New Release of the Trinity Desktop Environment

mescobal writes: A new release of the Trinity Desktop Environment (TDE) is out. TDE is "a computer desktop environment for Unix-like operating systems with a primary goal of retaining the function and form of traditional desktop computers" which translates into a fully functional KDE 3 style Desktop. Something is missing in the new generation of desktop environments, since some people (perhaps more than "some") feel at home with Gnome 2 or KDE i3. They have repositories for Debian and Ubuntu-based distros. I'm now using it on Ubuntu 15.04, amazed about how well-planned things were in the previous generation of DE. We may have gained some things with Gnome 3 and Plasma 5, but we lost a lot of good features too. TDE brings them back.

Comments

Change the channel, Marge

[mfearby]

Yawn. Not *another* desktop environment. I gave up on Linux when Ubuntu ruined everything with their Unity rubbish. Never been happier than I am now with a Mac. Linux still good for servers, but for desktops? It never has been suitable, and never will be.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Anonymous Coward]

so, do you sell your car when you get tired of the color or no longer like the wheels?

Maybe you should paint the car with one of the very many colors that are available and put some nice wheels on it to match. Sounds like someone doesn't like to get their hands dirty. Maybe Linus isn't for you.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Anonymous Coward]

It's an interesting twist that Ubuntu killed any hopes of Linux on the desktop.

On the other hand, Macs keep on getting a little better every year.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[epyT-R]

The real issue with UI lately is the 'mobilization' of the desktop, to its detriment. Windows, osx, and linux all suffer from it now. At least the latter allows the user to run alternatives.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't Ubuntu basically Mac-ified the UI? And then you switch to a Mac?

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Anonymous Coward]

Pish and tosh.

I'm happily compiling my tool chain under FreeBSD 10.2 while learning Gnome3.

Which tools? Xorg, Gnome3, Eterm, xosview, Opera, Seamonkey, Firefox, Chromium, Midori, lynx, Thunderbird, Pidgin, LibreOffice, LibreCAD, xpdf, Audacity, xmorse, VLC, KeePassX, nmap, Wireshark, Zenmap, Nmapsi4, Vagrant, Packer, Docker, VirtualBox, awscli, cdrtools, dvd+rw-tools, etc.

Why? Because this is the only way to have that exact toolset configured just the way I need it. As a bonus, I get ZFS, and full-disk encryption, too!

As a sysadmin, for thirty-plus years, I've used whatever I was given (with the possible exception of installing some sort of virtual desktop enhancement to give me more window acreage), but my personal preference for the past two-plus decades, on my personal machines, has always been olvwm - I'm an old school UNIX guy, and I haven't found anything better.

I gave some thought to trying out Compiz (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compiz) but decided to leave that for another day. Besides, I need more than six virtual desktops.

Almost everything you see on the Mac that is any good was developed under Linux, FreeBSD, and other Open Source projects.

Ubuntu is not a good spokesperson for UNIX, Linux, Open Source, or desktops.

~childo

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[0123456]

Unfortunately, even if you install a real desktop, you still suffer from the 'mobilization' of the web.

So many websites have now been redesigned for touchscreens to the point where they're utter crap on a desktop machine.

I really can't wait until this 'mobile' fad is over, and the 'UX designers' find some other fad to chase after.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[gfxguy]

That's what I was thinking... they gave me a Mac Mini at work about 4 years ago. I gave it a real try - several months, but couldn't get over the UI, and couldn't understand why people claimed to like it so much. So I powered it down and worked on my old Linux box. Then Ubuntu switched to Unity, and I was like "this again? I went back to Linux to get AWAY from this."

I think anyone can get accustomed to just about any UI, and I think we're mostly hung up on how things worked before, but unless those new "paradigms" actually prove advantageous to work, then it's not just a fear of something new or disliking a learning curve - why should I learn something new when it gains me nothing?

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Anonymous Coward]

So you changed an entire operating system and hardware, because of one desktop by one distro?
You bought, and learned a whole new system, instead of clicking a couple of buttons to swap out a desktop?

