SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the just-thought...-you-were-a-guy. dept.
https://www.trinitydesktop.org/newsentry.php?entry=2014.12.16
The Trinity Desktop Environment (TDE) development team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of the new TDE R14.0.0 release. The Trinity Desktop Environment is a complete software desktop environment designed for Unix-like operating systems, intended for computer users preferring a traditional desktop model, and is free/libre software.
Unlike previous releases TDE R14.0.0 has been in development for over two years. This extended development period has allowed us to create a better, more stable and more feature-rich product than previous TDE releases. R14 is brimming with new features, such as a new hardware manager based on udev (HAL is no longer required), full network-manager 0.9 support, a brand new compositor (compton), built-in threading support, and much more!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 17 2014, @11:00AM
This is a fork of KDE 3.
(That was hinted at in the very next sentence of TFA and explained thoroughly farther down the page.)
If you have warm memories of KDE 3.x (and/or an aversion to some aspect of KDE 4.x), maybe Trinity will be just the ticket.
Its heft is attractive compared to some other DEs.
http://l3net.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/cmp-all4.png [wordpress.com]
(From Page 3 of 3.) [wordpress.com]
Nitpick to Trinity guys and others: Putting dots in numerical things like versions makes them difficult to Google when you don't know exactly what you're looking for.
-- gewg_
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Marand on Wednesday December 17 2014, @12:03PM
If you have warm memories of KDE 3.x (and/or an aversion to some aspect of KDE 4.x), maybe Trinity will be just the ticket.
As much as I liked KDE 3.5 -- it's the DE that finally pulled me away from Window Maker -- I can't see myself going back to it in any form. Maybe it's because I followed Debian's releases, which didn't switch to KDE4 until 4.2 or 4.3, so I missed the initial KDE4 pain that made people hate it, but I really like what they did with KDE4.
That's not just speculation, either. Some time after I'd switched to KDE4, I booted a laptop that still had 3.5 on it to do updates, and it just didn't seem right any more. It still had things that made me like KDE (like the KIOslaves), but it was missing just as much. It's easy to miss all the little things that got added or polished when you use it every day, but you notice them once they're gone.
I'm more likely to use Window Maker or notion (a static tiling WM I like that only uses ~5MB of RAM) in any situation where I don't want to use KDE4. If the system is so resource-constrained that I can't make KDE work on it, I'm going to want something smaller than Trinity.
I don't begrudge them working on it, though. KDE 3.5 was great for the time and there are definitely worse projects to want to keep alive. I'd definitely use it before GNOME 3 ;)
Its heft is attractive compared to some other DEs.
http://l3net.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/cmp-all4.png [wordpress.com]
(From Page 3 of 3.)
I don't normally like to complain about charts, but wow, that chart is incredibly misleading. Bad enough that I had to dig into the 3 pages of article just to put any useful meaning to the numbers because they aren't explained on the chart itself, but then it turns out it's comparing the memory use of DEs at full-fat, including any background apps they're set to run by default, to window managers that don't provide much (if anything) beyond window management. (Plus it's Ubuntu, so it's probably defaulting to extra stuff for newbie-convenience on the most common DEs.)
That's not even remotely a fair comparison, because if you decide you want any of those extra features when using one of the non-DEs , you're going to have to run a program to do the same job, just like you do with the DE, and the RAM use goes up. Wireless, bluetooth, clipboard manager, etc. apps are all going to use RAM if you decide you want them, just like the DE. Likewise, if you don't need a feature, you can usually disable it with a DE.
If the chart were clearly labeled and the coloured bars showing memory use were split into "window manager" and "other DE components" it would have been more useful because you could compare apples to apples while also seeing how much overhead a default DE adds.
(Score: 2) by efitton on Wednesday December 17 2014, @03:02PM
Kasbar alone is enough for me to consider it. The ability to change window decorations from the taskbar was frankly awesome and I miss it. The next DE/Window Manger which implements both a quick launch area and something like kasbar will be getting me as a user. Just put Cinnamon on a few days ago after years away from Linux (and everything about KDE 4 was painful for me) and it looks good so far. But still no Kasbar.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Thursday December 18 2014, @02:47AM
I never used kasbar, so I tried looking up screenshots and features. Looked like windowmaker and, except for quick window decoration swapping, most of the listed features seem to be available elsewhere in some form. You can probably brew up something that covers that with a little scripting, some launcher shortcuts, and a window manager that can be controlled in some way from the command line. Might be worth looking into, since most DEs don't require you to use their window manager.
That actually goes back to what I was saying about random things that would make it hard to go back to KDE3 for me. I don't see much of my window decorations any more, because one of kwin's decorations, oxygen, can completely disable the titlebar. kwin's decorations at this point are a few pixels of border on all four sides. Thanks to another feature -- binding modifier key + mouse clicks to window control actions -- I don't have much use for the titlebar, since I can resize, move, etc. with things like meta+left click and meta+right click.
The other thing I really like is plasma's super flexible panels. I've got different panels on different displays, and none of them are using the default taskbar because it's just another configurable component and I preferred the alternatives. I also embed folder views into the panels and use them as group launchers, by pointing the folder view to a folder filled with shortcuts to frequent apps.
Kwin's also one of the best compositing WMs right now. I find the magnifier, window grid, and present windows plugins really useful, and when I want to turn it off (for a game or something) there's a otkey to disable/enable compositing on the fly, or I can set it to happen automatically when certain programs run. I also use the window rules to work around deficiencies in brain-dead programs that don't like to start up on the correct display or start at weird sizes, too. I used to need to use compiz for this stuff in KDE3, but kwin generally works better for the non-flashy stuff so I don't need to any more.
