It seems many people think we are wasting our time here: http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?74347-Trinity-KDE-3-5-Desktop-Fork...
Rebuttals are welcome. ;-)
Tim
On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 7:30 PM, Timothy Pearson kb9vqf@pearsoncomputing.net wrote:
It seems many people think we are wasting our time here: http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?74347-Trinity-KDE-3-5-Desktop-Fork...
Rebuttals are welcome. ;-)
Tim
Honestly, people are free to rage, rebut, and make the effort seem like trash on whatever medium they choose to do so on.
But it's worth it our eyes and our users, which will always make the effort worth it.
On Friday 12 of October 2012 01:33:00 Robert Xu wrote:
On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 7:30 PM, Timothy Pearson
kb9vqf@pearsoncomputing.net wrote:
It seems many people think we are wasting our time here: http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?74347-Trinity-KDE-3-5-Desktop-F ork-Sees-New-Release#post290457
Rebuttals are welcome. ;-)
Tim
Honestly, people are free to rage, rebut, and make the effort seem like trash on whatever medium they choose to do so on.
But it's worth it our eyes and our users, which will always make the effort worth it.
It looks very funny: "and there's this tqt thing that is really REALLY really slow." ... when everywhere I tried it, is Trinity significantly faster than KDE4 :)
(Newer than KDE 4.6 I have not tried, I did not find any interesting reason why to try it ... among other, I do not know about newer packages for Squeeze.)
Slavek --
On Friday 12 of October 2012 01:33:00 Robert Xu wrote:
On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 7:30 PM, Timothy Pearson
kb9vqf@pearsoncomputing.net wrote:
It seems many people think we are wasting our time here: http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?74347-Trinity-KDE-3-5-Desktop-F ork-Sees-New-Release#post290457
Rebuttals are welcome. ;-)
Tim
Honestly, people are free to rage, rebut, and make the effort seem like trash on whatever medium they choose to do so on.
But it's worth it our eyes and our users, which will always make the effort worth it.
It looks very funny: "and there's this tqt thing that is really REALLY really slow." ... when everywhere I tried it, is Trinity significantly faster than KDE4 :)
(Newer than KDE 4.6 I have not tried, I did not find any interesting reason why to try it ... among other, I do not know about newer packages for Squeeze.)
Slavek
This brings up an interesting point: who here has tried the latest KDE4 version (v4.9 IIRC) on a LiveCD or similar?
Tim
It seems many people think we are wasting our time here:
http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?74347-Trinity-KDE-3-5-Desktop-Fork...
Rebuttals are welcome. ;-)
Rebut what? If something is true then if possible we fix the problem. If false then that is water on a duck's back.
With that said, there is value with reading what others say.
1. When asked or challenged, we should admit we went through a rough time with the tqt transition. That did not go well. Things broke. Occasionally we still find problems associated with that transition. Such is life with software. Anybody who tried Trinity during that transition unlikely will be convinced the software is now stable and responsive. We live with that.
2. Regarding the statement about "international team of developers." Do we claim that anywhere in the software? What about the web site or wiki? Although the claim is true, such statements portray a large number of people and we should not convey such claims. We barely survive with the few people we have.
3. How many people use Trinity? I haven't a clue and I doubt anybody does. Is the user base tens of thousands of users? Thousands? Hundreds? Dozens? One dozen? My point is we are a small project. We should not get involved in the whirlwinds of debate. Just quietly mind our own business. People will always think what they want. The only way people will pay attention to us in a positive light is to release quality products. To that end we focus. 3.5.13.1 is out. Onward with R14. :)
Darrell
On 11 October 2012 21:02, Darrell Anderson humanreadable@yahoo.com wrote:
It seems many people think we are wasting our time here:
http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?74347-Trinity-KDE-3-5-Desktop-Fork...
Rebuttals are welcome. ;-)
Rebut what? If something is true then if possible we fix the problem. If false then that is water on a duck's back.
With that said, there is value with reading what others say.
When asked or challenged, we should admit we went through a rough time with the tqt transition. That did not go well. Things broke. Occasionally we still find problems associated with that transition. Such is life with software. Anybody who tried Trinity during that transition unlikely will be convinced the software is now stable and responsive. We live with that.
Regarding the statement about "international team of developers." Do we claim that anywhere in the software? What about the web site or wiki? Although the claim is true, such statements portray a large number of people and we should not convey such claims. We barely survive with the few people we have.
