Dear Ilya and Timothy, 

I am using OpenSuse 11.4 with KDE:KDE3 and am VERY grateful 
for it!  Many thanks, Ilya!

At the same time, I'm also very interested in the Trinity Desktop.
Thanks, Timothy for all the great effort you are putting into it!

KDE:KDE3 and Trinity are brother projects.  The hostility 
between the two of you must stop.  Timothy, you have made a 
beginning on this.  Ilya, please accept Tim's effort toward 
reconciliation.  Both of you please think back to the time 
when you felt good toward each other, and restore that 
feeling now!  Forget the angry things that were said.  
Just begin anew emotionally!

This is needed for the benefit, and perhaps the survival, 
of the human race!

I say that because KDE4 has been crippled in various ways.  
Crippled KDE4 creates a crippled GNU/Linux!

But the people of the world greatly need fully functional 
Linux for worldwide communication and political and economic 
organization.  

At this unique moment in history, the world is at a crossroads.
The people of this planet have been dominated by wealthy and 
powerful psychopaths for thousands of years.  These monsters 
control most of our governments and news media.  But now with 
the Internet, people have been exchanging accurate information 
about how the world works, and what's really going on.  

Free open-source software runs the Internet, and it is also 
much more resistant than proprietary software to the increasing 
efforts by governments and corporations to censor the Net.  
The human race needs fully functional GNU/Linux with the power 
of KDE3, not crippled KDE4!

KDE4 has been crippled in many ways.  The desktop names 
in the KDE4 desktop pager are not readable, so any more than 
about 4 desktops are very hard to use.  I use 20 desktops.

KDE4 enforces the use of the phonon audio system, which won't 
work with the audio chip of my merely 4 year old Asus 
motherboard, and many others as well.  These two things alone 
are sufficient to persuade many Linux experts not to recommend 
Linux with KDE4 to people, at least not enthusiastically.  Linux 
must support the older machines found in less wealthy nations.

The bullshit KDE4 marketing ploy of renaming everything 
"plasma-this" and "plasma-that", as if they really invented 
something new, and the ridiculously complex and useless visual 
theming system for every tiny part of the GUI, and the stupid 
"cashews" and the poor UI for adjusting the panels, etc, etc, 
are also very offensive to rational, thinking people.  We don't 
like to be manipulated!

Without a good KDE -- which means KDE3, not KDE4 -- Linux 
will not be widely recommended by expert Linux users, and 
thus will not be widely adopted by new people.  The other 
desktop environments are becoming more oriented toward 
small-screen tablets and mobile phones, which are not 
suitable for getting real work done, and storing and 
organizing large amounts of data on multiple subjects, 
for thinking people with multiple interests (power users).

Without wide adoption of Linux and other free software, for 
communication and organization of the emerging World Community 
of people, humanity will suffer even more under the military 
and economic attacks by various corporate-controlled governments 
than it has already.  

KDE was always the DE of choice among Linux power users before 
KDE4.  The crippled KDE4 means crippled Linux for any distro 
that does not also offer easy selection of KDE3.  

The world is now at a major turning point in history that can 
lead either to total domination by the wealthy, and thus world 
fascism and war, or to a World Community where all people benefit 
from economic activity and work and share ideas together.

Excellent, functional Linux, which means fully functional KDE3, 
is vital to history turning in a good direction now, since it's 
essential for communication and organization among the people 
of the world.

It also serves as a model of how sharing instead of competing 
can work in areas other than software.  This is already happening
in the publication of scientific papers freely accessible on 
the Web.  

So, Ilya and Timothy, the results of your work go far beyond 
a set of software.  No one knows how close we are to total 
nuclear annihilation by the vicious wars of the governments 
controlled by the ultra-wealthy, or to an electronic and 
computer enforced worldwide fascist police state far worse 
than what the Nazis and Stalinists created.

The human race needs to pull out of this nose-dive into extinction,
and that means very good worldwide communication via the Net 
and personal computers, which means Linux and KDE3.

So please, Ilya, accept Tim's efforts of reconciliation.  Both 
of you please stop saying anything negative about the other 
person and project for a while.  If you need to criticize, please 
do it gently, kindly, and constructively.  The work you are doing 
is extremely important!  Both of you please re-think whether 
one or the other or both projects can be upstream (I don't 
really know what that means).  Just forget about previous 
negative feelings toward each other.  Lots of people are trying 
to save the human species from attacks by real monster psychopaths 
with weapons that can kill millions.  The two of you may not have 
realized it, but your efforts and successes with KDE3, and thus 
with the increased worldwide adoption of GNU/Linux can help 
humankind substantially!

  Sincerely,

  Mark S Bilk
  mark@...
  phone 650-968-1065 any time