I get that a lot of this won't be applicable to others, so they won't get the appeal, but I figured since it was on-topic I'd elaborate on what I meant about KDE4 having a bunch of little things I'd miss.
(Score: 2) by efitton on Thursday December 18 2014, @04:23PM
The nice part about using the taskbar to manage window decorations was the ability to turn them back on again easily. It is nice you can turn off decorations from the title bar, but if it's the title bar I'm temporarily hiding for that window it can really complicated, frustrating, etc. to bring it back. And maybe things are better now with KDE but for years I struggled with KDE 4. It feels like getting food poisoning 4 times at a restaurant and then having the head chef mad at you for not giving it another chance.
My ability to whip up scripts to deal with the window decorations is just not feasible. I am a math teacher who hasn't coded in a decade. I have a two year old and another child due on the 30th. And while KDE doesn't owe me anything, at this point I don't feel like I owe them anything either. Maybe I'll give it another look as it has been 3 or 4 years since I've tried it but it left just an awful taste in my mouth.
(Score: 2) by efitton on Saturday December 20 2014, @04:22PM
Being able to pin across workspaces and flag a window "keep on top" from the taskbar was also helpful. Especially when you hid the title bar.
(Score: 2) by bart9h on Wednesday December 17 2014, @01:19PM
If you have warm memories of KDE 3.x (and/or an aversion to some aspect of KDE 4.x), maybe Trinity will be just the ticket.
And if you have warm memories of GNOME 2, (and/or an aversion to some aspect of GNOME 3), maybe MATE [mate-desktop.org] will be just the ticket.
(Score: 3, Funny) by rts008 on Wednesday December 17 2014, @02:31PM
Gahhh! Begone, blasphemer!
I have no warm memories of any version of GNOME!
You can MATE your GNOME all you want, but please, no pic's!
*Disclaimer: This comment is not meant to be taken seriously. (except the part about not liking the GNOME DE)
(Score: 1) by rockdoctor on Wednesday December 17 2014, @03:15PM
For some reason, I could never feel comfortable with KDE. On the other hand, I do like Mate. Choice is good!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by rts008 on Wednesday December 17 2014, @03:54PM
Yes, choice is good.
I like the fact that there are many options for Linux.
Hundreds, if not thousands of distro's, then many different DE's to pick from for each of those, and many thousands of software packages to download from the repository.
Life is good. :-) [limited to the context of this discussion]
I got hooked on KDE during my time with Mandrake 5 thru 8(bailed when it became Mandriva), and have stayed with it. When the KDE 4.0 fiasco happened, I just stuck with 3.5, then warily tried 4.2...all good since.
I think what spooked me away from GNOME was a 'first impression' experience with Ubuntu 5.04. I also missed the cofigurability of KDE, so with 5.10, I went with Kubuntu.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Marand on Thursday December 18 2014, @03:43AM
Yes, choice is good.
I like the fact that there are many options for Linux.
That's what people don't understand when they complain about "fragmentation" and "too many alternatives". It's a good thing to have options, because not everybody wants the same thing. If everybody liked KDE or GNOME there'd be no reason to even have separate projects, but that's not the case. Different DEs and WMs have different goals and appeal to different people.
Even in environments like Windows, people end up hacking in options like shell replacements and window theming. The difference is with the X11 GUIs it's explicitly supported so you can do a lot more and have it work better.
I got hooked on KDE during my time with Mandrake 5 thru 8(bailed when it became Mandriva), and have stayed with it. When the KDE 4.0 fiasco happened, I just stuck with 3.5, then warily tried 4.2...all good since.
I think what spooked me away from GNOME was a 'first impression' experience with Ubuntu 5.04. I also missed the cofigurability of KDE, so with 5.10, I went with Kubuntu.
I tried GNOME 1 (or maybe it wasn't even at 1.x yet) and liked it, but it was too resource heavy for the AMD K5 I had, so I ended up using AfterStep instead. Switched from AS to WindowMaker at some point and used it for a very long time.
Then one day I decided to check GNOME out again and absolutely hated GNOME 2. They'd already begun their crusade of removing customisation and hiding anything resembling flexibility inside registry crap even back then, and it was a massive shock coming from window managers with more freedom.
As for KDE, I tried KDE 1, didn't like it. Tried KDE 2, didn't like it. Then sometime around early KDE 3.5 I tried that and was happy. The flexibility was just what I wanted, and it felt like there was finally a worthwhile upgrade from WindowMaker. I didn't get KDE4 until 4.2 or 4.3 because of Debian, so I missed the pain and ended up liking it because it's even more flexible than KDE 3 was.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Magic Oddball on Wednesday December 17 2014, @03:22PM
Trinity 3.5.13 was a fork or continuation of KDE's 3.5 -- it took the KDE 3 code and expanded on it. According to the discussions, the reason that this release is "F14.0.0" rather than "3.5.14" is because it no longer uses KDE code, altered or otherwise. The dev(s) worked hard to recode everything from the ground up and design it so it would look/function mostly like KDE did, but were pretty careful to make it clear that it is a totally distinct project at this point.
That explains the change from using HAL over to using udev, which is now just a subcomponent of systemd, unless the TDE team is using an older/different version of udev that doesn't require it.
(Score: 2) by fnj on Wednesday December 17 2014, @11:25PM
Bye bye Trinity, just another abortion.