[arch-general] Anyway to revert back to KDE 3.5.9? (Don't Panic)

[Nigel Henry]

On Monday 11 August 2008 19:09, David Rosenstrauch wrote:
> Attila wrote:
> > On Montag, 11. August 2008 18:07 David Rosenstrauch wrote:
> >> I'm more than open to hearing counter-arguments as to why someone thinks
> >> it's worth the switch
> >
> > I'm frustated as you but i must say that there was no way for the arch
> > devs to make it right for everyone. Imagine that there is no kde4 in the
> > repos and than you will read a lot of "i want kde4" wishes instead of "i
> > want my kde3 back".
>
> I have no qualms with what the devs did.  KDE4 is out, and so the Arch
> devs have to upgrade to it.  (And in fact, IMO, they even were pretty
> cautious about the upgrade, waiting several months until 4.1 was
> released before upgrading.)  Arch is a distro that uses "bleeding edge"
> software, and we all know that going in.  And if somebody wants to use
> old packages, the onus is on them to make it happen.
>
> My qualms are with the KDE4 software itself.  I'm not saying it's bad.
> (In fact, I'll admit that I've barely even tried any of the new
> functionality.)  It's just that it's a very big a change to a lot of
> important desktop functionality that I rely on, and would be too
> disruptive for me to switch over right now.
>
> I probably could get used to it over time, though, which is why I'd like
> to be able to install KDE 3 and 4 simultaneously, and so be able to
> switch into KDE4 and kick the tires every now and then, without having
> to completely wipe KDE3 off my system.
>
> The state I'm in now (keeping KDE3 via a number of IgnorePkg directives
> in my pacman.conf) is not sustainable long-term, so I'm going to have to
> get a bit more proactive soon and come up with some solution.
>
> DR

I initiated this thread. I had been downloading Fedora 9 (6cd's on dialup) 
which has KDE4 as default), finished the downloads and burned the cd's, but 
chose to update other distros before installing Fedora 9. Bad move me thinks. 
Archlinux was going to upgrade to KDE4, and on asking a ? on the list there 
were mixed opinions. Anyway, I let the upgrade go ahead. Another bad move.

leaving aside Fedora, which more or less appears to be a test ground, where 
Redhat can get feedback, which will help in their next release of Redhat, I 
believe that it may have been better if Archlinux had gone the way of 
Kubuntu/Ubuntu's Hardy Heron 8.04 release. Here KDE 3.5.9 is the default, but 
with the option of using KDE4. I have Kubuntu 8.04 installed, and using the 
default KDE 3.5.9. I don't know how installing KDE4 as the option works, 
whether it runs side by side with KDE 3.5.9, or replaces KDE 3.5.9.

If Archlinux had made the KDE4 packages available as an option, I believe this 
may have been the best way to go. that way you could have installed another 
instance of Archlinux on some spare harddrive space, and tried out KDE4, 
without, as it has turned out for me, finding that you now have a KDE desktop 
that has gone back into the dark ages. I'm posting from Fedora Core 2, that 
is using KDE 3.2.2-14.FC2.legacy Red Hat. Apart from the odd Konqueror crash 
when accessing certain websites, there are no problems, and FC2 is ancient, 
and no longer supported.

At the moment I'm trying to find a way to revert to KDE 3.5.9, without 
re-installing Archlinux. I've installed Gnome, which goes against the grain, 
as I don't normally use it, but just want a desktop that I can use after 
removing all the KDE4 packages, and at the moment is better than KDE4.

Next step will be to find the packages to reinstall KDE 3.5.9, and attempt to 
reinstall them. Someone mentioned getting them from svn, and I have the 
install disk. Can I somehow get the KDE 3.5.9 packages off the install disk, 
and install them?

I'll start a new thread for this, unless anyone here has any suggestions.

This is a whole bundle of fun at the moment, and it's not like I use any of my 
distros for serious work. I can really understand someone needing to use 
their OS for their work, upgrading, and finding that the desktop has gone 
back to start ( "start" reference being to board games).

Again I would like to restate, that this is not a knock at Archlinux, but at 
KDE4, which personally I feel is not ready for release as a replacement for 
KDE 3.5.9.

Nigel, and expecting "Incoming"