Cancel April release of Vivid

[NoWorries]

I do not believe that we should strictly adhere to the 6 month release schedule, particularly when monumental changes are being made and are yet to be finished. I, for one, constantly encounter limitations and bugs in Vivid. Such problems I would expect in a pre-Alpha release, not in one that is one week from being released.

If I were a developer working on Vivid, I would not be happy with the current state of its preparedness. In all fairness to the developers, I think that, if a release is to be made this month, it should be scaled back to a slightly modified version of Utopic.

I definitely do not want to see KDE with egg on its face this time round. So I would urge those who have influence over release decisions to seriously consider the consequences of releasing Vivid in its current state and look at alternatives.

[whatthefunk]

Hmmm...sounds like I will be missing this upgrade.

[Rod J]

I leave the latest bleeding edge releases to those more adventurous souls. I'll stick with my nice and stable 14.04 LTS thanks.

It troubles me that the debacle that was the first version of KDE 4 might be repeated though. That put KDE on the back foot for quite a while and people still seem to knock KDE for that even though it's brilliant now. Release often and release early might have its good points but it can backfire badly.

[marco07]

Well, I will install it on a test partition and play with it. This way at least I can test and point out the bugs at this forum, which may help the developers to improve the version. If, nobody trys, then how do we expect to have a fully stable version??

[dequire]

Well, I will install it on a test partition and play with it. This way at least I can test and point out the bugs at this forum, which may help the developers to improve the version. If, nobody trys, then how do we expect to have a fully stable version??

I think this is wise advice. The community needs to work together - i.e. developers develop and users test, especially on versions like 15.04 that reflect major changes. Though perhaps with as fast as the FOSS world is evolving / changing these days, and with LTS versions of Kubuntu being truly "LTS" for the last two releases, we should consider what I Tweeted about a few days ago:

[ronw]

I don't get the labeling non-LTS versions as Testing or Beta.

I've been using non-LTS versions for so many years I don't remember how many now. Not on some spare machine, my everyday work computer. The only serious problems I've ever had involved Radeon drivers on an HP laptop, and to a lesser extent Nvidia drivers. Neither of which I blame Kubuntu (or Arch or Opensuse for).

My thoughts: Vivid has been amazing since Alpha 2.

[claydoh]

Well, I will install it on a test partition and play with it. This way at least I can test and point out the bugs at this forum, which may help the developers to improve the version. If, nobody trys, then how do we expect to have a fully stable version??

Actually, the proper place for bugs and issues is launchpad's and kde's bugzillas.
Most devs don't frequent forums much. Those of us here looking to help with problems usually trawl through these looking for reports.

[marco07]

Actually, the proper place for bugs and issues is launchpad's and kde's bugzillas.
Most devs don't frequent forums much. Those of us here looking to help with problems usually trawl through these looking for reports.

Agree! What I meant was to point out the misbehavior of the version for discussion on the Forum to make sure it is not something case specific and then report or post a bug report.

[vinnywright]

I'm not having any real trouble with it ,,,15.04

some times some screen scrambling when waking from sleep (closed lid) when it happens closing the lid again and opening or just loging in (blind) and then going to a TTY and back will straiten it out.
Gwenview not having the kipi-plugins available for sending screenshots to the service of your choice.
not being able to have different backgrounds for different desktops ,,,,,,,,,,,
,,,,,,,,,, that’s all that strikes me right now





VINNY

[kubicle]

Nothing would ever get released, if releases were halted because they're problematic for some people.

The early reviews I have seen are largely positive (though it's beyond me why anyone would like "breeze", but that's another story)...so it will likely not be a huge failure. I for one have run Vivid since the utopic release without any major (unsolvable) issues.

There will always be regressions when you introduce major changes (like systemd and kf5), but that's why they are brought in early and in the non-lts releases, so they can be widely tested and stabilized for the next lts. Non-lts aren't really betas, but they serve a very similar purpose.

[NoWorries]

I don't get the labeling non-LTS versions as Testing or Beta.

I've been using non-LTS versions for so many years I don't remember how many now. Not on some spare machine, my everyday work computer. The only serious problems I've ever had involved Radeon drivers on an HP laptop, and to a lesser extent Nvidia drivers. Neither of which I blame Kubuntu (or Arch or Opensuse for).

My thoughts: Vivid has been amazing since Alpha 2.

I have had Vivid on a USB memory for some time now and it is stable but limited in capabilities such as Widgets and Multimedia editing.

I have been away from home for about three months and when I returned, a PC that I had Vivid installed on had lots of updates but I could not get it to work after all the updates. I then installed the 15th April iso and when I rebooted I got the black screen. I then decided to install two copies on this system and eventually I got it to boot. I experienced a Plasma crash as well and I now find that if I want my desktop to have a slide-show of jpg images, I get a black screen!!!!