Well our developer base is international ;)
- How many people use Trinity? I haven't a clue and I doubt anybody does. Is the user base tens of thousands of users? Thousands? Hundreds? Dozens? One dozen? My point is we are a small project. We should not get involved in the whirlwinds of debate. Just quietly mind our own business. People will always think what they want. The only way people will pay attention to us in a positive light is to release quality products. To that end we focus. 3.5.13.1 is out. Onward with R14. :)
Though I would like to know this... how many users do we see pulling from our repositories?
Calvin
- Regarding the statement about "international team of
developers." Do we claim that anywhere in the software? What about the web site or wiki? Although the claim is true, such statements portray a large number of people and we should not convey such claims. We barely survive with the few people we have.
Well our developer base is international ;)
I wrote, "Although the claim is true..."
- How many people use Trinity? I haven't a clue and I
doubt anybody does. Is the user base tens of thousands of users? Thousands? Hundreds? Dozens? One dozen? My point is we are a small project. We should not get involved in the whirlwinds of debate. Just quietly mind our own business. People will always think what they want. The only way people will pay attention to us in a positive light is to release quality products. To that end we focus. 3.5.13.1 is out. Onward with R14. :)
Though I would like to know this... how many users do we see pulling from our repositories?
I suspect download data is a poor reflection of the acutal user base.
Darrell
On 11 October 2012 21:39, Darrell Anderson humanreadable@yahoo.com wrote:
- Regarding the statement about "international team of
developers." Do we claim that anywhere in the software? What about the web site or wiki? Although the claim is true, such statements portray a large number of people and we should not convey such claims. We barely survive with the few people we have.
Well our developer base is international ;)
I wrote, "Although the claim is true..."
- How many people use Trinity? I haven't a clue and I
doubt anybody does. Is the user base tens of thousands of users? Thousands? Hundreds? Dozens? One dozen? My point is we are a small project. We should not get involved in the whirlwinds of debate. Just quietly mind our own business. People will always think what they want. The only way people will pay attention to us in a positive light is to release quality products. To that end we focus. 3.5.13.1 is out. Onward with R14. :)
Though I would like to know this... how many users do we see pulling from our repositories?
I suspect download data is a poor reflection of the acutal user base.
Darrell
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Yet it is our only gauge
On 11 October 2012 21:39, Darrell Anderson humanreadable@yahoo.com wrote:
- Regarding the statement about "international team of
developers." Do we claim that anywhere in the software? What about the web site or wiki? Although the claim is true, such statements portray a large number of people and we should not convey such claims. We barely survive with the few people we have.
Well our developer base is international ;)
I wrote, "Although the claim is true..."
- How many people use Trinity? I haven't a clue and I
doubt anybody does. Is the user base tens of thousands of users? Thousands? Hundreds? Dozens? One dozen? My point is we are a small project. We should not get involved in the whirlwinds of debate. Just quietly mind our own business. People will always think what they want. The only way people will pay attention to us in a positive light is to release quality products. To that end we focus. 3.5.13.1 is out. Onward with R14. :)
Though I would like to know this... how many users do we see pulling from our repositories?
I suspect download data is a poor reflection of the acutal user base.
Darrell
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Yet it is our only gauge
In that spirit, here are some raw numbers from the package archives alone: Month Unique visitors Number of visits Pages Hits Jul 2012 7203 30044 2148392 2171289 Aug 2012 7512 33376 3775045 3796052 Sep 2012 7689 38260 2296008 2312371
Regarding my earlier comments on whether anyone has tried KDE4 recemtly, I downloaded a KDE 4.9 testing LiveCD with OpenSUSE 12.1. While the boot sequence was slow and the default graphics are as bad as I remembered, the killer was that the entire virtual machine locked up as soon as I clicked the Kicker menu icon. I think I'll wait until OpenSUSE officially releases a LiveCD with KDE 4.9 before trying again. :-)
Tim
Regarding my earlier comments on whether anyone has tried KDE4 recemtly, I downloaded a KDE 4.9 testing LiveCD with OpenSUSE 12.1. While the boot sequence was slow and the default graphics are as bad as I remembered, the killer was that the entire virtual machine locked up as soon as I clicked the Kicker menu icon. I think I'll wait until OpenSUSE officially releases a LiveCD with KDE 4.9 before trying again. :-)
I find testing Live CDs in a virtual machine to be problematic at times. Something about the way Live CDs are made or function goes awry in a virtual machine. Mostly I tend to avoid that kind of testing because unless the Live CD is built with virtual machine video drivers, the maximum resolution is 800x600.
