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**rec9140** · Oct 18, 2011, 12:51 PM

Re: Another rant

Originally posted by bendy

My first minor gripe with KDE was konqueror getting marginalised in the KDE world. I loved konqueror and how so much of my work flow could be handled with a few konqueror windows open. It was my default web browser, file manager, network share browser, file and media previewer. But then we were told that konqueror was "too complicated" as a file browser and got given D[censored]. Who were these users who found konqueror "too complicated"? Have you ever met one? I know I haven't..... Of course I know I can still set up konqueror to be my default file manager, but I trusted the KDE devs and wanted to "get with the program" so I embraced D[censored]. It's alright.

I only use Konqi, period. File, web, smb, ftp. First, thing I've had to do is put Konqi back as the x browser. I just not interested in that other program or any other browsers. I get too much done in Konqi.

Originally posted by bendy

Then along comes rekonq. Why?

This is like a lot of other things.. a SOLUTION looking for a PROBLEM that does NOT EXIST. See: wayland, as another example.

Originally posted by bendy

What's prompted this rant is kmail2/nepomuk/akonadi of course.

This is why my upgrading to the lastest is on hold. I use KMail, nothing more, never have used anything else. The others just don't measure up. I can do a few simple scp's to move files over in KMail, start on the new install and away you go. Not now. >

I've read the various articles about how this, that and the other issues with the KMail stuff from message stores, to address book to search... ok, fine.. lest improve them... WHOOOOOAAA! The cure is worse than than the disease! >

One of the first things that happens, is nepomuk disabled, agents reconfigured to not start etc..

So because of this cure, and my fix so my quad core system runs better than a VIC20, I loose features in KMail??

Originally posted by bendy

I suddenly realised I am no longer the target market for KDE. ............All I want is desktop that suits the way I work and doesn't need lots of attention.

This really struck home... although the "slick and intergrated" I don't think are in the same vain as what I would probably want.

Originally posted by bendy

Apparently the target user for KDE is now the anally-retentive uber power user who organises his or her (but probably his, lets be honest) life into "activities" and spends all their spare time tagging their content to share with their socially networked friends.

This is what really hit home, coupled with all the buzz word comments from asegio et al about "semantic desktops"

Let me tell you about your shmantic shemantic desktop, since I don't use any of that privacy invading facedorg and twidiot stuff I could care less about this stuff. No I don't want data dancing around on the desktop, like its spinny, wobbly cousins is cute for a 1 uS if that, and I rarely see the desktop with all the other windows open. I want a simple reliable, stable email program, thats it. I don't want it to share anything with any other program, if it has its own addressbook, fine, if it has its own search, fine, it it has its own

Originally posted by bendy

I understand that the most reliably KDE-centric of the major distros - Mandriva - has switched to t[censored] as it's default mail client. It's fairly damning that Mandriva have abandoned the native mail client.

I simply wont upgrade my working systems, till maybe hopefully it shakes out, but this impacts a project of mine, to the point I would have to tell users to either:

1) Use another program - that violates projects goals, principles and tenants
2) Suffer through this quagmire - that violates projects goals, principles and tenants
3) Start over with their accounts and just import messages - slow..
4) repack a non borq'd KMail - thus causing problems for other programs that may depend on libs that Kmail uses that have been relegated to older versions... what a nightmare.

I loved the post about how its "too late to moan and groan... be level headed about this..." I suggest no one who develops Kmail, nepocr ud and akondacr ud run into me as I will give them a piece of level headed opinion on this mess!

Originally posted by bendy

Maybe I'll come to understand the other half of the nepomuk/akonadi thing and suddenly find I can't live without it.

99.99999999% of users disable this stuff, and don't want it, so the dev's go we will fix that! And ram it down users by forcing it into programs as a "fix" to this or that ill.

I have no use for this stuff... again solutions to problems that don't exist. Maildir and mbox have been around how long? So we need to store this in these AND THEN into a DB for what again ? ? ?

Originally posted by bendy

Certainly the alternatives don't attract me, particularly after spending a couple of hours with unity on a netbook last night, and g[censored] doesn't ppeal. So I'll probably stick with KDE until E17 is finished.

I tried KDE 4.x, didn't agree with it being release ready, not till 4.6 did I see things *mostly* back to stable ala 3.5.10. There are still huge differences between what I think should be there and where things have went. Like you I am KDE die hard, not fond of any of the others...

