illogic-al.Org

This post will be made into a lifetime movie someday. I guarantee it.
The title of this post is "How slicker made me a better person." I decided on this as the title instead of the alternative "Slicker: A Plasma Story" because this will largely be a personal post. In the original writing this was suppose to illustrate the journey the SlicKer Project took from being one man's dream of a desktop redefined to the actual birth of a new desktop paradigm; i.e. Plasma.

Introduction - skip at your leisure
I can't with any authority say that slicker caused the creation of plasma, nor was I going to. I was instead making the connections between the two and showing how things fell into place from the conception of one idea to the implementation of another. All this to show how one ripple in the pond extended outwards to create something greater, and more powerful than that single event. It was a feel-good story. It was a propaganda piece, it was the "Here's KDE 4.0 kiddies, and here's how it happened!" piece I was going to write one year ago. That piece is still unfinished; still on my desktop. Largely complete mind you, just missing some screenshots and a paragraph or two to finalize the first draft. It will probably never see the light of day.

KDE 4.0 in the months leading up to release disillusioned me. I had seen the state of it during the beta and RC periods and realized that, in my opinion, it was not ready. And yet the hype. It abounded. And then right before release, let's say a month, the tune began to change. I could link to blogs, I could divulge mailing list threads, but that would require more research for this one paragraph than the entire slicker story. Let's just say that I did not then, and still do not now, agree with the releasing of KDE 4.0 as a Desktop Environment. Why? Because the primary component - the desktop, i.e plasma - was broken; for a large number of people.

This left my article in something of a state of limbo. I had no motivation to finish it as I no longer had any desire to promote KDE 4.0. At the same time I didn't want to write a negative review. I decided to censor myself, something those who know me will realize, I do not do lightly. I felt it the prudent thing to do in this situation however, because negativity is a funny thing. You see, even with the best of intentions, it can be misconstrued. Allow me to explain with a scenario. I believe at least the gentlemen in the audience (who am I kidding, you *are* the audience) will be able to relate to what I'm saying.

Let's say you have a lady friend who asks your opinion about something; "how's that outfit make her look?", "how's the food taste?", "does it annoy you when I do...?" etc. Let's say that your opinion is in the negative: looks horrible, tastes bad, yes, etc. What to do? You could tell the truth and risk hurting her feelings and incurring her wrath. You could also lie and spare her feelings, but this lays the foundation for an unpleasant relationship. She might keep buying those outfits thinking you like them, keep making that dish thinking you like it, etc. Society has conditioned us to believe that it is acceptable to go with the lie, the "little white lie". There are even a substantial amount of women who expect it if the answer is not a positive one. I, invariably, tell the truth. If you ask for my opinion, you will get it, whether I know you will like it or not.

The problem here is not with telling the truth however, it is in how you tell it. I do not do it well. In fact, I don't even try. I know this, the people who know me know this, and any fool asking me questions is damn well going to find out. Herein lay my problem. Whilst I have no problem at all giving a negative opinion if asked, in the case of KDE 4.0. I wasn't asked. I wasn't asked and it was beyond my capacity to do it in a "nice" way. The problem then is the impression that this gives. In my experience people are incapable of reading through information, critically analyzing and assimilating said information for themselves. They seem incapable of finding the salient pieces of information and processing it independently. Doubly so of opinion pieces. Bear with me, we're on the home stretch now.

My "review" of KDE 4.0 would have mentioned the great foundation for future applications, the stability of the underlying core libraries, the awesomeness of the included applications, the glaring absence of the missing ones, and the absolute atrociousness of the desktop. I would have, after giving requisite praise to the idea of plasma, ripped the implementation a new asshole. But what purpose would it have served? Were the deficiencies in plasma things the developers did not know about? No. Was this a final product slated to not progress beyond current functionality? No. What purpose then would this have served but to give ammunition to the naysayers and detractors? To what end would my words have been used to either a) better the project or b) inform the user?

It would have not have done any of (a) since the deficiencies were already known and were currently being worked on. The project does after all run on volunteer power and only so much can be done on a part time basis. I would not have been doing much of (b) either as, there would be others doing much better jobs at impartial reviews and people would have focused on the negatives mentioned in any opinion piece I did. That would also have been misinformation as, while I personally knew the reasoning why some things were the way they were (from blogs and mailing lists), I would not have bothered to give the context. And even though I might have disagreed with these decisions, readers who might otherwise think poorly of the project might be more understanding given proper context.

For instance, Aaron Seigo once mentioned in a blog post (either before or after KDE 4.0 was released, I forget), that a release had to be made. Apparently issues people, myself included, were having with the desktop (plasma) crashing were at least in part due to proprietary video drivers and bugs in the X server. If a release was not made, then the video card maker(s) would have no incentive to fix their broken drivers, or the X server folk would not have enough data to find what (and where) things were broken. This would result in people continuing to have crashes because enough data couldn't be compiled to find out what was wrong. A bit of a chicken and egg situation you see.

Personally I believe that once you know about a crash, a release should not be made unless that crash is fixed, or worked around. The plasma and kwin code released for 4.0 exposed broken things in places the KDE developers didn't have much control over. Instead of working around it they released anyway to force the hand of all involved to get proper fixes (and really, that's better in the end for everybody). I think that's how the explanation went. If true my main gripe with the 4.0 release, releasing a desktop environment with a broken desktop, still stands. BUT. I understand. I don't agree, but I understand. If true, you, release dude Stephan, and others are at the same time both brave and evil me. I both love you and hate you for it. Never stop, or do. Either one is fine.

Chapter the 1st: For unto us a star is born

Y'know, I'm tired. This is already post number 5 today. Let's just say it's to be continued.
I also, am an evil man. Brave? Not so much ;-)