I always laugh at that argument, it's such a transparent fanbois lie.

Or you are my mother.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Anonymous Coward]

I happen to like the Mac desktop. I totally agree with you and that's fine if it's not your thing. Where I'm feeling it is Microsoft's movement with Office 2013 and Windows 8 into Windows 10. I learned how to work with them. I'm adjusted I supposed. But I hate them and I think it's a huge step backwards. I liked OSX best back at Snow Leopard so I suppose I'm not exactly thrilled about iOS features coming to Mac but Apple hasn't been as forceful at upsetting desktop systems.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Noughmad]

This is not *another* DE. It is KDE3, which was the only good one in a time when KDE4 crashed all the time, Gnome3 has arond 3 features in total, and Unity got introduced. Now, however, it's old, and everybody and their mothed has moved on.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[epyT-R]

There's that, but, for the moment anyway, I've been able to avoid depending on here-today-changed/gone-tomorrow web sites for critical workflows.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[gweihir]

You seem to have missed that on Linux you can completely ignore whatever crappy (e.g. KDE, Gnome) window-manager the distribution has standardized on. I have been running Debian with my own fvwm configuration for ages and that configuration I first created on sun-os. I had to do one rewrite when fvwm2 came out, but that is it.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[gweihir]

I never noticed. Of course, I never used KDE or Gnome or some other crappy "modern" window-manager. fvwm has all I need and excellent customization possibilities in addition.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[gweihir]

You should have looked a tiny bit longer. Then you would have noticed that you can run one of a few hundred different window managers on Linux. What the distribution installer gives you as default is merely an example.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Anonymous Coward]

"Macs keep on getting a little better every year."
Not good enough.

Hardware improves a lot, we get to use GPUs for every little animation now if we want to, the screen resolution increased a lot in the past decade, along with the physical size of the screens.

Bash away at Windows, Gnome, KDE and others, but the fact is they're trying to make use of these new developments.

Compiz, beryl, metro are mistakes, right? Wrong, they were steps forward, but in a wrong direction, research if you will. Added knowledge that everyone has benefited from, including OSX.

For instance, Have you ever tried ultra wide screens? They're really cool ... but unusable if the desktop environment wasn't designed with enough flexibility in mind.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[amiga3D]

I've got to say that the Mac desktop peaked with Snow Leopard. I'm running Yosemite on my Macbook and it's really not all that impressive. I remember upgrading from Leopard and seeing a massive speed boost. Now it gets just a little more sluggish with every upgrade. The major feature upgrade? The fucking Apple Store.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Barsteward]

perhaps you should do some research instead of relying on a headline otherwise it shows your ignorance.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Anonymous Coward]

What he's saying is - don't buy a crappy new car when you can fix your old one.

And if you can't understand that, you need to level up.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Dutch Gun]

Don't forget the removal of all gradients and everything shiny or glossy. Gotta keep those UX designers doing something, right?

Honestly, though, I barely notice any functional or speed difference. I have a Mac Mini I bought a while ago as an inexpensive dev box, which I'm using to port my game to OS X. I actually see the lack of significant changes as a *good* thing, and hope it continues. It means that Apple considers the desktop functionality and design to be stable, and has no need to radically alter the paradigm like MS tried to do with Windows 8.1, or to make a "unified" desktop for multiple devices like with Ubuntu.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Hognoxious]

Wrong, they were steps forward, but in a wrong direction

Have you any idea how dumb that sounds?

research if you will. Added knowledge that everyone has benefited from, including OSX.

Bollocks. Learning from mistakes is fine - in the lab. Releasing shit is inexcusable.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not *another* DE. It is KDE3, which was the only good one in a time when KDE4 crashed all the time, Gnome3 has arond 3 features in total, and Unity got introduced. Now, however, it's old, and everybody and their mothed has moved on.

