Release Date for Linux Mint 11 KDE

[JeffShepherd]

I think you are probably right Craig.

Sadly it seems that the Mint team cannot be taken at their word, so yes moving to another distro does look like a good move.
Very, very poor practice IMHO. If plans have changed it would be decent for the team to let us know.

Why are you doom mongering? The KDE version has been announced and as far as I know we do not know how many people are working on it. Why would this be announced if there is no intention of doing anything?

If you want to move to another distro then fine, that is your choice but please to not go round saying the mint team cannot be taken at their word with no evidence to back it up.

[Fandangio]

I think you are probably right Craig.

Sadly it seems that the Mint team cannot be taken at their word, so yes moving to another distro does look like a good move.
Very, very poor practice IMHO. If plans have changed it would be decent for the team to let us know.

Why are you doom mongering? The KDE version has been announced and as far as I know we do not know how many people are working on it. Why would this be announced if there is no intention of doing anything?

If you want to move to another distro then fine, that is your choice but please to not go round saying the mint team cannot be taken at their word with no evidence to back it up.

I'm not doom mongering. This "opinion" is based on what has been indicated compared to what is being seen. Rightly Mint Gnome is this distros main edition and with Ubuntu released it would seem only normal that this will be in heavy development, thus pusing KDE back yet again. This isn't a complaint just an observation. If this is the case then some users may wish to move to another KDE distro or wait.

At the moment there is no way of making an informed choice as there is no info.

As for questioning the mint teams words, yes I may have been hasty and I apologise. That said I'd put my money on the fact that the iso for Main Gnome is released before LMDE KDE...

[rec9140]

If you want to move to another distro then fine, that is your choice but please to not go round saying the mint team cannot be taken at their word with no evidence to back it up.

No, I agree 100% with the assessment by Fandango. The evidence you want is in this forum, lack thereof, and on the blog posts when they finally relent and address the posts.

http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1845


7 Posts till a reply, which is nothing more than what was mention in passing several months ago. Waiting for DebMint releases, then KDebMint will come along.....

Then user manny nails it:

manny Says:
October 10th, 2011 at 9:09 pm
..... There is one thing in my opinion neeeds improvement and this is better communication involving KDE. KDE forum is almost dead and I might suspect lots of KDE users have abandoned ship with frustration .......

Note: Emphasis mine.

[JeffShepherd]

rec9140,

I respect your right to your view but will say that a lack of posting by the developers is only evidence that nothing has been posted.

[Fandangio]

A lack of iso speaks volumes...

[JeffShepherd]

A lack of iso speaks volumes...

How long should it take for Boo to put everything together so that an iso can be made available?

[Fandangio]

A lack of iso speaks volumes...

How long should it take for Boo to put everything together so that an iso can be made available?

Why don't you ask him!

I'll await the response from tdockery's kind request for information before posting on this thread again.

[Andrew33]

It definitely would be nice to have a little more interaction with the dev team as to what's going on and progress (if any) being made......I kinda thought that was what forums were about and should be....cheers


Andrew

[zerozero]

well, i don't believe this is exactly good news, but it's news

Clem Says:
October 21st, 2011 at 8:52 am

@scyg: No, libfontconfig1 and libglib-2.0-0 are too old in Linux Mint 8 Helena and previous releases to support this build.

@Carlos: We’re actively working on extensions for Gnome 3 (including a menu, window list, bottom panel..etc). For the KDE edition, please wait until December, at the moment we’re fully focused on Linux Mint 12. (This is completely off-topic by the way.)

http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1847

[Fandangio]

Thanks ZeroZero, personally I am just glad for some useful info.

I can now make an informed decision on whether to swap to another distro or wait till December. For me though I've seen KDE bumped several times for seemingly any reason by the Mint team (firstly I think for LMDE, then the unity issues, then LMDE respin, now Gnome Main). It doesn't look that favourable and I am sure something else will crop up to further delay LMDE KDE come December.

I'll be a little sad to leave Mint behind. It stopped me eternally distro hopping and felt like a place I'd stay for some time...

[zerozero]

i know this is not the piece of "advise" that will fit everybody, or even make everybody happy until december, but why not install LMDE-gnome or xfce and add kde-standard or kde-full (and choose kdm when asked);

i did that about a week ago (or something) and it's been a pleasant experience, as a all-time kde-user (but never with mint or kubuntu) i find kde in debian very interesting, a bit "raw" (maybe too much vanilla would be a better definition), somehow outdated (but stable).

[Fandangio]

That's good advice and something I tried (thanks to tdockery). Didn't quite fit for me though.

I think I may have a look at openSUSE12 and Julep.
It will be interesting to see how distros that have KDE as their main DE compare.

[craig10x]

Also...don't forget once mint kde lmde comes out you won't have to worry anymore about when the next mint kde version is going to finally come out
I have little doubt that Clem will start working on actively getting it out once Mint 12 is "wrapped up" next month...you have to bear in mind that the majority of mint users use gnome based versions (main and lmde) so it's understandable that attention has to be focused on that (especially since the new ubuntu had already been released)...

So...if you like the idea of kde lmde then your patience should be rewarding in December...but if you prefer the ubuntu based versions of kde....or similar..then you would be wise to look at some of those alternatives you mentioned..

