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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: 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.