Can I just say "thank grudd for that". Trinity developers; we love you. Even better will be if you manage to keep API and desktop interaction convergence with KDE whilst still having everything work according to your own taste. However if we wanted the right to demand that we would come and work for the project ;-)

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[amiga3D]

I wont say it's drastic but on the 2.4 Core2Duo based Macbook the difference between 10.10 and 10.6 is noticeable. On my Quad i7 Mini that came with Lion I can't really tell the difference between 10.7 and 10.10 but then I think 10.7 might have been the most noticeable drop in performance. It's not a huge difference and really Yosemite isn't bad but all the features they've added are less than useless to me. At work we're still on Windows 7 so I can't really comment on Windows 8 but most of the people I've talked to that have it are less than thrilled with that. I still remember the debacle that was Unity when I ran it for a month or so trying to see if I could get used to it. Ubuntu just destroyed a great desktop. There is a certain point that something is done and things just need to be tweaked for performance and bug fixes.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Anonymous Coward]

Try FreeBSD!
I have been working with various Linux distros for over 10 years and really liked it until the recent "improvements" that have been implemented by most main stream distros.

I was a bit scared at first since *BSD always had that hardcore Unix vibe. Then I started using it for a project and it was like someone switch a light on. The file system layout makes sense and files are in consistent places, not peppered all over the file system with almost no logic to it. Services come with basic configurations where I have to turn additional features on. This is how Linux used to be.

My experience with FreeBSD has been entirely in a VM / Server environment but I think I'll spin up a VM to give FreeBSD + Trinity a shot during the F1 race.
If it works it will replace that modern Debian System D turd really quick.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[mfearby]

Why should I have to fight with package dependencies and fiddling with config files every time some clique of nerds decides one DE is better than another? It soon became tiresome. Now that I've been on OS X for 3+ years I've never looked back. Its DE doesn't throw the baby out with the bath water every 12 to 18 months.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[mfearby]

OS X doesn't suffer from the 'mobilization' of the desktop. I use OS X on a daily basis and not one thing that's going on in iOS-land has adversely (or even noticeably!) affected my existence. Perhaps you could elaborate on what you mean?

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[mfearby]

I actually see the lack of significant changes as a *good* thing, and hope it continues.

Amen! The constant chopping and changing (often for no apparent reason) on Ubuntu drove me nuts. The same with Windows, which I have to use at work (thank goodness for Classic Shell). Whilst I'm no particular fan of the Dock on OS X one good thing about it is that it hasn't significantly changed in 15+ years. Windows has done more damage with throwing out the Start Menu than Apple ever has by having a crappy dock instead of a decent task bar.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Anonymous Coward]

You might be interested in Ubuntu MATE or Xubuntu, if that's the case. Xubuntu is a main flavor and MATE (which runs, unsurprisingly, MATE) seems like it's doing well and may become a main flavor in the future.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[mfearby]

Ubuntu's 'macification' of their UI was so half-baked that it was a massive retrograde step. Forcing apps to render their menus at the top of the screen is only one aspect. The whole Linux ecosystem is NOT designed around this fundamental concept from OS X, and it was never going to work well - it certainly didn't before I gave up. I have no idea if it has improved since then, but now that I'm a happy Mac user - "fanboy" if you will (boo, hiss!!) - there's absolutely no reason to go back. All my dev stuff works on OS X and I have a fully functional unix underneath (if I care to go near it).

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[mfearby]

I suppose I'm not exactly thrilled about iOS features coming to Mac but Apple hasn't been as forceful at upsetting desktop systems.