[wiko]

Well, give it a day or two and see if we get some clarification. I've emailed Clem asking for an update so that we know whether to expect KDE in the near future.

thx.
hopefully his answer will clarify the situation.

as stated by me before, even as a newbie, I would love to go with M11 (or even 12) KDE(-DE), but if the wait will be very long then an alternative will have to be found (M10 KDE, M11 LXDE [running this from a Live-CD now] or another distro-KDE [Kubuntu 11.10 or Mepis 11, maybe going to try them out in a couple of weeks] alltogether).

[rec9140]

A lack of iso speaks volumes...

How long should it take for Boo to put everything together so that an iso can be made available?

I will shed some light on *my* experience... it takes about 4-5 hours to install the upstream ISO, then go around and pull in the various bits and pieces that are needed konqueror, kubuntu-restrictred-extras, install-css.sh, KMyMoney, VLC, nuke nepocrud, nuke its agents, nuke pulsecrud, add other software and tweak things.

I have pretty much sitting on the dev machine the final version. I have some more tweaks to do for a few things this weekend.

All told and in sum I have probalby about, 6 hours, in doing this with things interspersed in there. Now the fun starts when you've got things set and you start to test. I basically put things through the paces like I would my normal desktop. Ran into problems with HLPIP and printing, those got resolved. Right now the KMail2 fiasco and a Cheese bug in 3.2.0 are some issues that are outstanding.

Additionally, I've been basically do this on daily builds of things since Alpha 3, so I've got the routine down pretty good.

In summary it takes about 2 good days to work up an ISO to hit testing. Then the real fun beings.

[Andrew33]

i know this is not the piece of "advise" that will fit everybody, or even make everybody happy until december, but why not install LMDE-gnome or xfce and add kde-standard or kde-full (and choose kdm when asked);

i did that about a week ago (or something) and it's been a pleasant experience, as a all-time kde-user (but never with mint or kubuntu) i find kde in debian very interesting, a bit "raw" (maybe too much vanilla would be a better definition), somehow outdated (but stable).

Hey zerozero,

I'm glad you joined the crowd in tweaking LMDE with KDE......I'm currently running experimental LMDE_KDE in 32 & 64 bit....32 on my laptop which replaced LM 9 Isadora and 64 on a newly built desktop, both are running fairly well and haven't had many problems with either. It's very nice and stable, like the idea of not having to delete and replace every 6 months or so....cheers


Andrew

[Fandangio]

I think you are probably right Craig.

Sadly it seems that the Mint team cannot be taken at their word, so yes moving to another distro does look like a good move.
Very, very poor practice IMHO. If plans have changed it would be decent for the team to let us know.

Why are you doom mongering? The KDE version has been announced and as far as I know we do not know how many people are working on it. Why would this be announced if there is no intention of doing anything?

If you want to move to another distro then fine, that is your choice but please to not go round saying the mint team cannot be taken at their word with no evidence to back it up.

Well it seems that they could not be taken at their word. KDE we were told would be out after LMDE respin.
At least they've let us know now. Albeit a little late

[craig10x]

yes he did say that...of course you need to keep in mind that this sudden switch to gnome 3 which included a RADICAL change in the desktop environment (which was not the case went KDE 3 went to KDE 4)...so he needed to look into possible solutions to work around it (knowing most of the gnome base here aren't very fond of unity or shell as a workable environment)...and also there seems to be issues going on with whether Boo will continue with this or Clem will take over the helm....They are a small operation...this isn't ubuntu...so sometimes things like this can force re-scheduling of certain planned events...

Once this change over has been complete, and Mint 12 is out, he should be able to "settle in" to finishing the kde lmde introduction...

Be thankful you kde guys didn't get pushed out of a conventional style desktop and have this shell/unity mess forced upon you!

[foggytown]

I don't get the whole stringing people along thing, who does that benefit?

Is Mint striving to be an example of how not to manage a "community" based distro?

First the CE gets dropped, allegedly striving for more parity. But unable to make a decent KDE spin from Ubuntu base. Then abandonment of Ubuntu base with a projected mid-August release goal. Then we need to finalize the LMDE spin, get on it right after that. Then it gets pushed back till after update packs are prepared, really really we will get on it after that. In the meantime the new Ubuntu gets released and the main edition takes precedence, after that...for real this time? Should I just assume that something else that takes precedence will come up before December? "Sorry we have to polish the gnome logo, we will do KDE in January."

And of course don't communicate like rational beings, leave hints in comments of unrelated blog posts...let people read tea leaves for the clues for all the good it will do them. If Clem does not want to do a KDE edition, then don't do one. But to string people along a month at a time is pretty much BS.

So if people rant in this thread, it is because you can't have community without communication. Could always try giving them something to rave about.

</rant>

[Fandangio]

I don't get the whole stringing people along thing, who does that benefit?

Is Mint striving to be an example of how not to manage a "community" based distro?

First the CE gets dropped, allegedly striving for more parity. But unable to make a decent KDE spin from Ubuntu base. Then abandonment of Ubuntu base with a projected mid-August release goal. Then we need to finalize the LMDE spin, get on it right after that. Then it gets pushed back till after update packs are prepared, really really we will get on it after that. In the meantime the new Ubuntu gets released and the main edition takes precedence, after that...for real this time? Should I just assume that something else that takes precedence will come up before December? "Sorry we have to polish the gnome logo, we will do KDE in January."

And of course don't communicate like rational beings, leave hints in comments of unrelated blog posts...let people read tea leaves for the clues for all the good it will do them. If Clem does not want to do a KDE edition, then don't do one. But to string people along a month at a time is pretty much BS.

So if people rant in this thread, it is because you can't have community without communication. Could always try giving them something to rave about.

</rant>

Absolutely spot on...