back to article Trinity desktop's latest release snaps into action on Q4OS 5.3

A new version of the Trinity desktop is out, with a new window-snapping feature. And that's not the only way it's snappy. The Trinity Desktop Environment (latest release 14.1.1), or TDE for short, is a fork and continuation of KDE version 3.5, the last release of KDE 3. It's loosely comparable to MATE, which is a continuation …

  1. nematoad Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    Thank you.

    Trinity and PCLinuxOS have had an on and off relationship over the years.

    In the past it was available on PCLOS but was a swine to install, then it was added as a community option, it then vanished for a while so I am very happy to see that is available as on option on PCLOS again.

    Due to the on again off again nature of Trinity on PCLOS I switched to MATE but I always liked Trinity as the successor to my then favourite KDE3.5.

    I will definitely take a look at Trinity the next time I have to rebuild one of my boxes and see how the old girl has got on since I last used it.

    +1!

    I also agree with Liam on Q4OS. It's slick and intelligent when installed under VirtualBox. Not many of the various distros I have tried install all you need to get a fully functioning OS and being Trinity it just works. At least for me.

  2. gerryg

    The main point is being missed

    It doesn't really matter if "this vulture" doesn't get on with the KDE philosophy. This is all about the power of choice.

    Back in the day Timothy Pearson thought KDE 3 was where it was at (and given the travails with KDE 4 it was possible to see his point).

    I recall he had certain complaints about the changes to the underlying infrastructure too.

    So is plugging away at TDE and here we are. Yours for the using. Or not. That's the point.

    1. gerryg

      just installed it

      Frighteningly it takes over the log-in from SDDM but it plays very nicely on Tumbleweed. Wave of nostalgia and props to the team but I'm not sure I'll be using it much.

      1. drankinatty

        Re: just installed it

        Replacing sddm with kdm (or tdm as it is rebranded) is a feature, not a bug :) Having used TDE for more than a decade and having built it for Archlinux for a couple of years, it is a solid KDE3 desktop with enhancements you would expect. While I've run KDE3 from openSUSE for the past few Leap releases, they are essentially the same. Commit sharing goes on between the two projects, etc.. Tim is smiling from somewhere tonight with the press TDE got today. Though not as actively involved now as in the past, it is a testament to the idea he had back in the 2010-ish timeframe. Kudos to The Register for covering it.

    2. Liam Proven (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

      Re: The main point is being missed

      [Author here]

      > It doesn't really matter if "this vulture" doesn't get on with the KDE philosophy. This is all about the power of choice.

      I beg to differ.

      My choice is: can I please not have so many choices?

      I do not want my file manager to also be a web browser. I want clean lines of separation between my apps. I want smaller simpler apps.

      This is an uncomfortable truth that people do not like, but it remains the case:

      1. Most Linux desktops today are copies of the Windows >= 95 desktop, taking some or all of that GUI as their template.

      2. (Aside: the ones that aren't are either copies of something else, or are just trying to be different to avoid corporate lawsuits.)

      3. However, the Windows desktop has gone through several major versions: 95, then 98 "active desktop", then Vista/7, then 8.x, then 10.x, then 11. Many Linux folks are not familiar with the precise differences but they explain a lot of how and why different Linux desktops work the way they do.

      4. This implies that which Windows desktop (or, indeed, other OS GUI) you preferred influences which Linux desktop you prefer.

      So, to give some specific examples:

      * Xfce, LXDE, and GNOME 2 model themselves on Windows 95, with changes.

      * KDE was clearly modelled on Windows 98 instead.

      * Cinnamon looks to me to be aiming for Vista/7.

      * Now meta-desktops like DashToPanel in GNOME >= 3 clearly model themselves on Win 8 or Win 11.

      As it happens, I like the Win95 model. No intermediate rendering formats in the filer; a simple desktop/file manager that doesn't do anything much else.

      Win98 makes it all HTML and the filer has an embedded web browser, so you can have web content on the desktop or in filer windows, you can have background wallpapers in filer windows and things like that, which I personally consider pointless bloat.

      But I know some people like this stuff. Good for them.

      I really liked KDE 1.x. I thought it looked good and worked well.

      KDE 2.x was getting a little bloated, but Xandros tuned it up better than anyone.

      KDE 3.x was so big it was too much for me, and Xandros gave up, too.

      KDE 4.x is perhaps best forgotten. ;-)

      KDE 5.x is still a bloated mess, but it's at least it's a streamlined one now. Going flat relieved the visual horrors of KDE's long history of overcomplicated visual themes.

      KDE 6... well, we will see.

      I appreciate that some like specific versions, but it's not OK to say "you should like this because it's so customisable" when it's not customisation that I want. I want fewer options to twiddle. I want fewer settings. I want smaller simpler components with less customisability, and that is a choice that KDE and TDE deny me.

      1. gerryg

        Re: The main point is being missed

        > My choice is: can I please not have so many choices?

        Then don't look. If whatever you are happy with is what you are happy with, then lucky you.

        It's not always necessary to have an opinion

        For example I have no idea how many distros there are - I don't look and I don't care - 25 years ago I picked what is now Tumbleweed.

        > but it's not OK to say "you should like this because it's so customisable" when it's not customisation that I want.

        Who was saying that?

  3. The Spider
    Thumb Up

    For a long time, there seemed to be a problem with their repos and I couldn't get a new install to work. Recently, however, they seem to have fixed this and I now have it working alongside Plasma on my Mageia 9 main machine.

    It works fine - in fact, speed-wise it is observably faster than Plasma in use - and all programs etc. are accessible. There do seem to be a few which cough a bit but this is Linux, so there will be a way around it.

    Congratulations to the TDE team. This is great work (and shows how little my desktop tastes have changed in the last, say, ten or twelve years).

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Never, ever forget

    When talking about Konqueror, always bear in mind that KHTML is what became WebKit, which is what became Blink. KDE 3.5, KIO and what came from it was also peak innovation at the time. It may all seem antiquated now even with people still maintaining it, but it was all way ahead of its time.

  5. Zolko Silver badge

    Very disappointing article

    Doesn't even mention which version of Qt this uses.

    1. Liam Proven (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

      Re: Very disappointing article

      [Author here]

      > which version of Qt

      TBH I thought that anyone who would care, would know.

      As far as I know, the rule is that KDE version x.whatever uses Qt x.whatever.

      KDE 6 is being built on Qt 6.

      KDE 5 uses Qt 5.

      KDE 4 used Qt 4.

      You can check the release dates and see how each major version of KDE comes out a year or 2 after a new major version of Qt.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_version_history

      https://userbase.kde.org/History_of_KDE/en

      Trinity is based on KDE 3. Therefore, it is based on code that used Qt 3.

      Qt 3 went out of support nearly 20 years ago.

      So, TDE forked it and it is now called TQt.

      The answer to your question is "no version; TDE does not use Qt any more, it uses a fork of Qt 3 called TQt."

      1. Zolko Silver badge

        Re: Very disappointing article

        TDE does not use Qt any more, it uses a fork of Qt 3 called TQt

        thank-you very much. But this is still an important information: another desktop is already quite an undertaking and maintenance challenge, but if it uses its own toolkit then it takes another level.

        1. Liam Proven (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

          Re: Very disappointing article

          You're right, it absolutely is.

          MATE faced the same problem. MATE has moved to Gtk3, but GNOME has now abandoned that and moved to Gtk4, which is one of the problems of working with GNOME tools.

          TDE has some experimental work underway to move to Qt4, I believe, but that is EOL too now.

          Qt6 is, I suspect, too big and too different for a tiny team.

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