The Plan for Kubuntu And KDE 4
It appears that Canonical and the Kubuntu team have decided that, due to the delayed release of KDE 4, the upcoming release of Kubuntu, 8.04, will not be a long term support (LTS) release, as it would usually be. Periodically, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, and other Ubuntu variants maintained by Canonical release a LTS release, which means that the release will be supported for 3 years on the desktop and 5 years on the server. Because KDE 4 will be released shortly before Kubuntu 8.04 is released, Kubuntu and Canonical are not comfortable giving the LTS tag to a release that incorporates KDE 4 this soon after its release. On the other hand, considering the amount of excitement around KDE 4, it seems like a mistake to not include KDE 4. The current solution, according to this announcement on the KDE mailing list, is to release two versions of Kubuntu 8.04, one with KDE 3.5 and the other with KDE 4. Apparently, neither will have the LTS release, though. Although this break from the standard schedule may cause some problems, considering the situation, I think the Kubuntu development team made the right choice.
December 26th, 2007 at 10:29 pm
Yes I agree with you on the last point there, as if kde 4 has quite a few bugs I won’t run it on my main PC! Plus, it just might not be my cup of tea!
December 26th, 2007 at 11:04 pm
I hope they include Compiz in the next release, I switched back to GNOME because KDE and compiz on kubuntu never got along for some reason.
December 27th, 2007 at 12:15 am
An alpha quality release is now dictating a major distributions release cycle.
All for one mans ego. Fine work Aaron!!!
December 27th, 2007 at 6:52 am
YOU LINUX MORONS: MORE OF THE SAME
Here’s a good example of Linux stupidity, and the morons who work on it. Why don’t you people smarten-up, and take some computer science courses? Why don’t you learn how to manage software projects? Let me guess: There’s no communication on the above projects, and the “community” is nothing more than a really bad forum running on PHP?
YOU LINUX MORONS MAKE ME LAUGH.
December 27th, 2007 at 7:48 am
JJuarez:
You really have no idea what you’re talking about, do you?
December 27th, 2007 at 11:57 am
Kde 4 is not stable. I think they should go with KDE 3 and provide LTS or provide it with a shorter support time if KDE 3 support totally gets dropped.
But KDE 4 will not be stable for a while and now I can’t suggest Kubuntu to my customers because we have no clue when the next LTS release date for Kubuntu will be. Could be 2 years from now!
December 27th, 2007 at 1:18 pm
They made the right decision…otherwise they would have had to try and maintain kde 3.5 themselves for a number of years, and kde 4 clearly isnt ready. what are they planning to do for their next lts release though?
December 27th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
Why don’t they just use KDE 3.5 in 8.04 for LTS and offer 4 as an option for those that are willing to use it. Canonical should mandate that the developers support KDE 3.5 until the next LTS.
D.
December 27th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
hi, you might have misunderstood the kubuntu mail. there are no plan for two distinct releases, instead it will be one kubuntu with the two options: use kde 4 or kde 3.8.x
ciao
December 27th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
DOUGman – I would like to know the answer to that question too.
December 27th, 2007 at 7:50 pm
LTS is not advisable as open source has always new versions / very rapid development. I want to be always updated!!!
December 28th, 2007 at 7:25 pm
@ anonymous
If you want to have the most up-to-date software try Arch Linux (I am a proud user).
They could add LTS to the next Kubuntu release 8.10 only for Kubuntu, I think. Does this mean they sould separate repositories for KDE after Ubuntu 8.10 support drop? Anyway DOUGman is right.