I don't know whether 4.9 continues the practice, but the default in KDE4 was compositing being enabled. That will cause older versions of VirtualBox to fail.
Testing KDE 4.9 from a Live CD in a virtual machine likely is not conclusive in any way. :)
I have access to 4.8.5 but have not explored.
Darrell
<snip>
Regarding my earlier comments on whether anyone has tried KDE4 recemtly, I downloaded a KDE 4.9 testing LiveCD with OpenSUSE 12.1. While the boot sequence was slow and the default graphics are as bad as I remembered, the killer was that the entire virtual machine locked up as soon as I clicked the Kicker menu icon. I think I'll wait until OpenSUSE officially releases a LiveCD with KDE 4.9 before trying again. :-)
Tim
Quick update. I burned the image to a CD, which resolved the crashing issue. While I note that KDE4 has drastically improved since the early days, it still is not something that I would choose to use over TDE/XFCE. Even after "reverting" to folder view and other KDE3-esque settings, I found myself not only using many more mouse clicks than under TDE but also it seemed like I did not have full control of the environment. Setting a screen saver? Not intuitive (actually I was not able to find the control at all within a reasonable time). Opening a terminal? All the lines were cut in half. Run a custom command? Could not find a way to launch the minicli from a menu. Press the power button (e.g. to power off)? The screen corrupts itself.
In short, I think KDE4 needs a lot more work to be useful for people like me who want to hybrid an old-school terminal and modern GUI experience.
Tim
Quick update. I burned the image to a CD, which resolved the crashing issue. While I note that KDE4 has drastically improved since the early days, it still is not something that I would choose to use over TDE/XFCE. Even after "reverting" to folder view and other KDE3-esque settings, I found myself not only using many more mouse clicks than under TDE but also it seemed like I did not have full control of the environment. Setting a screen saver? Not intuitive (actually I was not able to find the control at all within a reasonable time). Opening a terminal? All the lines were cut in half. Run a custom command? Could not find a way to launch the minicli from a menu. Press the power button (e.g. to power off)? The screen corrupts itself.
In short, I think KDE4 needs a lot more work to be useful for people like me who want to hybrid an old-school terminal and modern GUI experience.
I have not yet tinkered in a serious manner with KDE 4.8.5, which is part of the stock Slackware 14. When I last tinkered I used version 4.5.5. At that time I experienced sufficient frustration.
I imagine that folks who have been with KDE4 since the first release have grown accustomed to the different ways of doing things. I accept that anybody moving from KDE3/Trinity must remain open to doing things differently. The point that can be resolved only by each user is whether the different way is more productive or more efficient. Each to their own is the best answer about that.
Discouraging to me is akondai, nepomuk, and strigi continue to grow deeper roots into the entire KDE4 desktop. Reminds me much of how Internet Explorer grew to a point of not being able to be removed from Windows. There does not seem to be any option to build KDE4 without those three layers. Perhaps that is possible, I don't know, but I haven't found any tutorials about the topic.
For myself, I want a cohesive desktop environment. I don't like mixing and matching apps using different widget tools. That is a personal fetish. Many people don't care about mixing apps. For me to use KDE4 means I want to use the kdepim suite. For the life of me I still don't comprehend why I need to run a backend database cache for the handful of emails I receive during the day. Or why I need to run that database cache for the few akregator feeds I receive or the dozen and half tasks I maintain in kalarm.
I don't know why features like strigi indexing, nepomuk, and compositing are enabled as the defaults. Many of the complaints I read are about that overhead. The last I read, kdepim apps remain buggy.
I remain open to new technologies but there has to be real choice. The choice of using or not using KDE4 is simple enough, but true choice allows compiling KDE4 without the evil three and still have a fully functional desktop environment.
I still don't like the way KDE4 looks. The wide sidebars in apps, the flat look, the big buffoon mouse pointers all are not appealing to me. Seems no matter how I tinker with themes, styles, widget looks, etc. I can't find a look-and-feel I like. If my desktop is not relaxing to me then I'm only increasing my frustrations.
I don't care that other people call KDE3/Trinity old. I don't care that certain people think that some of the patches we push are trivial. I find Trinity useful and visually pleasant.
I don't care that other people want to be excited about the software they use. I only ask they allow others the same liberty.
