Trinity Desktop R14.0.7 Released For Keeping KDE 3 Spirit Alive In 2020

[betam4x]

I completely agree with you, I would add that GUI development peaked back in the Windows 2000 era and has been since getting progressively worse ever since. As you mentioned Windows 8 was the abomination.

I don't know, that Windows 7 start menu is BOSS. I've yet to find a superior application launcher to it.

[slalomsk8er]

Enlighten me how you can put these items in the task bar in KDE5:

• CPU usage indicator
• Various HW sensors as numbers
• RAM use as numbers
• Network interfaces activity LEDs
• Tasks run at an internal output
• Weather conditions and current temperature as a number

etc. etc. etc.

Also, tell me how the task bar can be made fully transparent. I have neither time, nor desire to constantly minimize all my apps to stare at the desktop where I have pretty much nothing. It's asinine.

Half of the stuff you ask for can be had with one Widget "Command Output". I use it to keep track of how bad my connection is: ping -c 4 8.8.8.8 | tail -1 | awk '{print $4}' | cut -d '/' -f 2 | xargs printf "%8.2fms"

The rest needs to be developed if not already existing - at least your widget will not break on the next minor update like in Gnome.

I think I don't get, what you want to accomplish with a transparent task bar but I guess the task bar gets the transparency from the theme.

Idk.. the entire concept is bad.. always was.. personally I'm a gnome/mac user.. I press a key and see all my open apps. no lists at all. Far simpler and I don't have to move my hands at all.. What is easier to click... a 10x40 square at the edge of the screen, or a 80x80 picture in the center?

I never got the need for this expose stuff - Plasma has it in the top left corner. I didn't bother to find the or bind a hotkey for this as I use it as much as I use the file indexers to help me find content in my files. I also try to avoid GPS for navigating but that is just me: I like to know where stuff is and hold it in a mental map.

If I have a complex task going, that needs multiple windows, I use virtual desktops for fast random access.

[k1e0x]

I completely agree with you, I would add that GUI development peaked back in the Windows 2000 era and has been since getting progressively worse ever since. As you mentioned Windows 8 was the abomination.

I don't know, that Windows 7 start menu is BOSS. I've yet to find a superior application launcher to it.

You realize on the old versions of windows you can't search in the start bar.. right? Applications were grouped by Program > Manufacture Name > Application. So in some cases that was clear but in other cases it was very hard to find because you didn't know the company who created the software.

If you are looking for a good Application Launcher try Spotlight. (Gnome's is similar)


And I can go on.. Explorer is the only file manager that does not highlight a selection on right click. And it still does this today. Try for yourself. Click on blank space in explorer to un-select a file. Then right click the file. Every other file manager will select the file and give you the context menu for the file. Explorer does not, it give you the context for the folder.. and that is very confusing. as... you just clicked on the file?? If you want the context menu for the file you have to left click it.. then right click it again. Jes.. what a great OS.. the pinnacle of UI design..

[ehansin]

Also, enlighten me how to stop KDE from shitting all over my ~/.config and ~/.local

KDE3/4 stored everything under ~/.kde{3,4} and /var/tmp/$username. XFCE stores everything under ~/.config/xfce4 and doesn't really have any temporary files to speak of.

Only KDE5 doesn't respect any conventions.

I stay out of these desktop wars, but yeah, I posted something similar here before. Seemed ridiculous to be spreading config files all over the root of ~/.config vs. creating sub-directories to "namespace" these some, and keep things clean. I saw that and said I'm done.

[Sonadow]

Also, enlighten me how to stop KDE from shitting all over my ~/.config and ~/.local

KDE3/4 stored everything under ~/.kde{3,4} and /var/tmp/$username. XFCE stores everything under ~/.config/xfce4 and doesn't really have any temporary files to speak of.

Only KDE5 doesn't respect any conventions.

Got to agree on this. Personal pet peeve when using Plasma 5. It stopped being a problem when I decided to stop caring about tidying up or maintaining the hidden folders in $HOME.

Generally, when it comes to desktops, I keep three installed: Weston, Plasma 5 and Gnome 3. Weston for daily usage, Plasma 5 for when I need to do things very quickly with a mix of Wayland and X applications, and Gnome 3 as a fallback when things go apeshit on Weston or Plasma 5. Because Gnome 3 is really the only desktop GUI on Linux that has practically complete Wayland functionality.

[Paradigm Shifter]

And I can go on.. Explorer is the only file manager that does not highlight a selection on right click. And it still does this today. Try for yourself. Click on blank space in explorer to un-select a file. Then right click the file. Every other file manager will select the file and give you the context menu for the file. Explorer does not, it give you the context for the folder.. and that is very confusing. as... you just clicked on the file?? If you want the context menu for the file you have to left click it.. then right click it again. Jes.. what a great OS.. the pinnacle of UI design..

And in list view with total files exceeding the fill of the window, these oh-so-helpful auto-select-file methods do not allow me access to the folder context menu. I have to switch to icon view, carefully navigate my cursor into the space between two or more file icons/names and right click then.

