hi...
i picked this email to reply to since it was the one i landed on last while reading the thread, but it could have been a reply to any number of emails here.
note that i write this both as the person who wrote the features that gave Trinity it's edge in the one category Byfield felt it was better in (panel configurability), as well as one of the developers working on KDE's new offerings ...
On Tuesday, November 15, 2011 21:01:55 Keith Daniels wrote:
work-flow. They added steps, moved things around, and made you throw away years of training and experience just because they wanted a "cuter" OS with lots of glitter.
just as you would probably appreciate others not misrepresenting Trinity or speaking on your behalf as to what your motivations are, i would graciously request you pay the same respect to others, particularly those in closely related projects (e.g. those working on Plasma Desktop and other 4.x software).
in this case, you are absolutely incorrect in your assesment, and it is disconcerting that we face the specter of dealing with FUD from within the borders of the broader KDE / Trinity community.
i'd rather see us support each other than get annoyed at each other.
of COURSE people are going to write comparisons of Trinity and KDE's 4.x software: they want to figure out which to use. and of COURSE people are going to write them with some level of struggle between the two because the people who are using 3.5 / Trinity have made it a *highly contentious* issue where the quoted bit above is the norm rather than the exception. so, in part, you brought this on us all. but also in part, expect comparisons. that's fine. it isn't a threat. focus on what you can improve, enjoy the accolades given and avoid the temptation to fall into attacking others.
then maybe Trinity's community will be able to shake the "den of hate" reputation that it has earned, properly or not, in significant parts of the KDE community.
now, just so it's very clear: it pains me to see the stability of the 3.5 series diminish. every release made after our last official release (3.5.9 iirc was the last i was involved in...) has seen, imho, questionable choices in patch inclusion. but i understood, or at least have tried to, the motivation: to keep the code moving forward and keep it fresh and usable on new Linux OSes. so, as someone not directly involved in that code base anymore and as someone who has no desire to see people fail with KDE's code and efforts, i really haven't made a big deal of that point in public. even as i have had to deal with the claims of KDE 3.5's continued, obvious and unnassailable superiority to everything before or since.
i hope that can be appreciated and perhaps mirrored in the Trinity community.
I think most people resist having to learn new things but they absolutely HATE having to learn to NOT do something that they have done continuously for years. If you play on that you can get people's attention.
please consider that if the intention is to put forth a marketing effort that paints Plasma or other KDE software in a bad light, that this will effectively and quickly put an end to any cooperative spirit we may have been able to build.
the moment you get into "comparison shopping" marketing is the moment you start creating rivalry and that often leads to bare-knuckle competition. you would, for instance, find that the last dot.kde.org article (which i went to the wall for so it would be published, btw) likely to be Trinity's last.
this is how one builds a situation where people end up ripping each other down so that everyone's progress is impaired. look up "crabs in a bucket" if you aren't familiar with that phrase.
i would suggest that instead of focussing on what you are not and playing on what you believe to be people's negative feelings about other products, focus on Trinity's positives and what Trinity is. yes, the topic may end up being the same ("traditional desktop values", "performance on older hardware", etc) but it goes from being a message based on the negatives of others to one that is about the positives of Trinity.