Amarok weathers its own storm of reactions

That's where KDE had the grief - the devs were screaming "4.0 is where the *interface* is stable - now you can port your apps without the next release breaking them all again".

The reason there weren't any user-level apps with 4.0 was because the *app* maintainers didn't appreciate chasing a moving target. They'd rather fix the code *they* broke, not fix code that *KDE* broke by moving the goalposts.

So a .zero release merely means "we've stopped messing about with the foundations, now you can build the superstructure without us breaking it". And users *shouldn't* expect that superstructure to magically appear in no time flat.

(The trouble, of course, is that distros need to support .zeros because many of their users may be those app developers, that need .zero in order to upgrade and test their apps.)

Cheers,
Wol