Re: [trinity-devel] My opinion on Trinity project quality - tde-devels

13 Sep 2013

...
 Sure, all you mentioned about KDE4 are indeed drawbacks
that hold 
me
from using it. What I expect to be done for KDE4 is some 'Classic
mode' (like for Windows), that will rip those horrible kid visuals 
and
needless daemons. Also merge of window manager features from 3 to 
4 is
a must to decide KDE4 more or less serious shell.

Sorry, I don't want to repeat in details why TDE is wrong. You can
find it in bugs (open and closed) and here on the list by 
searching
for my name.

Figuratively speaking, they try to move a mountain to build a 
straight
way through when it is satisfactory to build a road over that
mountain. They will never have enough resources to move the 
mountain,
the project will always be half-finished and half-working. In 
fact,
all this tremendous work is needless. And moreover, it is even 
worse
than this simple image. Moving a mountain is finite job and what 
they
do is doom of endless support. They will never have time for real
features and bug-fixes. Moreover, I'm afraid that they will only 
make
more bugs.

Unfortunately, both of these projects KDE4 and TDE hadn't followed
real users expectations. 
Possibly you have some points of merit, but I don't think anybody 
here is going to spend time looking through the bug tracker and 
list archives to find what exactly you are referring. A bullet list 
of your concerns would be helpful. :-)

Trinity is a small project. The people involved have lives. 
Everybody does their best to keep things moving but that is not 
always possible. I suspect with free/libre software that users tend 
to forget that project members are impacted by life. For example, 
recently I experienced a life-changing event that affects my time 
involved. I am aware of at least one other Trinity team member who 
is experiencing similar events. We don't share that information 
publicly because the events are very much private and personal. Yet 
family and life takes precedence over software projects. Tomorrow 
the same could well happen to you. The important point is to bring 
constructive criticisms to the mail list in a manner that allows 
for such events. A little sympathy and understanding goes a long 
way. :-)

I use Trinity from Git and have been doing so for more than a year. 
Yes, bugs exist, I too have filed bug reports (probably more than 
any Trinity user). We peck away at the reports when we have time. 
Certianly with the bugs Trinity is not perfect or super polished, 
but none of the bugs that I have filed reports are show-stoppers. 
Almost all of the bugs are irritating to one degree or another, but 
none of the bugs come close to stopping me from using Trinity. I am 
aware that other people have different use cases and the bugs they 
report might be more critical.

In short, despite the number of total bug reports filed by all 
people, I find Trinity (Git) remarkably stable.

I have used KDE4, as recent as 4.10.2, and found that KDE4 is not 
without its own set of bugs and usability issues. Between the two 
desktops, I find Trinity more appealing to my computer usage and 
the related KDE4 bugs that affect me to be more irritating than 
those from Trinity. Not to mention I don't relish certain design 
aspects of KDE4. If I had no choice I could adapt to KDE4, but I'd 
rather use Trinity.

I have tried Xfce as well and find that desktop much less 
configurable and tunable than either Trinity or KDE4.

I have not tried GNOME since the 1.x days because I don't care for 
the developer culture there.

Please help us improve Trinity and our response climate by listing 
exactly what is troubling you. Possibly some of the bug reports you 
filed can be bumped in priority for the R14.0.0 release.

Darrell