Unfortunately I think this whole akon/nepo mess is going to torpedo all the work of the past 3 years to get KDE 4.x back to the 3.5.10 level.

**Qqmike** · Oct 18, 2011, 06:56 PM

Re: Another rant

I find the original post and Reply #1 (rec9140) to be well stated, on the mark, fwiw. I really like Konqueror as a file manager. (Btw, I'm still using 8.04.3 w/Konqueror and KDE 3.5.10 and find it to be perfect for everything I need.) With everyone here proclaiming how great Dolphin is, I'm made to feel either stupid or that I've terribly missed something. Dolphin doesn't come close to Konqueror. Let's not create solutions for problems that don't exist. Let's not do regressions. Let's not "improve" for glitz and pizazz when it hinders substance. Let's respect effective simplicity over snazzy complexity.

**claydoh** · Oct 18, 2011, 09:08 PM

Re: Another rant

No, it is just that the fact that Dolphin is awesome does NOT mean konqueror is not

Dolphin has the effective simplicity to Konqueror's Swiss Army Knife.
There is nothing I used to use Konqueror for that I cannot do in Dolphin, having used Konqueror heavily for literally everything it could do for over 7 years or more.
(and the so called "D3lphin" in 8.04 is not awesome at all, two different animals)

**Teunis** · Oct 18, 2011, 09:29 PM

Re: Another rant

I might be mistaken but about a year ago I noticed that when removing/ changing Dolphin or Konqueror's configuration files affects the other just as much, i.e. they are both front ends to the same.
I use Konqueror the browser to get access to a few very odd sites and am happy as a pig in mud with Dolphin the can-all do-all file manager.
Shortcuts like F3 and F4 are just two examples of it's usefulness.

**SteveRiley** · Oct 18, 2011, 11:51 PM

Re: Another rant

Originally posted by rec9140

See: wayland, as another example.

I think I will be very happy to see X get, well, axed. It's old and far too complicated. Do we really need a "network display server" when all we want is for applications running on our local boxes to display graphical output on our local monitors? At least Wayland makes no attempt to achieve "network transparency," which in and of itself will greatly simplify the work involved in converting ones and zeros into pleasing output. Although as for nVidia's refusal to get on the Wayland bandwagon, well, I have a suggestion for them that involves a bodily contortion not generally possible given the construction of human anatomy!

**barbolani** · Oct 19, 2011, 02:05 AM

Re: Another rant

I've been reading this thread and I have to agree with the rants. A few checks here and there and you learn that the problems were know at the time of the release, and that it was too late to fix them.

I hope that a later upgrade fixes the problems, but anyway the damage is already done in that lots of novices attracted to KUbuntu are going to have a bad experience. And for the target Ubuntu user category, this is going to be difficult, if not impossible, to remediate. A lot of potential users are not going to try again in the next release, and worse, they are going to tell their friends and family how amateurish this Linux thing is.

My question is, if it was too late to fix them, why not ship the previous stable version instead? I mean, are the KDE apps (Amarok, KMail, etc...) such strongly and inextricably linked to the KDE minor version number?

Mind you, the KDE desktop environment is very good on itself and provides the services for client applications to run decently. I'm surely not the only one that has something else than Konqueror/reKonq as its main browser. I don't use KMail as my main mail client. I use LibreOffice as my word/spreadsheet package.

The KDE desktop environment runs extremely fine non KDE applications, and its flexibility and configurability, together with almost sane defaults is what makes it my DE of choice. That is, even if there were NO KDE applications (and I'd miss k3b a lot!!!), KDE would still be my desktop environment of choice. KDE is good enough on its own. I consider the KDE apps a kind of bonus included in the KDE project.

Now look at Windows and Mac: both have linked the GUI layer with the OS layer in a way that forces the customer to upgrade the OS even if all it has is new fancy bells and whistles. Linux is much saner in that regard because it separates the two layers, more or less (save for proprietary driver woes)

But even Microsoft manages to release Office (its main cash cow) more or less independently from Windows. You've a reasonable set of choices in combining the versions of Windows and Office. Of course, it makes sense that they ask you to run the latest OS if you want to run the latest Office, but even so the latest Office runs in Windows-1.

