[CS-FSLUG] Linux Today - Is desktop Linux too fragmented to succeed? A friend tells it like it is!!

[Timothy Butler]

> It's perfectly doable, and I don't think it's much of KDE's business.
> Right now I can run KDE3 and KDE4 apps simultaneously because  
> Slackware
> provides a KDE3 compatibility layer (with selected libraries, and so
> on). This comes at the cost that right now I am not able to compile  
> KDE3
> stuff on this machine (only KDE4 stuff). But the point is that binary
> compatibility *can* be done in a matter of something as simple as
> installing packages, and even an undermanned, underpowered and simple
> distro can do that in a very simple way. Why the Fedoras and Ubuntus  
> of
> the world can't, then?

	I am surprised Kubuntu doesn't bother, since it is KDE focused.

	How do KDE 3 and KDE 4 apps interoperate? For example, I can run an  
app written for Mac OS X 10.1 and one for 10.5 and not know which is  
which. Likewise, I can run many Windows XP, or even 3.1, apps on Vista  
and not have a clue which is which.

	At least in the past, for example, KDE 2 apps did not integrate well  
with KDE 3 apps, even if both libraries were installed. How's the  
situation with KDE 4?

	I think the big thing, though, is that KDE does keep breaking the ABI  
even if you can kludge around it. Mac OS X has not broken its ABI.  
And, when they switched architectures, Apple went to great lengths to  
hide even something as complex as an emulator or another architecture  
(!) so that the user never sees it.

	I'm thinking that kind of smoothness is probably best handled by the  
DE project, not by the distro builder....

	-Tim

---
Timothy R. Butler | "Not  every end  is the  goal.  The end  of a
Editor, OfB.biz   | melody is not its goal,  and yet if  a melody
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                                            -- Friedrich Nietzsche