So it looks like the behaviour of Vivid depends on what distribution you use, as the problems I experienced with the new installation have not been evident on the system that I have on the USB connected to my laptop. I therefore wonder what reviewers will experience with the released version when they try to do a thorough test.

EDIT:
I am totally embarrassed as I have now found that the jpg files that I was accessing were 0B long. I must have made the monumental mistake of not doing a "safely remove" when I copied the files onto a USB stick. So I am pleased to say that all is well with that aspect of Vivid.

Currently I plan to copy all of the hidden files from my 14.10 system into the home directory of another partition on this spare PC and do an install in order to simulate what would happen if and when I do it on my "production" Laptop.

[dequire]

My thoughts..based solely on using Kubuntu since around 2007 would simplify to this...LTS releases are exactly that...and exactly what "non-techie" people should use, along with using Ku in a biz or professional setting. The release immediately after should be always referred to as "testing", since this is the point in the release cycles where major changes get introduced typically. The 2nd release from LTS shouldn't be called anything - these releases (ex. 14.10) are usually quite stable, but lack the "LTS" tag which as mentioned earlier is likely important in certain situations.

Us geeks...well...we're gonna run bleeding-edge no matter what...even if it's just to test / play / break and maybe report some bugs...Take my opinion FWIW.

[Rod J]

Well, I have to disagree with the notion of "non-techie" people only using the LTS versions. I would describe myself as a "techie" ... always have been ... (although I would describe myself as a nerd rather than a geek) It takes me ages to get my everyday system looking and behaving how I want it to, including installing and configuring all the extra apps I use ... and I'm just not prepared to do that every six months or so (I do have other things to do).

Since I installed 14.04 64 Bit on my new system in January I'm still trying to sort out problems with BackInTime backing up to my new NAS (xattr settings just won't work it seems, even though the NAS is mounted as NFS). And I still can't get some On Demand TV (with it's damnable DRM) working in Firefox. To go through this purgatory every six months ... forget it!!

I could install a later release (or other distro) in the second partition of my SSD to have a play with the latest stuff (I may do that later, when I get the time). One of the problems I have is a very slow internet (128Kb sustained download) which puts me off having multiple OS's installed with the necessary updating involved.

[eco2geek]

Ah yes, KDE 4.0. "What were they thinking?" was the main thing going through my head at the time. However, KDE 4.0 was intentionally released before it was ready for mass consumption so that developers could use and abuse it. As Wikipedia notes:

"Despite being labelled as a stable release, it (KDE 4) was intended for early adopters. Continuing to use KDE 3.5 was suggested for users wanting a more stable, "feature complete" desktop."

Although KDE 5 may not be perfect, it's no KDE 4.0. Although the look 'n' feel are different, most all of the functionality of KDE 4 is there, AFAICT. Most of the "showstopper" bugs are now gone. So I'm not worried that this release will be anything like early releases of KDE 4.

[xennex81]

The gripes I have with Vivid are:

- The Splash screen of the login of Plasma5 flickers on my box. Equally, the ctrl-alt-del logout screen is badly visible.

Other than that:

- Firefox has a way of loading directories of downloaded files in Gwenview or even Wine-explorer but never in Dolphin ;-).

- there are problems with selecting themes, (on my box) the Breeze Dark theme doesn't apply, the Air theme didn't apply correctly last time, these are important things if that stuff doesn't work, these small errors, but important, important for the user experience, it is like your whole system becomes worthless to a user that wants to have a pleasant experience and obtain a working KDE version. I don't know how to express it. It is vital that certain things work (WORK!).

- the theme chooser for Window Decoration constantly crashes

Basically the presentation aspect that people work so hard on lies half flat on its face. You spend hours and hours and hours and work for months and then finally there is something probably minor bugging out, and all your work is wasted because in the end it just doesn't work. That means your whole effort has gone to waste if you release it like this.

I agree with the OP. Postpone it for a month. Gets people off the burn-out-track.

Like this Oividiu person who is doing the website. Total burnout. Can't look anymore, can't get any work done anymore. Just a little breathing room will give people the needed refreshment.

Seriously, I agree. You don't have to postpone indefinitely. But I believe it would look even very good on Kubuntu if they deviated from Ubuntu in this. Just say "Sorry, it doesn't work yet, it needs to work and it doesn't, some elemental features are broken, let's give ourselves some time." Like a horse of a horse span and the horse goes straight ahead while all the other horses make a turn. The horse does its own thing. In order to stay true to itself.