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On Saturday 04 June 2022, J Leslie Turriff was heard to say:

The author says, "Yet another alternative is to install from source tarballs, *which is the only choice for adding Trinity to an existing installation.*" -- Really?

It was only recently I tried doing a headless Debian first, then adding TDE to see if all the additional underlying bits would get added correctly. It worked perfectly.

Prior to this I have always done a XFCE install first, made sure that worked, then added TDE by including the signing keys and repository, then installing TD_Trinity_Desktop (or whatever the main metapackage is).

TDE has always worked.

Curt-

- -- You may my glories and my state dispose, But not my griefs; still am I king of those. --- William Shakespeare, "Richard II"

On Sat June 4 2022 08:14:43 Mavridis Philippe wrote:

It's not that Trinity fails to communicate itself, it's that the editors nowadays don't properly do their homework, it seems, and it happens with quite a lot of magazines.

A journalist would have run an article by the devs so they could offer (not mandate) corrections.

But I guess journalists can't work for whatever most techie zines pay.

OTOH I've seen far worse techie articles than this even if it does get some facts wrong.

On Tuesday 07 June 2022 18:23:23 Michael wrote:

On Monday 06 June 2022 08:50:49 am Michele Calgaro via tde-users wrote:

...

Googling the title brings up the full article: https://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/Features/Exploring-the-Trinity-Desk to p

Thanks Michele! (Linux Magazine’s profit model baffles me.)

I still can't ascertain which way the author is trying to bias people towards Trinity. Most everything seems to be a very unsubtle backhanded complement. It’s almost like the author took everything good about TDE and tried to make it sound “bad?” Or was forced too, but took it to such an extreeme so that readers could easily read between the lines on how ‘good’ TDE is? Or maybe, as Nik says, the guys just a horrible writer?

"Trinity dates from a time when functionality ... [was] more of a priority"

"Trinity’s success lies in having fought the odds to provide a small group of users what it wants and in extending the choices for everyone."

And since I’m a math head…

"Trinity claimed only a 1.3 percent share." (of Linux users)

additional info from various ‘internets’ sources...

• Windows more generally (1.5 billion active users, a number that hasn’t

moved, magically, in years),

• For desktop and laptop computers, Windows is the most used at 75%,

followed by Apple's macOS at 15%, and Linux-based operating systems, at 5% (i.e. "desktop Linux" at 2.48%, plus Google's Chrome OS at 2.38%, in the US up to 3.2%)

Seems to indicate there are 650 thousand TDE users!

2,000,000,000 * 75.00% = 1,500,000,000 2,000,000,000 * 2.48% = 49,600,000 49,600,000 * 1.30% = 644,800

It seems like most TDE users never sign up on this list, how sad...

There is pressure to conform to the mainstream opinions and tastes, and some people would rather fit in than to think too much.

For me, with TDE, I can have whatever I want, limited only by hardware and my own skills or lack of them.

Also, in some places that retro look, the newfangled hipsters, are supposed to be cool. But users can make their TDE screens look almost like anything they want. Rather than having maybe a dozen bland prefabricated configurations to choose from, TDE's old school interface offers infinite possibilities for how we can make our desktops look; all it requires is a little exploration and tinkering.

Maybe that isn't to everybody's liking, though I don't get why. But then, for myself, I got used to being the minority opinion. Then again, we might consider it as a problem of branding: the kids have got to be taught that old school sometimes was really cool, and still is cool.

Bill

On Tue, 7 Jun 2022 15:39:58 +0200 Thierry de Coulon tcoulon@decoulon.ch wrote:

On Tuesday 07 June 2022 15.24:45 James Leone wrote:

Actually, reading the article I did not even find out what Trinity was missing (except that "modern look").

I was able to ferret out a few semi-specific complaints:

1. They couldn't find a UI for either system services or turning off autostart bits of TDE (it's not entirely clear which they meant, or even whether they do—or should—understand the distinction).

2. They couldn't figure out how to adjust the font size for desktop icon captions (perhaps it needs a better label than just "Desktop"?)

