Critical info (was Upgrading...)

[Jonathan Hutchins]

On Friday 05 January 2007 09:18, Brian Kelsay wrote:

> Hopefully this [inconsistent file locations] will all get straightened out
> as we move on to KDE 3.5.x ...

Running for several months now as an optional upgrade on Mandriva.  Current 
kubuntu is also 3.5.x...

I'm not comfortable with the way KDE is storing certain information, but I've 
discussed that with the appropriate people and I really don't have a concrete 
alternative.  

There is a collection of important, version- and even program- independent 
information that is an essential part of a user's identity: Their email 
store, their address book, and their log-in info for various services like 
mail accounts, IRC, and IM.  Too often, all that has to be re-entered by hand 
if the user does a new install, changes distros, moves to a different 
workstation, etc.

Packages are getting better at dealing with multiple possible versions of 
config files, but it's still common to have to remove all the old KDE 
configuration files (all of ~/.kde/) because something is conflicting or 
causing problems.  I'm sure this is true of Gnome as well.

I don't know what the answer is, but there oughta be a better way.