So it seems that KDE takes a step back from the separation of the Window Manager/Desktop Environment/Apps layers. I can understand that they force an application upgrade as part of the change from one major version to another (3.x to 4.x) But the apps should not have such a strong dependency on the DE. Simply stated: if the latest KMail, or Akonadi, or whatever else, has severe problems at the time of release, instead of releasing those problems to the unsuspecting public, KUbuntu should be able to ship with the previous versions of the app.

It is much worse for the reputation of the distro to be out in the open with showstoppers like these (or the one that affected nVidia cards with desktop effects in 11.04) than to release without the latest and greatest versions of everything.

That's my point of view, but seems that I'm not in line with the Ubuntu release policies.

**rec9140** · Oct 19, 2011, 04:40 AM

Re: Another rant

Originally posted by Qqmike

I find the original post and Reply #1 (rec9140) to be well stated, on the mark, fwiw. I really like Konqueror as a file manager. (Btw, I'm still using 8.04.3 w/Konqueror and KDE 3.5.10 and find it to be perfect for everything I need.) With everyone here proclaiming how great D[censored] is, I'm made to feel either stupid or that I've terribly missed something. D[censored] doesn't come close to Konqueror.

My main work desktop is still 8.04 based, I use another distro till they murdered their KDE edition. I only use Konqi, and your not missing any thing, at all. That other program is just like alot of other "new" programs, I've come to the conclusion that new developers come along and see some program, and feel they should do it again using say in Qt v. GTK etc.. Why?

Originally posted by Qqmike

Let's not create solutions for problems that don't exist. Let's not do regressions. Let's not "improve" for glitz and pizazz when it hinders substance. Let's respect effective simplicity over snazzy complexity.

DING ! DING! DING! We have a winner. Can we post this to every developer list on the planet, say on auto post every 5 minutes or so with a required acknowledgement from the developers. That sums up the issue pretty well.

**rec9140** · Oct 19, 2011, 04:49 AM

Re: Another rant

Originally posted by SteveRiley

Originally posted by rec9140

See: wayland, as another example.

I think I will be very happy to see X get, well, axed. It's old and far too complicated. Do we really need a "network display server" when all we want is for applications running on our local boxes to display graphical output on our local monitors? At least Wayland makes no attempt to achieve "network transparency," which in and of itself will greatly simplify the work involved in converting ones and zeros into pleasing output. Although as for nVidia's refusal to get on the Wayland bandwagon, well, I have a suggestion for them that involves a bodily contortion not generally possible given the construction of human anatomy!

Thanks but your not going to convert me.

One, I USE XDMCP DAILY via ssh, for 3-5 connections to do MY JOB both internally and externally. I also use it to walk up to infested computes, stick a USB stick in, boot up, ssh -X and Xephry to my box on the other side of the building etc. Or worse case maybe I have to use Xming

. Just because YOU don't use it, have no need for it, does not mean that is not needed. Maybe YOU only use local boxes, I don't.

Thanks but no thanks to wayland and any of its other ilk.

I FULLY SUPPORT nVidia and the Just say no to wayland!

A solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

Lets just work on X12 to IMPROVE X, instead of framenting things more.

**rec9140** · Oct 19, 2011, 05:05 AM

Re: Another rant

Originally posted by barbolani

My question is, if it was too late to fix them, why not ship the previous stable version instead? I mean, are the KDE apps (Amarok, KMail, etc...) such strongly and inextricably linked to the KDE minor version number?

The changes in the KDE libs that support KMail means that KMail will not run with the new libs. I already tried that with the old version of KMail. There was an error about kmail.privatemail.so object not found or something.

All the libs, or at least the KDEPIM libs probably have to be returned to the 4.6.x, to get KMail to work. I may try this to see what has to be returned to get it to run, but doing this will probably cause other breakage elsewhere, say if you use other parts of the KDEPIM stuff, which I don't, but I am not sure what all get lumps into this now, since they put certain things into this group. I only use KMail, but they've separated parts like I think kaddressbook to be its only little thing, when it really should just be part of KMail (yeah what ever, I've heard about all the goals of doing this, not buying it) I am guessing that kaddressbook would be effected, and this could spread outside KDEPIM if something else is using some thing in those libs.

It really is a house of cards in regards to this, and the devs have done a good job in pretty much forcing this change and its dependencies.