We don't bother anybody. We advertise with a news release to invite others to use Trinity, but we don't pimp our efforts. That really is the whole debate in a nutshell. We don't bother anybody. So why can't other people do likewise?
Darrell
Am Montag, den 15.10.2012, 14:29 +0200 schrieb Darrell Anderson humanreadable@yahoo.com:
Discouraging to me is akondai, nepomuk, and strigi continue to grow deeper roots into the entire KDE4 desktop. Reminds me much of how Internet Explorer grew to a point of not being able to be removed from Windows. There does not seem to be any option to build KDE4 without those three layers. Perhaps that is possible, I don't know, but I haven't found any tutorials about the topic.
I think it is still possible to build kde4 without akonadi/nepomuk/strigi. the result, however, would be quite useless: no kdepim (which relies entirely on akonadi now), missing basic functionality all over the place elsewhere. so, not a viable option. looking at kde forums/lists gives the impression, that akonadi/nepomuk and kdepim have reached a usable state now (from 4.9.x), with nearly all features that were present in 3.5.10. even address completion in email composer has been reported to work now, provided nepomuk running correctly and already having indexed everything :) I plan to give it a go during the next weeks and write a short conclusion.
Werner
I think it is still possible to build kde4 without akonadi/nepomuk/strigi. the result, however, would be quite useless: no kdepim (which relies entirely on akonadi now), missing basic functionality all over the place elsewhere. so, not a viable option.
Yes, that was my point. :) Possibly doable, but impractical.
looking at kde forums/lists gives the impression, that akonadi/nepomuk and kdepim have reached a usable state now (from 4.9.x), with nearly all features that were present in 3.5.10. even address completion in email composer has been reported to work now, provided nepomuk running correctly and already having indexed everything :) I plan to give it a go during the next weeks and write a short conclusion.
The ongoing problems with kmail was one reason I never considered moving to KDE4. If those problems are (finally) resolved that does not mean I'll migrate. Only that there is one less obstacle. :)
Yes, I receive the impression that the stability issues of the evil three are more or less resolved, but that does not remove their existence. I admit I'm in the minority of people who organizes files in a consistent manner. I always find files quickly, usually in only a few seconds. I don't need this indexing and caching overhead. Yes, those options can be disabled, but for me using KDE4 would remain be a long road for many of the reasons I have shared previously. Not impossible, just a long road. Perhaps I'm just getting old and cranky. My existing system works the way I want. I remain content with how Trinity fits my way of using a desktop computer.
I notice the razor-qt desktop has been updated to version 0.5. Certainly an alternative against KDE4, but there are no PIM apps. If somebody ripped the akonadi crap from kdepim and renamed to razor-qt-pim, then I suspect that would create a buzz. I suppose there would be the option of using razor-qt and then building tdelibs/tdepim....
Please do share your conclusions after testing.
Darrell
On 16 October 2012 16:11, Darrell Anderson humanreadable@yahoo.com wrote:
I think it is still possible to build kde4 without akonadi/nepomuk/strigi. the result, however, would be quite useless: no kdepim (which relies entirely on akonadi now), missing basic functionality all over the place elsewhere. so, not a viable option.
Yes, that was my point. :) Possibly doable, but impractical.
looking at kde forums/lists gives the impression, that akonadi/nepomuk and kdepim have reached a usable state now (from 4.9.x), with nearly all features that were present in 3.5.10. even address completion in email composer has been reported to work now, provided nepomuk running correctly and already having indexed everything :) I plan to give it a go during the next weeks and write a short conclusion.
The ongoing problems with kmail was one reason I never considered moving to KDE4. If those problems are (finally) resolved that does not mean I'll migrate. Only that there is one less obstacle. :)
Yes, I receive the impression that the stability issues of the evil three are more or less resolved, but that does not remove their existence. I admit I'm in the minority of people who organizes files in a consistent manner. I always find files quickly, usually in only a few seconds. I don't need this indexing and caching overhead. Yes, those options can be disabled, but for me using KDE4 would remain be a long road for many of the reasons I have shared previously. Not impossible, just a long road. Perhaps I'm just getting old and cranky. My existing system works the way I want. I remain content with how Trinity fits my way of using a desktop computer.
I notice the razor-qt desktop has been updated to version 0.5. Certainly an alternative against KDE4, but there are no PIM apps. If somebody ripped the akonadi crap from kdepim and renamed to razor-qt-pim, then I suspect that would create a buzz. I suppose there would be the option of using razor-qt and then building tdelibs/tdepim....
