releases, then you are telling me that I should switch away 
from KDE.

When KDE 4.0 was released and distros switched to it, the KDE folks claimed that 
4.0 was only supposed to be for developers, normal users shouldn't be useing it 
and it was a mistake on the part of the distros to switch that early.

Well, either the same mistake is happening again, or it wasn't a mistake on the 
part of the distros, it's a mistake on the part of the KDE maintainers to be 
pushing this.

I am very willing to try new software, and I would have been very willing to 
give Plasma5 a try. But given the problems that I'm running into, I would have 
switched away from it rather quickly. As it is, I've had to switch away from KDE 
on one laptop, and I'm debating doing to same on my work systems.

Please provide some way to switch back to Plasma4 quickly and don't make Plasma5 
the default until it's ready.

David Lang