Exactly. I haven't noticed ANY features from iOS suddenly ruining my day on OS X (Yosemite) so that's got to be a sign that Apple, indeed, has NOT upset the desktop like Microsoft did with the dreaded Windows 8.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[mfearby]

you would have noticed that you can run one of a few hundred different window managers on Linux

That is SO funny. I don't even know where to begin. I'm just so over "oooh, look at this new window manager and how it does this obscure thing in this slightly different way to that other evil one". There's more to life than fiddling with window managers (and I used to configure them heavily!). I'm so glad that OS X has cured me of my WM-tweaking addiction.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[mfearby]

I had been hopping around distros for several years before I settled on Ubuntu 10.04 for a while. I just grew dissatisfied with the endless and unnecessary changes that required me to read HOWTOs to install this or that to get back what I had lost. My brother and his wife had also switched to Mac around a year or two before and I saw how simple life could be. Once you go Mac you never go back (and I used to laugh at Mac fanboys; but now I'm one of them). There really is no better coupling between software and hardware than a Mac.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[gweihir]

You do not think it is worthwhile to invest a few hours into a tool that you are going to use literally for thousands of hours?
You are right, that is hilarious. Human stupidity is really boundless.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[kevingolding2001]

OS X doesn't suffer from the 'mobilization' of the desktop

That isn't quite true. It is suffering from 'mobilization', and also 'socialization'.
Snow Leopard (10.6) was the best release ever. Since then it has been going steadily backwards, albeit slowly.
I remember reading one of their '200 new features in the next release' that mentioned Facebook 46 times. That was when I knew it was all going to be downhill.

Apple got an early lead in the race to the bottom by taking away great things like expose, but then they seemed to falter a bit.

Linux and especially Microsoft were, as usual, late to the party, but have since caught up with Gnome 3 and Windows 8 respectively.

We'll have to wait and see who manages to get to their 'Hitler' version first.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[mfearby]

I did try FreeBSD - once - but only as a curiosity. There was no way it was going to be viable as a desktop OS, for me at least. As far as distros I still respect it would have to be Debian, but even the stable branch was too out of date, and there was no way I was going to run unstable. I want my OS to behave, I don't want to be its slave. That's one thing I like about OS X, I hardly ever notice the OS.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[mfearby]

Using a fork of something simply to keep what I was used to was the beginning of a slippery slope in my book. I didn't want to start using someone's fork that could wither and fall into obscurity thereby kicking off yet another round of DE evaluations until I found one that suited. I no longer have this conundrum because I have OS X. Its DE "just is" and "just works" and it's no longer a concern.

It's a bit like Maslow's hierarchy of needs: with Linux I felt I never quite got to Self Actualisation, I was always stuck down at the Safety level fiddling around with config files and packages. With OS X I don't have to worry about any of the lower level stuff, I'm doing what *I* want to do, not what the OS forces me to do.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[fnj]

So ... I worked on my old Linux box. Then Ubuntu switched to Unity, and I was like "this again? I went back to Linux to get AWAY from this."

For the love of god, not this shit. Linux is all about CHOICE. Who fucking CARES what the default desktop is? It's for people literally too lazy to bother trying to find their best match. Besides Unity and GNOME3 for the tasteless brainwashed, there is always KDE4/5. If KDE4/5 is too bloated to taste, there are Cinnamon, MATE (essentially GNOME2), Trinity (essentially KDE3) , Xfce, and LXDE. Enligtenment has its partisans too. If every one of those seem too heavy and in-the-way, you can use one of the large variety of old standby (and plenty of newer) window managers that are less than full-blown desktop environments. Some of the better-known and wiely-used ones are awesome, Blackbox, dwm, Fluxbox, FVWM, IceWM, ratpoison, twm, and Xmonad. That's far from an exhaustive list.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Hognoxious]

My brother and his wife had also switched to Mac

Clearly false.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[MightyYar]

How in the world will "mobile" go away? I don't pretend to know what the Next Big Thing is, but people are not going to return to physical keyboards anytime soon. I'm sitting on the couch with a laptop right now, but only because the kids have the tablets. This laptop is 6 years old, and I doubt I'd bother with another except that I need to do real work on it - as you point out, much of the new efforts are directed towards mobile.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[smittyoneeach]

Ever the Wally-esque undertaking, Slashdot has dodged this bullet by keeping its design head welded to the pillow.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[smittyoneeach]

it has been going steadily backwards, albeit slowly.

I thought that Adam Sandler mesured the velocity and arrived "At a Medium Pace".