3. They had unclear issues with the system tray, perhaps because it was overpopulated.

4. The selection of *non*-TDE applications on whatever installer or live media they used didn't match their preferences.

5. They dislike the application-names-start-with-K thing we inherited from KDE.

1-3 are possibly actual problems, but the level of detail mostly isn't good enough to follow up on.

E. Liddell

Quotes from the article that were available to me:

"Note that after 2013 and release 3.5.13.2, Trinity switched its numbering system to avoid being dismissed because of its version number alone."

The above statement is absolutely untrue, at least for me. I genuinely feel sorry for any user that picks a desktop because of a version number, rather than functionality.

As to functionality, TDE is faster than KDE Plasma, and actually displays folder contents the exact way I want to see them. I don't want to see a mix of folders and files when I am browsing the file system. Gnome seems to have banished the use of desktop icons, forcing the end user to remember the name of the application they want to use, so they can search for it. A lot of desktop space is wasted and time wasted searching rather than just clicking on what you want. And sometimes the command line for an icon should actually be edited. In Linux, sometimes, it is important to modify things so you can do what you want and how you want.

TDE does not lack an application search function. The only things I ever borrow from other desktops, that works well in TDE is are 1. network manager[1] application and 2. KDE connect.

"Trinity is included in few distributions, so the project cannot depend on maintainers from outside the project. Instead, the project includes downloads for images of several distributions configured to install Trinity. These include a number of images for Debian, Devuan, Red Hat, and Fedora. For convenience, the Long-Term Support (LTS) releases, such as Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa), are probably the ones to choose because newer releases may not support Trinity. In some cases, unofficial or testing versions may also be available. Yet another alternative is to install from source tarballs, which is the only choice for adding Trinity to an existing installation."

This is an unclear statement, but I personally know that there are several repositories for several distributions.

Oh wait, they added this later:

"Unless you install from source files, the installer for Trinity depends on the distribution used."

I really don't see how making images available for several distribution should amount to a criticism.

[1] I rarely use network manager because it has, at times, interfered with Postfix functionality, which I use to send fail to ban notices on desktops I have a way to remote into to administer.

On Tue, Jun 7, 2022 at 8:13 AM E. Liddell ejlddll@warpmail.net wrote:

On Tue, 7 Jun 2022 15:39:58 +0200 Thierry de Coulon tcoulon@decoulon.ch wrote:

...

On Tuesday 07 June 2022 15.24:45 James Leone wrote:

...

Actually, reading the article I did not even find out what Trinity was missing (except that "modern look").

I was able to ferret out a few semi-specific complaints:

1. They couldn't find a UI for either system services or turning off

autostart bits of TDE (it's not entirely clear which they meant, or even whether they do—or should—understand the distinction).

2. They couldn't figure out how to adjust the font size for desktop

icon captions (perhaps it needs a better label than just "Desktop"?)

3. They had unclear issues with the system tray, perhaps because

it was overpopulated.

4. The selection of *non*-TDE applications on whatever installer

or live media they used didn't match their preferences.

5. They dislike the application-names-start-with-K thing we

inherited from KDE.

1-3 are possibly actual problems, but the level of detail mostly isn't good enough to follow up on.

E. Liddell ____________________________________________________ tde-users mailing list -- users@trinitydesktop.org To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@trinitydesktop.org Web mail archive available at https://mail.trinitydesktop.org/mailman3/hyperkitty/list/users@trinitydeskto...

On Tuesday 07 June 2022 06:24:45 James Leone wrote:

TDE is the only reasonably usable desktop. Period.

On Fri, Jun 3, 2022, 3:58 PM Michael mb_trinity_desktop@inet-design.com

wrote:

...

Not sure if it's a hit piece or legitimate news reporting, but I recently found this:

https://www.linux-magazine.com/Issues/2022/254/Trinity-Desktop

I didn't buy the article, so no telling what their conclusion is.

Thought I'd share, best, Michael

Nothing else out there can come close.

But, like anything that is simple and good and true, which puts ordinary people in control of their own machines, it must be marginalized, kept secret, reserved for the few who can find it.

If people get control of their own machines, next thing is, they will start to get control of their own lives.

Bill

Bill