Well, after being back in the saddle for a bit, I've drawn a few conclusions, good or bad, about the current status of KDE and KDE 4 more specifically. This is derived from my interactions with users, and monitoring of KDE related feedback on the net.
1) KDE 4.2.4 is a good release, and while some people still find ways to complain about it, that doesn't take away from it being a really good release.
2) Some applications from KDE 3 are still not fully usable for KDE 4, or not yet released. For example, k3b or konversation. This is holding some people back still, and causing some distros to ship the kde3 libs so that their users can keep using these apps.
3) Some apps, like KOffice 2, are stable for KDE 4, but feature incomplete. This prevents them from being used for day-to-day activities for some users.
4) There are a few missing or incomplete features in KDE 4 that should receive high priority, according to the users: these include, for example, the Print dialog, the Mac-style menubar, and the Network Manager plasmoid.
I know that KDE 4.3 is waiting in the wings, and if KDE 4.2.4 is any indication, it should be a solid release. However, there are a few things we can do (as above) that can ensure that KDE 4 rocks the world. So we could use some help:
Users: please test k3b, konversation, koffice, etc. when you have the chance, even though they are still in varying states of development. k3b and konversation are in alpha status right now, so you might need to build from source to lend a hand. KOffice 2 on the other hand should be available on many distros for testing. File helpful bug reports and the developers will love you.
BugSqaud: I haven't talked to bugsquad yet, but if there's a chance that some time could be devoted to helping these projects out, it would be well spent.
Developers: well, you know what to do. Happy hacking. :)
/me goes back to fighting QThreads in PyQt4... does anyone know how to signal across threads so that I can shut off a timer? QThreads doesn't like that...
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