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[radoslav.dejanovic]

Releasing shit is inexcusable.

Indeed - I still remember when KDE 4 was released as "production ready". Then I dragged my background out of the screen. Then users unleashed. Then one of KDE developers said: "Who needs users, anyway?" (not sure if he used the word "anyway", though...)

The KDE team backed up by stating that the users were all wrong - that the release was just for developers. As if all the previous news and blog rants were nonexistent, and as if they did not specifically tell the users that they're done with KDE 3 maintenance and that they should better jump ship while it is hot...

That faithful year I moved on to Gnome. Then Gnome people did the same. Now I am using Cinnamon and haven't looked back since.

People are just not aware of the immense power they have with a system that lets them change parts of it and still get it working the way they want.
Oh, yes - sorry, Ubuntu users. ;-)

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[RoccamOccam]

"That faithful year ...."

For future reference, the commonly-used phrase is "That fateful year ...."

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, no, I don't want to invest hours in window managers.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[mfearby]

I'm using Yosemite and I've not once been pressured into setting up a Facebook account by Apple. I don't have one, and don't care for it. I'm still not sure what you mean by 'mobilization' of OS X.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[mfearby]

Nope. That's a statement of fact. It was my brother's wife who bought a Mac a year or so before my brother. We both liked to tease her about it but she shot back with the fact that she'd never rebooted (a slight exaggeration) and had dozens of browser tabs open. The writing was on the wall when my brother (an overclocking nerd clearly not sympathetic to locked-down hardware and OSes) finally switched, and with Linux going down the toilet, Mac was the only logical choice for me.

Re: Change the channel, Marge

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly that's exactly how it works.
All system defaults should be good enough for the cattle. Else it will end up being a nerds thing.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[jshackney]

Why constantly fix a car that barely works?

I'm still running Debian, CentOS, and PC-BSD, but I can understand the frustration.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[nukenerd]

How in the world will "mobile" go away? .... people are not going to return to physical keyboards anytime soon

Yes they are, or they have never abandoned them. Typing (as opposed to just looking and reading) is just awful on a touchscreen. Also, the fad for smallness is going away already. The marketing droids will represent keyboards to the next generation as a "new idea", as they did analog watches.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Kjella]

For the love of god, not this shit. Linux is all about CHOICE. Who fucking CARES what the default desktop is? It's for people literally too lazy to bother trying to find their best match. Besides Unity and GNOME3 for the tasteless brainwashed, there is always KDE4/5. If KDE4/5 is too bloated to taste, there are Cinnamon, MATE (essentially GNOME2), Trinity (essentially KDE3) , Xfce, and LXDE. Enligtenment has its partisans too. If every one of those seem too heavy and in-the-way, you can use one of the large variety of old standby (and plenty of newer) window managers that are less than full-blown desktop environments. Some of the better-known and wiely-used ones are awesome, Blackbox, dwm, Fluxbox, FVWM, IceWM, ratpoison, twm, and Xmonad. That's far from an exhaustive list.

The choice of DE is not merely a theme or a set of configuration changes, Unfortunately there's generally not a good separation between the system utilities and the UI it runs on, so it is not just a visual change but you're throwing away most everything you'd find under the control panel of device management, disk mangement, wired and wireless network connections, keyboard and localization settings, mouse settings, bluetooth settings, display settings, sound settings, power management, user management, accessibility options, default applications and so on. Switch DE and you're usually practically starting over, not to mention they actually have different capabilities so what worked under one won't work under the other. It's the same problem that you typically have when the answer to a problem is to switch distro, most likely the new distro will break in some other way sending you on a time-consuming and often futile search for a solution where everything you want works at the same time. Also every six months or so people will tell you all your old experiences are invalid, try again now on the current version.