Please do share your conclusions after testing.
Darrell
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Razor Qt is this: Panel Desktop Application launcher Settings center Sessions
A very, very, very basic desktop. I wouldn't really consider it an environment. I achieve the same thing available here with Openbox and a few other programs.
Am Dienstag, 16. Oktober 2012, 13:11:07 schrieb Darrell Anderson:
I think it is still possible to build kde4 without akonadi/nepomuk/strigi. the result, however, would be quite useless: no kdepim (which relies entirely on akonadi now), missing basic functionality all over the place elsewhere. so, not a viable option.
Yes, that was my point. :) Possibly doable, but impractical.
looking at kde forums/lists gives the impression, that akonadi/nepomuk and kdepim have reached a usable state now (from 4.9.x), with nearly all features that were present in 3.5.10. even address completion in email composer has been reported to work now, provided nepomuk running correctly and already having indexed everything :) I plan to give it a go during the next weeks and write a short conclusion.
The ongoing problems with kmail was one reason I never considered moving to KDE4. If those problems are (finally) resolved that does not mean I'll .... Please do share your conclusions after testing.
so, here is a first short writeup: http://www.hoernerfranzracing.de/php/wordpress/?p=397
Werner
so, here is a first short writeup: http://www.hoernerfranzracing.de/php/wordpress/?p=397
Thanks. Will be interesting to read subsequent reports.
Darrell
so, here is a first short writeup: http://www.hoernerfranzracing.de/php/wordpress/?p=397
Thanks. Will be interesting to read subsequent reports.
Darrell
If KDE has finally gotten their act together for even part of they desktop, we should look at deprecating parts of TDE which duplicate functionality.
KOffice immediately springs to mind, but we would need some consensus from users that the KDE4 application is a true replacement for the old TDE application before proceeding.
One area where I want to see greater cooperation between TDE/XFCE/KDE/Gnome is in kioslaves and file handling dialogs. As far as I am concerned this is the last great barrier between mixing/matching toolkits in a single session. IMHO there is no reason why we shouldn't be able to hammer out some kind of extensible common API to handle these tasks; computers have been dealing with file selection and management for decades; the fact that all the major toolkits have reinvented the wheel in incompatible/nonextensible ways is absurd.
The only other thing that still concerns me is the continual breakage from the upstream Qt project; Qt 4.8 for example contains a number of drawing bugs that make non-pixmap based styling very difficult. Anyone who has tried the TDE/Qt4 theme engine on Qt >= 4.8 will know exactly what I am referring to. ;-)
As the KDE4 "desktop" itself does things very differently than TDE there is very little chance that the TDE desktop will ever be able to be replaced, but this cannot be said about the application ecosystem itself. If a better, feature-full KDE4 application exists we should seriously consider deprecating the TDE equivalent to reduce our maintenance load. When I say feature-full I mean that the new application can do everything the TDE equivalent could, including supporting the original TDE workflow.
Thoughts are of course welcome!
Tim
If KDE has finally gotten their act together for even part of they desktop, we should look at deprecating parts of TDE which duplicate functionality.
KOffice immediately springs to mind, but we would need some consensus from users that the KDE4 application is a true replacement for the old TDE application before proceeding.
One area where I want to see greater cooperation between TDE/XFCE/KDE/Gnome is in kioslaves and file handling dialogs. As far as I am concerned this is the last great barrier between mixing/matching toolkits in a single session. IMHO there is no reason why we shouldn't be able to hammer out some kind of extensible common API to handle these tasks; computers have been dealing with file selection and management for decades; the fact that all the major toolkits have reinvented the wheel in incompatible/nonextensible ways is absurd.
The only other thing that still concerns me is the continual breakage from the upstream Qt project; Qt 4.8 for example contains a number of drawing bugs that make non-pixmap based styling very difficult. Anyone who has tried the TDE/Qt4 theme engine on Qt >= 4.8 will know exactly what I am referring to. ;-)
As the KDE4 "desktop" itself does things very differently than TDE there is very little chance that the TDE desktop will ever be able to be replaced, but this cannot be said about the application ecosystem itself. If a better, feature-full KDE4 application exists we should seriously consider deprecating the TDE equivalent to reduce our maintenance load. When I say feature-full I mean that the new application can do everything the TDE equivalent could, including supporting the original TDE workflow.