I wish some one would come along and take over the KMail program and let KMail2 ride off on its own infested way.

Originally posted by barbolani

That's my point of view, but seems that I'm not in line with the Ubuntu release policies.

Your not the only one, trust me. Your not alone.

**SteveRiley** · Oct 19, 2011, 09:24 AM

Re: Another rant

Originally posted by rec9140

Thanks but your not going to convert me.

One, I USE XDMCP DAILY via ssh, for 3-5 connections to do MY JOB both internally and externally. I also use it to walk up to infested computes, stick a USB stick in, boot up, ssh -X and Xephry to my box on the other side of the building etc. Or worse case maybe I have to use Xming

. Just because YOU don't use it, have no need for it, does not mean that is not needed. Maybe YOU only use local boxes, I don't.

Thanks but no thanks to wayland and any of its other ilk.

I FULLY SUPPORT nVidia and the Just say no to wayland!

A solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

Lets just work on X12 to IMPROVE X, instead of framenting things more.

Whoa, friend... feels like emotions might be getting a bit frazzled here. I'll admit I vented a fair amount of frustration myself at Kmail/Akonadi/etc.

My no means am I suggesting that X be abandoned -- that would be silly, because people with your use case would then be left in the cold. I suspect, though, that your use case is in the minority. the way people use computers has evolved over time, and will continue to evolve. X was written for a different time. I'm not convinced that its architecture is amenable to supporting the fundamental changes required to support how people use personal computers today. So for graphical displays -- which are almost, but not always, local now -- it makes sense to replace resource-heavy X with something much more lightweight as the default. Under no circumstances, though, should distributions prohibit users from installing X if they need it.

I sense that what frustrates many of us is the appearance of loss of choice. We've grown accustomed to pruning out parts of the OS we don't like and grafting in parts we do. This ability seems to be disappearing: high-level applications are extending bits of themselves too deeply into the base OS; the frequency of inexplicable hard dependencies is on the rise. If there's some underlying assumption that these moves will make Linux easier to use and therefore attract a wider audience, that assumption is, IMHO, incorrect.

**rec9140** · Oct 19, 2011, 11:49 AM

Re: Another rant

Originally posted by SteveRiley

My no means am I suggesting that X be abandoned -- that would be silly, because people with your use case would then be left in the cold. I suspect, though, that your use case is in the minority. the way people use computers has evolved over time, and will continue to evolve. X was written for a different time. I'm not convinced that its architecture is amenable to supporting the fundamental changes required to support how people use personal computers today. So for graphical displays -- which are almost, but not always, local now -- it makes sense to replace resource-heavy X with something much more lightweight as the default. Under no circumstances, though, should distributions prohibit users from installing X if they need it.

While I may in the minority of average desktop users. Those in many areas who have predominately been BSD, *NIX of some sort XDMCP has been and continues to be the way work gets done. I seem to remember ATT Cambridge or ATT UK something did this follow you around desktop, they did it with VNC, but could be done via XDMCP as well.

And if anyhing I think "thin" computing is on the uptick again, which is another reason things like LTS, and XDMCP etc. need to continue. You purchase a nice beefy box for your server and it runs all kinds of things, and you can reuse all the old clunkers around the house that were infested. Or something like the Raspberry Pis' running Xephyr back to a school providing a SSH'd connection to continue school work or some Android tablet connected up doing something.

Every program has room to improve, X is not any different... but to the throw out 20+ years worth of stuff, and features, and divide things off and convulet what many users already see as a mess with another layer of stuff to get back to what X already does/did is just a solution to a non problem.

Lets work on improving X's problems, not gut it and run off to a new variant, simply for the view that this or thats not needed by most.

This is just another way to turn off getting users on to Linux by trying to fix what really is not broke to start.

And most definately this should not be the default. Why should those of using a traditional desktop have to keep be shoved aside to get back out base build. If you want to use a gutted windowin system, then have at it, but that should not be the default, no way, never. I've heard all the various things about how bad this or that is in X, so lets FIX IT THEN! No were going to go off in some other tangent, loose features to "fix" things. I am not changing my opinion of wayland, its not needed. X has been around for as long as it has because of its power for local or remote systems.