The problem is they won't leave you any other choice but to switch. Many projects seem to be run by UX fascists, they're not offering an alternative they're taking away the old way and saying this is the new way and you will like it. I wish somebody would take a real modern desktop and write a GUI-less back-end leaving the front-ends to implement just the visuals. Then it wouldn't be such a big deal if they decided to break shit, just use a different front end to provide that functionality.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people used laptops to hook up to some projector so they could try to convince the decision makers of a potential customer that their product was better than the products of the competition, or that the only thing they were missing was the product they were now demonstrating. Others need laptops to fill in an online form to describe what they did. I know many who just had a laptop to check their mails whenever they had the change to get a coffee in a WiFi enable shop. All these use cases can be replaced by smart phones and tablets.

There is no reason to carry a heavy laptop around that needs to recharge every other customer visit when you can have a tablet that goes all day without needing to recharge and gets its own Internet access through G3/4.

'Real work' is a lot more than someone sitting behind a desk typing all day. Programmers and accountants, those are the people who need physical keyboards. Most other people are better of with a touch screen.

When I look a the warehouse of my company. People had a clipboard with a paper where they put check marks and write numbers on a real paper. When they were done, they went to a computer with a physical keyboard to put the same check marks and numbers in a computer program. Meanwhile someone else might have updated a number or check mark on another paper and the old school phone was needed to communicate what has to happen with those numbers.

We gave them a tablet to put check marks and enter numbers and they no longer need the double work and they no longer have problems with inconsistent data. And yes, people in warehouse also do 'real work'. They are the ones who make the 'x amount of items remaining' work on your business's webshop and make sure that the product that is ordered before 23:59 is delivered the next morning. This last service was -not- possible with the physical keyboard. Except off course when you force people to carry around a heavy laptop all day instead of the phablet that is attached to their sleeve.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Anonymous Coward]

Releasing shit is inexcusable.

That sounds equally dumb.

Using new and untested stuff for production is dumb, when you cannot cope with the problems.

Releasing shit is perfectly fine, using shit is your own mistake.
Read the release notes or use a stable distro.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[dinfinity]

I have a 4k monitor, with 125% scaling enabled.
The website where I order food recently managed to increase the amount of whitespace and lack of content to such an extent that now generally 10 rows of food fit on the screen.
10.

The rows are (pre-scaling) at least 140px high, even if no images are included. It's ridiculous.

Of course it doesn't help that determining the dpi of the user device wasn't well-supported in the past. Responsive CSS should really use min-resolution instead of relying on pixel counts:
http://stackoverflow.com/quest...

The workaround for the whitespace plague of course is creating and always applying some user CSS code for frequently visited sites.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[MightyYar]

You are stuck in an argument from 2006. Keyboards will not go away - as you imply, they are needed for real work. But the consumer world has moved on - you absolutely do not need a keyboard for consumption, or even social media. The "fad of smallness" already was under attack when Zoolander parodied it in 2001. The iPhone began the re-biggering of mass market cell phones, and they seem to have settled on a 5-6 inch form factor given their current capabilities.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if what you describe would relate at all to mobilization, but after reading about mission control changes I agree that does suck.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Ol Olsoc]

I never noticed. Of course, I never used KDE or Gnome or some other crappy "modern" window-manager. fvwm has all I need and excellent customization possibilities in addition.

Huh. I like to try out new things. Often the old things are better, but when declaring something as crappy, it's more authoritative to have first hand experience. That's why I keep a sacrificial machine around. It's actually fun, and sometimes you find out that the "smart guys" are full of it.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Anonymous Coward]

I would disagree. There are two platforms that explicitly got wholly consumed in chasing mobile UI: Windows and Gnome 3. Windows 10 at least rectifies those mistakes, though it does make a mess of update and privacy policies, but the mobile-ui-for-all part did go away.

Gnome 3 has, if anything, double downed on that, but even worse has made it even harder to customize your enviornment. Now you have to hope there's some extension out there that is maintained (since gnome breaks them every 6 months) or learn their partiuclar scheme of mostly-CSS (and again get befuddled every 6 months when they make changes, making it very rough to find a set of third party documenation for *your* 6 month window of Gnome and piss poor documentation even for those who would be willing to work on it).