Explicit selection of target before context action is a good thing, not a bad thing.

...

The search-in-start-menu function was introduced in Vista, which everyone seems to want to forget. Not without reason, although honestly it gets a lot of stick because Microsoft wanted to move to a more secure driver model, rather than the classic "allow any driver access to all the things" that it had followed before (apologies for the oversimplification) and every hardware manufacturer took that as an opportunity to stop supporting a ton of stuff and just blamed it on Microsoft. Well, that and the minimum spec shot up due to the desktop becoming "3D accelerated" with Aero. The Windows 7 start menu was nearly perfect for my use case when I used it, but the Vista one was close.

The only function Microsoft seems to stubbornly avoid adding to Windows File Explorer is tabs.

[starshipeleven]

Enlighten me how you can put these items in the task bar in KDE5:

Write a plasmoid (widget thing) that does that? How do you think current indicators were created? It's not like you can't do it, there are already plasmoids that do something similar.

Also, tell me how the task bar can be made fully transparent. I have neither time, nor desire to constantly minimize all my apps to stare at the desktop where I have pretty much nothing. It's asinine.

what does this even mean. What use has a trasparent task bar at all.
You mean auto-hiding task bar it is in the task bar own options. Rightclick on the task bar, select "Edit Panel" and then "more settings" on the additional bar that pops up, then you can select auto-hide or "windows can go above" (I guess this is similar to the "invisible"?) and "windows can go below" option for your task bar.

Also, enlighten me how to stop KDE from shitting all over my ~/.config and ~/.local

Disable "show hidden files" in your file manager. It's not like any other applications are much better and you are not supposed to edit config files manually for a GUI anyway, KDE isn't GNOME.

[Paradigm Shifter]

And in list view with total files exceeding the fill of the window, these oh-so-helpful auto-select-file methods do not allow me access to the folder context menu. I have to switch to icon view, carefully navigate my cursor into the space between two or more file icons/names and right click then.

Explicit selection of target before context action is a good thing, not a bad thing.

Minor addendum to my previous post: just tested in Windows 10 1909 build 18363.535 and right clicking empty space in list view gives me folder context menu (good, expected), right clicking name or icon gives me file context menu (OK, so exactly the behaviour k1e0x says it does not) and right clicking in the Date Modified or Type areas gives me folder context menu (excellent). Note; since I installed this system years ago, I may have made a change to the default Explorer behaviour and forgotten about it.

Also just tested with Cinnamon 4.4.6 (Mint 19.3) and in list view right clicking the name/icon/modified (anywhere with text, basically) gives me file context while blank space gives me fodler context. It did not used to do that, so I'm guessing it's a relatively recent tweak to Cinnamon/Nemo, but it solves one of my old complaints with it.

So the goalposts have shifted again, by the pace of development for the two desktops.

...

On a different note; I might give Trinity a go just for amusements sake - KDE was my first serious Linux desktop because of Mandrake Linux and RedHat 7, so I have some rose-tinted memories.

[Guest]

I've been using Trinity for about three/four months.
This is my experience so far (I haven't upgraded to the latest stable release yet):
the first time I installed almost everything. Kmail didn't work immediately, I needed to modify openssl.conf. Korganizer works fully, also Basket, a great software. Kommander, a program to make application using a script language, has many problem, but it is not so important. I've disabled Arts, I hate it since the Kde3 era. The control center is a great program, let me do everything. Konqueror has what I need, custom scripts and can set the thumbnail at a larger size. But it has one bug that can crash it (just learn how to avoid it). Just to keep Trinity Desktop clean and lean, only selected applications are now in my installation.
Why Trinity Desktop?
I really tried every desktop. Lxqt is a promising DE but it needs more work. Xfce was a great DE but now it switched completely to the gtk3. Cinnamon, Kde5, Mate, Gnome3, Enlightenment and others have always something wrong that don't let me continue to use them, expecially for high resources usage. I don't mean ram usage. When I scroll web pages (I don't use Firefox nor Chrome/ium) and see tearing I know that my not-so-powerful-but-recent gpu (and obviously the cpu) is working at low speed.
So, why to use Gnome3 or Kde5 instead of Trinity/Kde3? Just get rid of all the gtk3 applications and you'll see what difference this makes.

[soulsource]

You realize on the old versions of windows you can't search in the start bar.. right? Applications were grouped by Program > Manufacture Name > Application. So in some cases that was clear but in other cases it was very hard to find because you didn't know the company who created the software.
[...]

On old versions of Windows (meaning: between Windows 95 and 7) the Start Menu was a fully customizable folder structure. Many programs were by default installing their icons in a folder named after the developer/publisher, but you as a user could just move them wherever you like, and rename/create/delete folders to your liking.
I honestly still consider this superior to what most XDG launchers offer (and of course also vastly superior to Windows 10's "Start Menu", which would be utterly unusable without the search function - Windows 7 had it right, by offering both, user-defined folders and a search function).