Originally posted by SteveRiley

I sense that what frustrates many of us is the appearance of loss of choice. We've grown accustomed to pruning out parts of the OS we don't like and grafting in parts we do. This ability seems to be disappearing: high-level applications are extending bits of themselves too deeply into the base OS; the frequency of inexplicable hard dependencies is on the rise. If there's some underlying assumption that these moves will make Linux easier to use and therefore attract a wider audience, that assumption is, IMHO, incorrect.

I think there is a lot of truth in this, but theres also a lot of "I am the developer, I know best, accept it!" A lot new develpers are not welcomed into the say the X group of developers, so off they go to reinvent the wheel and disgruntled.

Lots of input from users that developers don't want to hear as it means an alteration to "their vision." Do you know how many times MY VISION of things get changed because of user need? Does not matter what the developer thinks if the users are opposed to it. Your vision just got altered. Outside of the KDE devs who honestly uses nepo for any thing? I see more threads about disabling it and nuking its recalcitrant agents than praise for any use of it.

Like my XDMCP, a minority, but because this minority is in control of the development, us unwashed masses will get on board or get out! Hence the KMail2 mess. Which leads to the mess to fix it, probably would break who knows what else in KDE... But it looks like I just may get to find out as I can not release my project and tell my fellow KMail users, "Sorry tough luck, upstream borq'd, your screwed, so sad, deal with it." That violates just about every goal, purpose, tenant and philosophy of the project!

**barbolani** · Oct 19, 2011, 06:08 PM

Re: Another rant

A few interesting things are emerging in this thread.

I sense that what frustrates many of us is the appearance of loss of choice. We've grown accustomed to pruning out parts of the OS we don't like and grafting in parts we do. This ability seems to be disappearing: high-level applications are extending bits of themselves too deeply into the base OS; the frequency of inexplicable hard dependencies is on the rise. If there's some underlying assumption that these moves will make Linux easier to use and therefore attract a wider audience, that assumption is, IMHO, incorrect.

I could not agree more. The beauty of Linux is freedom of choice.

What drove me to Ubuntu in the first place was that you have by default a simple, working environment. You can (could?) walk into your parents living room and install Ubuntu on their computer knowing that everything was going to work, no surprises. But you could customize it, if you wanted to. Someone is (was?) hiding all that complexity for the average non computer literate users, but if necessary you can get your hands as dirty as you like under the hood.

For someone used to Fedora or SUSE, that is (was?) the right way of handling the complexity of a modern operating system. This concept is being lost, replaced instead by increasingly big monolithic pieces of code that cover everything and that are an all or nothing proposition.

But going a bit deeper, I don't think that anyone at Canonical (or KDE, or Gnome or...) is doing that on purpose. There's no black helicopter conspiracy that says "let's restrict their choices". What is failing is the foundational concept of Unix: do one thing and do it well, have defined interfaces with the rest of the world. And again, diving deeper I can see that it¡s the interfaces that are failing.

Text, or raw, byte streams are easy to pipe and redirect around in comparison. But the complexity of a DE, with all its components (search, window management, event and device handling, printing, inter app communication and a large number of others that I don't know about) simply cannot be managed by passing text streams around. That's why frameworks, APIs and tookits exist, to provide applications a means of handling all that complexity without requiring a lot of involvement.

An API is a contract. API consumers use the API in the confidence that the API is isolating them from the complexity of the underlying environment and that their usage of the API will not change with each minor change in the foundational components that are used by the API.

Setting aside Firefox-like silly version number debates, when the previous version of an application does not compile under a minor revision of the API, the contract has been broken.

The irony with KDE team is that they are breaking their own contract. The message at the time of the 3->4 switch was that since it was a major revision, we had to be patient and wait for a while for the apps to catch up. Instead, what we have now is a set of applications integrated into a DE integrated in a distro where as part of seemingly minor revisions (what features exactly 4.7 has over 4.6?), backwards compatibility is broken.

The KDE team, as either failed at defining a sound, long lasting API, or simply should have not declared 4.7 as release quality. The "release early, release often" mantra applies to the code, not the APIs. You should be able to compile previous versions of your app unless a major change in the underlying thing has happened.