KDE 4's thematic problem was not mobile at all, it was chasing damn widgets. Originally, the KDE4 panel was just a fixed widget that happened to try to be along a screen edge and the right size, playing havoc when a resolution change would occur. Add to this releasing before they had anything usable. Their approach to Plasma 5/KF5 is better and when it works right it isn't too shabby, but it still day to day feels glitchier.

Other Linux DEs are pretty much not really changing. This is both good and bad. Good in that they are avoiding getting caught up in things, but bad should the time come when Wayland actually becomes a thing. Also I wouldn't have minded a GNUstep environment more fully realized, and with a compositor (they aren't just eye candy).

OSX I don't actually get a chance to use, but from what I've read, the dubious changes are not mobile related, just... changing their minds about stuff in general.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Anonymous Coward]

> Indeed - I still remember when KDE 4 was released as "production ready". Then I dragged my background out of the screen. Then users unleashed. Then one of KDE developers said: "Who needs users, anyway?" (not sure if he used the word "anyway", though...)

KDE people warned everyone about KDE4 being too new. I myself stayed in KDE3 longer than everyone, starting to use KDE4 at 4.3 or 4.4 (I'm not sure).

Those who used 4.0 did so because distros said it was pretty stable -- that means it's good for listening to music or watching videos, not for writing your thesis. Something was lost in the translation and people started to complain when KDE4 wasn't really ready.

The same is happening again, but less people are embarking on the Plasma 5 boat now. Maybe some have learned. I don't have any doubts about P5 being cool, and will use myself... just not now.

OTOH, the Trinity guys were too upset to work with KDE (and would these support version 3 if they had stakes in 4?) The fact is we need KDE3 for older machines, simply because KDE3 is better than Gnome2 and Xfce. IMHO I think it even rivals W7. KDE is better than W10, but too heavy for 512MB machines.

The result of the lack of support for KDE3 is Xfce's victory as the only viable UI in older PCs -- unless they really old and require Openbox / IceWM / jwm / fvwm / etc.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Ol Olsoc]

OS X doesn't suffer from the 'mobilization' of the desktop

That isn't quite true. It is suffering from 'mobilization', and also 'socialization'.

And yet, I use mine the same way as I've used it for years.

No facebook, no twitter, no iCloud - just applications. It works exactly the same way as when they went to 10 - I use only the new features I like. caveat: Spotlight has been ruined.

What they do, is offer options. If I want a Windows 8 sorta interface I can use launchpad. Not that anyone does, because that's gotta be the worst use of desktop space ever - just like W8 - but if someone does like it, it's an option.

So I've been derping around In OSX like I always have, with no weird adjustments to make other than abandoning Spotlight. One example out of the many that other OSs have foisted on their users isn't too bad at all

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, I don't remember the KDE 4 people saying that the early releases where production ready. I do remember that the KDE people use another version system. x.0, x.1, x.2 are all releases that aren't ready yet. This was the case with KDE 1.x, 2.x and 3.x. You were better of waiting for the x.3 or even x.5 release to have a production ready release. But KDE did not start as a GPL project and they didn't use the same version philosophy as GPL projects. From the nineties I still remember an interview with one of the developers that people had to wait for a x.5 for a stable release, but where welcome to test x.0/x.1/... releases to help fix bugs.

The big problem with KDE4 was that major Linux distribution ditched KDE3 for KDE 4.x where x

I never had problems with KDE4, but of course, the first KDE4 I installed was 4.8 which was production ready and remained stable throughout every update.

The biggest problem I have with the desktop environments is that they just seem to bring an update to their project: Gnome 2 to 3, KDE 3 to 4. But in reality it is a completely different program. It would have been better if Gnome 2.x was just the latest Gnome. They should have chosen a different name for Gnome 3. Maybe Shell DE or whatever. This way people could still install Gnome 2 a long side the latest product of the creators of Gnome. Currently is it impossible to install Gnome 3 next to Gnome 2 since one updates/upgrades the other.