Thoughts are of course welcome!
I believe the answer to your question depends upon perspective. As a developer I would want to reduce duplicity and overhead --- when palatable. As a user I want consistency in my environment.
I understand that the Trinity version of KOffice is getting a little long in the tooth. I also agree that OpenOffice/LibreOffice probably is a better replacement for many users. Yet as we have discussed in the past, the Trinity version remains useful --- but must be advertised appropriately. We should not mislead users by claiming that Trinity KOffice is a powerful or market-competitive office suite of apps. We advertise KOffice as a lightweight office suite that is suitable for home and small business users with modest needs. With that focus we reduce maintenance on the package to bug fixes. Don't build expectations and there won't be any. :)
If KOffice were to be abandoned, there are a handful of apps in the collection that could be saved. Or, as requested in enhancement request 464, we split KOffice into individual packages. That move reduces maintenance and retains the smaller apps. We do need to address a few issues such updating ODT support and possibly abandoning ruby support.
Unless or until we form a serious collective effort to improve Trinity for the enterprise, we should be realistic that most Trinity users are and will be home users and small business users. From that perspective retaining KOffice seems palatable to me. Large-scale enterprise administrators will opt for an enterprise office suite such as OpenOffice or LibreOffice. We need not delude ourselves. Likewise for other apps too even if they like Trinity as the basic desktop. Yet from the focus of home and small business users, I see no reason that Trinity KOffice need be abandoned.
I can't discuss kio slaves because that is over my head. :) I agree with the sentiment, but people well versed in coding kio slaves need to step forward and promote those discussions among the developers of the leading desktops.
Regarding other aspects about KDE4, we don't need to rehash those arguments. Yes, finally KDE4 is looking like the desktop environment promised and envisioned years before the developers abandoned KDE3. I'd like to see some limited integration, such as webkit for Konqueror, but otherwise I myself am not interested in anything further. Other than such limited integration, I much rather want to see the bug tracker attacked in a serious way to render Trinity the best damn small desktop environment of all.
I agree we should shed some weight by evaluating the source tree. That is a goal listed in the R14 road map. We should not panic or go hog wild. As Trinity and KDE4 can be installed concurrently without conflict, I see no reason to rush into decisions. That is, users who need or want apps from Qt4/KDE4 need only install and off they go. I also believe that any serious pruning decisions should be post R14. We have an etherpad for collecting post R14 ideas.
Unless a slew of skilled people join the development team, we cannot keep pace with innovations in KDE4, and I have no illusions of us backporting major segments of code for apps such as krita, kdenlive, okular, etc. People who need or want those apps will have to use them from KDE4 because Trinity does not offer anything like that. Conversely, I don't believe the Trinity user is focused on those types of apps or wants significant changes in how they use desktop software. We stay focused on those users, regardless of how small the community. The Xfce folks are doing just fine for those GTK fans who dislike the changes in GNOME, yet I'd be much surprised if the Xfce user base is anything close to the size of the GNOME or KDE4 user base.
Despite the improvements, and after more than four years of active development, I remain amazed that many people using KDE4 still long for the KDE3 desktop. This not nostalgia, these people miss the way certain things are done. Thus there is a niche to fill and serve. I believe then that our post R14 evaluations are two fold: 1) how to retain a desktop environment built upon the KDE3 style and 2) which apps to retain and which to abandon.
As a post R14 topic, I believe we address both questions nicely if we move toward splitting all modules to individual component apps. For the most part this is a packaging issue but we would need guidance for all packagers in order that all packagers provide the same package set. From that point we more easily decide which components to abandon, which to retain in maintenance mode only, and which to continually improve.
If app usage will drive Trinity's future, then split apps into individual packages. This provides end-users significant flexibility when they want to mix and match apps from different desktops. We still need to provide a fundamental desktop, one that is robust, stable, and highly functional. In that light I don't see much change with tdelibs or the other core modules, but I envision even tdebase being split.
Trinity fills a nice segment of the free/libre desktop collection. Many of the KDE4 developers recognize that and have no issue with people using or maintaining Trinity. They are content to leave us alone to scratch our own itch. As long as we don't mislead users and we remain active with maintenance, I believe that segment will be well served for a long time.