Lots of input from users that developers don't want to hear as it means an alteration to "their vision." Do you know how many times MY VISION of things get changed because of user need? Does not matter what the developer thinks if the users are opposed to it. Your vision just got altered. Outside of the KDE devs who honestly uses nepo for any thing? I see more threads about disabling it and nuking its recalcitrant agents than praise for any use of it

What I cannot understand is which kind of pressure the KUbuntu/KDE team feels to fall into that trap. Simply shipping 4.6 with less bugs than their previous offering would be already enough. And I don't hear anyone demanding that they keep rigurously the 6 month cycle. Make it a 6 and half, 7 or 8 instead, if that means that they'll ship with less showstoppers.

Well, I've read somewhere that Canonical employees have incentive plans based on meeting the release schedules. That may help explaining why things get released in the state that they are released.

**rec9140** · Oct 20, 2011, 06:42 AM

Re: Another rant

Originally posted by barbolani

What drove me to Ubuntu in the first place was that you have by default a simple, working environment.

Theres some good points in there.

Originally posted by barbolani

What I cannot understand is which kind of pressure the KUbuntu/KDE team feels to fall into that trap. Simply shipping 4.6 with less bugs than their previous offering would be already enough. And I don't hear anyone demanding that they keep rigorously the 6 month cycle. Make it a 6 and half, 7 or 8 instead, if that means that they'll ship with less showstoppers.

Well, I've read somewhere that Canonical employees have incentive plans based on meeting the release schedules. That may help explaining why things get released in the state that they are released.

I am not sure I am 100% clear on the status of kubuntu and its developers as part, not part, partially, or what ever of canonical. They seem to be bound by the fact that they MUST release on the schedule set...There was discussion about changing this so that things aligned better with KDE releases, and was ultimately rejected, for specious reasons (MY OPINION!) at best.

I think that having target dates etc.. for a release schedule are GOOD a VERY GOOD THING. BUT I also think that they are subject to revision and overhaul when problems arise, ie: KMail2. I stopped, hard to evaluate what to do with this mess on my project. Determined that I need to pack KMail, v. KMail2 for this release, and when it was not a simple downgrade of KMail, I will have to waste time to figure out what needs to be downgraded as well, and what else that might borq up. >

**Qqmike** · Oct 20, 2011, 07:03 AM

Re: Another rant

This is an interesting thread. Even though you guys seem to be new here (as indicated by your Post counts), it is clear you have good experience in Linux and computing. This is one of the better Rant threads I've read, incisive, thoughtful; in recent years there have been several threads here as we all know.

One issue comes up all the time, the assumption that a goal of the community is to attract other PC users, mainstream users, and possibly even some MS users to Kubuntu/Linux. And you do that by releasing versions that work. Pretty hard to argue with that.

Problem is the assumption doesn't seem to be true. At least that's what I've gotten from past rant threads on this interesting subject. I'm just an observer, a reporter, a casual user, not a Linux principal in any sense; but that is what I've taken away from other discussions on this. Not sure I remember the reasons behind it, but apparently we are not in a marketing game to position Kubuntu (Linux) in mainstream user markets. That isn't the focus of the devs (is it guys?). I'm really (sincerely) not sure what "our" focus or the ("our") goals are, are you?

I like Kubuntu/Linux. I really do not enjoy using MS Windows, irrespective of its cost or whatever. Having once earned a living as a professional, I was used to paying $1000 to get the package: Windows OS, Office Professional Suite, Virus checkers, Perfect Disk de-fragger, some books, and whatever else there was. Personally, I find Kubuntu (and other distros) more fun to use and less burdened -- which is another issue you guys (above) have raised about Kubuntu's evolution moving more in the direction of carrying a bunch of overhead, not being so flexible/customizable.

Yes, Kubuntu is free (-$). Yes, it is put out there for people to use, help test, give feedback for development. Yes we are on a 6-month release (and we all know by now what that means in practice -- it means we have to continue to practice). And so on.

But what is all this about? What ARE the goals of Linux powers that be? From a marketing standpoint, of course the above critiques are correct. Hard to argue with that! In a commercial marketplace, you simply can not, must not, release a product before it is fully ready, lest you invite name-brand disaster. You can not release a product to the mass MS-Windows market that is not ready to go off-the-shelf (with respect to major apps like email, browser, photos, Skype-type-stuff, sound, and so on). But again, as I said, I really don't gather that this has anything to do with the focus and the goals of the Kubuntu developers/movers-and-shakers. So, back to the question: What is all this about (besides being, in random order, alternately fun and challenging and frustrating and satisfying)?

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