On 19 December 2011 16:50, Darrell Anderson
<humanreadable@yahoo.com> wrote:
Over the past few months I have read several articles like this:
http://www.h-online.com/open/features/LXDE-and-Xfce-the-other-desktops-1392504.html
I'm not sure Xfce is a cholesterol free desktop or that LXDE is ready for prime time with non geek users. Yet I am sure that Trinity is receiving little comparative press coverage.
Time, time time. I have noticed a serious uptick of Trinity mentions in every reddit thread about KDE, GNOME3, or the whole current desktop environment disaster.
I'm not calling for a marketing campaign, but I would like to request all team members focus on making R14 the best release yet. To me that means three goals:
I think we need a slight marketing campaign and have a few people up my sleeve who are already helping develop ideas for a campaign of sorts.
* Eliminating many, many paper cut bugs.
* All packages build with minimal fuss.
* Provide an improved web site.
Yes +3
The paper cut project never got off the ground. Paper cut bugs discourage non geek users. They don't care or want to understand the nuances of programming or why something fails to function as intended. Paper cut bugs are a public relations nightmare. People vote with their feet. :(
KDE4.0 had this exact problem. Overall it worked well but there were many things users hit and missed, then never returned. The current stable branch is much more stable and performs without hesitation recently, but they are still paying the price in skeptical users.
Struggling to build packages is a good way to ensure little exposure because the desktop then is not available to users. A significant portion of the discussion in this list is build issues. Simple things like autotools looking for Qt4 rather than Qt3 are frustrating to non geeks. Remember that until Trinity is provided as a regular prebuilt package option in most distros, end-users are left to build the packages on their own. That means the wiki needs attention too and should be revised for non geeks.
Obviously there is the ongoing CMake effort. Though we should focus more attention on getting packages out the door, so that users won't have to build packages for widely used distrobutions.
We have been discussing web site changes and a possible RSS feed. Those plans likely will fall into place shortly. :)
Despite what reviewers declare, I don't see Trinity "competing" with KDE4 --- or GNOME. I see the "competition" as Xfce and LXDE. I use the word "competition" in a friendly, comparative way. Long-term we should be asking ourselves questions such as whether there is anything those desktops do better than Trinity? Is there anything those desktops do that Trinity does not? Trinity does not have to be at the top of all comparison lists, but should look favorable all around.
LXDE and XFCE fall miles behind in functionality and integration. I laugh at the fact they even call LXDE an environment. All components are so modularized (which isnt bad) that they are all independent. They don't even have their own window manager and use Open Box instead. Basically as I see it, the functionality provided by LXDE is that of me running Openbox, with a panel and desktop, using a File Manager of my choice.
XFCE is more of a competition, but we still beat them by miles with Konqueror and our other integration. That said, I love XFCE and it is my favorite GTK desktop.
There is one thing those two desktop environments do better than Trinity: start and exit faster. I don't know whether that observation merits an enhancement request. While I agree too much discussion is wasted on the topics, I'd like to think both can be improved in Trinity.
In the article I linked the writer mentions that "One developer in China has ported LXDE to a device with 128 RAM, 400 MHZ CPU." How does Trinity perform with such hardware? I have PI and PII machines sitting here with 256 MB of RAM. I have run 3.5.10 on those machines for several years and 3.5.10 is, well, sluggish. I suspect my problem is the video cards in my machines and I haven't fully tested yet. Yet I am guessing Trinity will fare only a tad better than 3.5.10.
What if we created some sort of "lo-fat" settings to help it run minimally and fast?
Opportunity is waiting. Let's strive to make R14 a desktop reviewers want to review and praise. :)
hear, hear!
Calvin Morrison