In short we keep tending our garden and we find peace in that. :)
Darrell
On Wednesday 31 October 2012 18:20:52 Darrell Anderson wrote:
so, here is a first short writeup: http://www.hoernerfranzracing.de/php/wordpress/?p=397
Thanks. Will be interesting to read subsequent reports.
well, here are some more impressions:
- kdepim is still not fully mature: distribution lists do not work (groups can be created nicely, but impossible to send mail to a group, deleting emails from my standard email account triggers arcane error messages from gmail ...) - searching in emails is nice, works 'as you type' due to nepomuk
as for Tim's thoughts about abandoning tde applications in favour of KDE4 apps, I think, this is not really an option ATM, as this would immediately pull in nearly the whole KDE4 stack just for calligra, e.g.. maybe this will become feasible with qt5/kde5, which will allow for much more selective dependencies than currently. so, my vote is clearly for keeping existing (fully functional, maybe feature-less) kde 3.5 applications alive and just abandon buggy cruft like kpilot. that will keep trinity as what it is today: the only lightweight, complete and consistent desktop, which runs flawless also on outdated hardware. (other WMs like razor-qt, E17.. are no real alternative, as they all lack a set of native applications)
Werner
On 11/10/12 23:30, Timothy Pearson wrote:
It seems many people think we are wasting our time here: http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?74347-Trinity-KDE-3-5-Desktop-Fork...
Rebuttals are welcome. ;-)
Tim
All three of them?
On 11/10/12 23:30, Timothy Pearson wrote:
It seems many people think we are wasting our time here: http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?74347-Trinity-KDE-3-5-Desktop-Fork...
Rebuttals are welcome. ;-)
Tim
All three of them?
Most disconcerting to me was the absolute lack of any positive commentary whatsoever. Is this really what FOSS has turned into?
I hope not. :-)
Tim
Most disconcerting to me was the absolute lack of any positive commentary whatsoever. Is this really what FOSS has turned into?
I hope not. :-)
Considering the nature of the Phoronix web site, I imagine readers and forum participants are bleeding edge types. Anything determined to be "old" by such people means obsolete and a waste of time. "Old" things are not "shiny." Doesn't matter to such people that old things remain functional. Shiny is all that counts to them. :)
All people do things that to others are deemed a waste of time. The old adage prevails that one person's junk is another person's treasures. We live in a big world but many people won't accept that.
Here is another 3.5.13.1 news announcement:
http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Update-to-Trinity-KDE-3-5-fork-brings...
Despite us not saying a thing about KDE4 in the press release, both writers raised the topic. Reviewers seem unable to let that dog sleep. All we can do is keep avoiding the topic and remain focused on our reasons for using Trinity.
Darrell
On 12 Oct 2012, Darrell Anderson stated:
Most disconcerting to me was the absolute lack of any positive commentary whatsoever. Is this really what FOSS has turned into?
I hope not. :-)
Considering the nature of the Phoronix web site, I imagine readers and forum participants are bleeding edge types. Anything determined to be "old" by such people means obsolete and a waste of time. "Old" things are not "shiny."
Phoronix also specializes in (usually really, really bad) benchmarks. "Old" also means "slow" to these people -- even though new software is almost always slower than old software, they imagine that a constant process of fierce optimization has actually sped it up, and the power of the placebo effect takes over.
Wrappers are also especially bad, because, y'know, it's a function call and they are really expensive, right? (Er, no.)
Phoronix also specializes in (usually really, really bad) benchmarks. "Old" also means "slow" to these people -- even though new software is almost always slower than old software, they imagine that a constant process of fierce optimization has actually sped it up, and the power of the placebo effect takes over.
My 486 with 16MB RAM running Windows for Workgroups 3.11 with the Norton Desktop 2.0 in many ways runs circles around modern desktops. I have the same environment on a partition on a PI system and the desktop just screams compared to any modern desktop.
Darrell
121012 Nix wrote:
Phoronix also specializes in (usually really, really bad) benchmarks. "Old" also means "slow" to these people -- even though new software is almost always slower than old software, they imagine that a constant process of fierce optimization has actually sped it up, and the power of the placebo effect takes over.
Wrappers are also especially bad, because, y'know, it's a function call and they are really expensive, right? (Er, no.)
I didn't read the Phoronix report as especially negative.
To make it clear you've started a new project you need to start your own version numbering, ie 'Trinity 1.0'.
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Calvin Morrison -
Darrell Anderson -
David Hare -
Nix -
Philip Webb -
Robert Xu -
Slávek Banko -
Timothy Pearson -
Werner Joss