On 1/12/25 1:35 AM, deloptes via tde-users wrote:

Andrew Randrianasulu via tde-users wrote:

...

someone trying to fit kde1 codebase on top of forked qt2 codebase ;)

It seems like in the museum we have a new field called software restaurators :).

It's also a reflection on how good the original developers were is desktop design to be able to squeeze good performance out of tightly written code running on 386 class processors and less than 4MB of RAM. Before Moore's Law gave of GHz processors, GBs of RAM and TBs of storage. KDE3/TDE and Gnome2/Gtk+2 all benefited greatly from that pedigree. The 2007 KDE Conference welcoming kde4 and Gnome3/Gtk+3 have shown us all the downsides of the new crop of desktop developers (kids with crayons...) that thought porting to a new toolkit was the way to the next Great, Ghee-Whiz Linux desktop.

That misguided design path destroyed any chance of seeing Linux as a Desktop in business and set that goal back by nearly two-decades. Eighteen years after the 2007 Conference we are just now beginning to see stability in the Qt6 based Plasma/KDE Frameworks and Gnome4/Gtk4. While better, and closer, neither ever obtained that Great new, Ghee-Whiz Linux desktop. Instead they have showed us how you cripple a desktop with mismatched dialogs for more than a decade as some functionality was porter while other apps and utilities languished for more than a decade before ever receiving attention.

And all the time TDE/KDE3 remained a remarkable set of desktops, written from the ground up with the Qt3 toolkit that provided seamless integration of a full suite of all the apps that most would ever need.

And today on GHz processors, SSD storage and GBs of RAM, TDE/KDE3 perform like never before with a tiny footprint on the hardware leaving the rest for your use.

The "lessons learned" (or should have been learned) where there for all to see in KDE4 when openSUSE provided 4.0.4a as the default desktop in the openSUSE 11.0 release of June, 2008. Sadly, from my interaction with the Gtk4 devs and the Plasma devs, I'm not sure those that are there really understand what a 5hit-5how of problems and disappointment the past 18 years of releases from the two major Linux desktop providers have really been.

And for sure, there are still a few of the old-guard developers there that do the best they can to steer development in the right direction. But, there is no question they are sadly outnumbered by the kids-with-crayon devs...

I'm not sure I recall kde1 that well. I may well have run it on Mandrake before the turn of the century, but I do remember kde2 -- and it was a solid stepping stone to KDE3, which with TDE will forever remain the best two desktops I've run in 25+ years of doing this.

</nostalgia-off>

I'll check out the link and see how far the kde1 project is along. Probably all fits in a 100KB tarball and can be built start to finish in less than 45 minutes :)

David,

An excellent piece you wrote on the beauty that is KDE3/TDE. It really captures the love of this desktop, and the true craftsmanship that went into making so much work with so little hardware resources. KDE3 really was the pinnacle of the KDE line.

I keep longing for the days of the sheer design beauty of those desktops, and it's such a privilege to still have it available for modern Linux installations, through TDE. When KDE and GNOME went with their new looks, and especially through the years as the smartphone GUI paradigm took over, and somehow, developers thought that was a good paradigm to follow, I moved many years back to XFCE. That was a great throwback desktop for many years, but sadly, it has now also seemed to adopt much of the smartphone paradigm. It makes me all the more happy to still have TDE to fall back upon. The graphics, and the fun sound effects, are just unmatched today. And having a screaming-fast, responsive system that leaves most of the resources for my actual programming enjoyment, is just a joy to use.

May this desktop environment always be available for our enjoyment!

-- Jim Petersen

On 1/12/25 5:19 AM, David C. Rankin via tde-users wrote:

On 1/12/25 1:35 AM, deloptes via tde-users wrote:

...

Andrew Randrianasulu via tde-users wrote:

...

someone trying to fit kde1 codebase on top of forked qt2 codebase ;)

It seems like in the museum we have a new field called software restaurators :).

It's also a reflection on how good the original developers were is desktop design to be able to squeeze good performance out of tightly written code running on 386 class processors and less than 4MB of RAM. Before Moore's Law gave of GHz processors, GBs of RAM and TBs of storage. KDE3/TDE and Gnome2/Gtk+2 all benefited greatly from that pedigree. The 2007 KDE Conference welcoming kde4 and Gnome3/Gtk+3 have shown us all the downsides of the new crop of desktop developers (kids with crayons...) that thought porting to a new toolkit was the way to the next Great, Ghee-Whiz Linux desktop.

That misguided design path destroyed any chance of seeing Linux as a Desktop in business and set that goal back by nearly two-decades. Eighteen years after the 2007 Conference we are just now beginning to see stability in the Qt6 based Plasma/KDE Frameworks and Gnome4/Gtk4. While better, and closer, neither ever obtained that Great new, Ghee-Whiz Linux desktop. Instead they have showed us how you cripple a desktop with mismatched dialogs for more than a decade as some functionality was porter while other apps and utilities languished for more than a decade before ever receiving attention.

And all the time TDE/KDE3 remained a remarkable set of desktops, written from the ground up with the Qt3 toolkit that provided seamless integration of a full suite of all the apps that most would ever need.

And today on GHz processors, SSD storage and GBs of RAM, TDE/KDE3 perform like never before with a tiny footprint on the hardware leaving the rest for your use.

The "lessons learned" (or should have been learned) where there for all to see in KDE4 when openSUSE provided 4.0.4a as the default desktop in the openSUSE 11.0 release of June, 2008. Sadly, from my interaction with the Gtk4 devs and the Plasma devs, I'm not sure those that are there really understand what a 5hit-5how of problems and disappointment the past 18 years of releases from the two major Linux desktop providers have really been.

And for sure, there are still a few of the old-guard developers there that do the best they can to steer development in the right direction. But, there is no question they are sadly outnumbered by the kids-with-crayon devs...

I'm not sure I recall kde1 that well. I may well have run it on Mandrake before the turn of the century, but I do remember kde2 -- and it was a solid stepping stone to KDE3, which with TDE will forever remain the best two desktops I've run in 25+ years of doing this.

</nostalgia-off>

I'll check out the link and see how far the kde1 project is along. Probably all fits in a 100KB tarball and can be built start to finish in less than 45 minutes :)

---

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