Previous TDE review

To late to test for the offical R14.0.0 release, but better late than never (R14.0.1). Some Trinity (TDE 3.5.13.x) quirks noted in a January 2014 review by Dedoimedo: http://netrunner-mag.com/they-called-it-trinity/ * Difficulty installing from repositories. * The default icon theme felt outdated. * No network manager tool was available in the default desktop. * Embedded webcam did not work. * Zerconf did not work because avahi was not installed. His conclusion: "TDE must be a completely simple and smooth framework, otherwise it stands no chance against the competition. This is the prerequisite, even before you start thinking about discussing the pros and cons of its layout, use and whatnot. It must be as trivial as all others." My notes: He used a Live CD and thus, some of the quirks would be caused by the person making the iso rather than with upstream TDE. While I have been a long-time Slackware user, nowadays I use mostly Fedora and LMDE. I lack build experience on those systems, but when the wiki is updated with R14 installation links, I will test installing TDE on those two distros. Opinions about icons and themes are subjective, but even while CrystalSVG remains the default icon theme, little testing has been performed using non Trinity icon sets. TDE should support all icon theme, no debates. Today I ran a test with the gnome-icon-theme and had problems with icons not appearing correctly (resulting in the infamous Empty icon). I will file a bug report but I have not looked into possible causes. This should be an R14.0.1/R14.1.0 priority. In a quick test, tdenetworkmanager (and tdepowersave) appeared on a new fresh R14 desktop. The trick was simply installing the packages, which on my desktop is not the norm. My thinking is tdenetworkmanager and tdepowersave should be part of the default installation on laptops and live CDs, but should be optional on desktops/workstations. I don't know whether a distinction is possible during package installation, especially since TDE is not a default desktop and installed after a distro is installed. In that case, I lean toward including tdenetworkmanager and tdepowersave as part of the minimal TDE package set. I do not have a webcam, but as that is standard for many users nowadays, that should be tested as much as possible. For distros that support required depenencies (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.), avahi should be a required package. Avahi is pretty much standard on most distros anyway, but explicitly including that dependency avoids problems. I have read Dedoimedo's articles for many years. I am certain that if he reviews R14.x.x he will immediately focus on the faults he found in the January review. That is how he typically reviews software. Darrell