[GLLUG] Redhat 8.0 + holy crap.

[Jo]

On Wed, Oct 02, 2002 at 10:09:47AM -0400, Melson, Paul wrote:
> What?!  How broken is KDE in RH8?  I'm burning the ISOs right now, but
> if KDE doesn't work, I'll wait until they're fixed and available via
> RHN.

  Err, nono, intentionally broken by RedHat. I'll look up the exact
details later, but they've broken the directory structure (to fit
in better with Gnome) which means 3rd-party KDE apps won't install properly.
They've also made the KDE panel start up non-KDE applications by default
(so if you click on the web browser icon you get Mozilla, and if you click
on the mail icon you get Evolution). This is bad because you've already
got all those KDE libraries loaded but don't have the Gnome ones loaded,
so KDE feels 'slower' than Gnome.
  They also forked KDE without talking to the KDE core team, without
consulting with them in any way, and without any KDE core members in
the company (they had one, Bero, but they pissed him off enough that
he left the company recently). Most of the hacking was done by the Gnome
people RedHat employs, resulting in what the KDE people see as some pretty
ugly code.  Oh, and to add insult to injury they removed the About KDE
box from KDE applications.
  RedHat has of course a perfect right to do all of this, and there is
some argument for a unified desktop, but hostile forks are generally
considered a Bad Thing in the free software world and RedHat's made
absolutely no effort to 'play nice' with the KDE people over unification.
It doesn't help that RedHat refused to ship KDE until fairly recently,
did a lot of the early Gnome funding, still employs several prominent Gnome
hackers, and is generally perceived by KDE folks as being pretty anti-KDE...