The KDE people had to name KDE 4 just Plasma. So you could still choose to install the latest KDE (3.5) and give Plasma a try. Now KDE4 was an upgrade of KDE 3.5, but it was not production ready. You could have a system with Gnome, Shell, KDE and Plasma. Two DE made by the Gnome team and two DE made by the KDE team.

It seems that they wanted to keep the current user base by not changing names, but instead of keeping them they alienated their user base with confusing decisions. I personally like the Gnome Shell idea, creating workspaces on the fly. I love it. But Gnome 3 came only usable (bug free and enough features) starting from 3.10 for me. I remained on an old Debian old-stable for my daily work. That shouldn't have been necessary. They could have simple given Gnome 2 to the community. Gnome 2.13, supported by the community (not by fedora/red hat). Bug fixes where enough for me. I didn't need extra features, nobody did I think. And there was this add on system anyway that could add some features if you really wanted. Making it compatible with never versions of Glibc or the Kernel, that was all that was necessary. And I think that could be easily achieved by the same team of people that are now doing lots of hard work with a fork of Gnome 2.x without needing to choose a non related name like Coriander or was it Cinnamon?

Now we have these DE that are forks from 'finished' DE of the Gnome and KDE team that have names that most linux users never heard about, and that very little mainstream Linux distribution care about. If you want to DE of your choice you have to be lucky that there are repositories for your version of the distribution and have to be knowledgeable enough to know how to add those repositories and how to install those DE's without messing up your system.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[laffer1]

Linux is not about choice. Linux is about winning at all costs. systemd! pulseaudio! deprecating ifconfig. Wayland.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, I've not noticed anything of those IOSification of OSX people are talking about. Except that optional full screen icon thing that I don't even see anymore because I simply removed it from the icon bar (and touch pad gesture list). But what change bothers me most in one of the latest updates, is defaulting to the iCloud thing to save my documents. I do not want my document on the Internet. I want to have a setting where I can change the default save location to Documents or to the last location. But insisting on saving to the cloud by default is annoying.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Kjella]

I got a UHD monitor and what I really miss is a simple way to say "This application is stupid, tell it that my screen is 1920x1080 and scale it 200%." Same thing with browsers, though they could optimistically render images at full resoulation if the image file has higher resolution than the display size.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Anonymous Coward]

Its DE doesn't throw the baby out with the bath water every 12 to 18 months.

You only say that because you have only been using OS X for 3+ years (assuming the 3+ means less than 4). It's possible you haven't noticed because after only 3+ years, you aren't familiar enough with the Mac to notice when something goes missing.

Workspaces arbitrarily changed from a useful grid to mandatory linear layout. Ditching a working file search for Spotlight that only allowed results to be sorted based on name, kind or "last opened". Dropping features during a crusade to eliminate features requiring filesystem metadata then turning around and going full metadata without reimplementing the lost features. Replacing mDNSresponder with discoveryd for no good reason since discoveryd didn't work, the proof being that they switched it back a few updates later. All of a sudden refusing to display users' custom icons is another one.

If you stay on the Mac, you will find Apple is constantly throwing out the baby with the bathwater, replacing what works with what isn't ready and leaving users with no recourse because Apple only supports the most recent couple of OS X versions with security updates.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Anonymous Coward]

Getting rid of scrollbar arrows and implementing reverse scrolling (at least the latter can be changed), and the proliferation of hidden UI elements (to save screen space) are nothing if not motivated by unifying the mobile and desktop experience, to the detriment of the latter.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[chmod a x mojo]

OS X doesn't suffer from the 'mobilization' of the desktop.

Bullshit! There are some things Mac does quite well ( having quick look would be awesome on my Windows / Linux machines ), and others that suck. It is no different than any other OS.

I started to use a Mac at OS/X 10.9 since they are so heavily used in academia. 10.10.x switched over to the iOS shit-tastic flat look on everything. It is atrocious to try and differentiate between UI elements now on a default install. Thankfully there are more than a few UI enhancements ( free even ) that can be installed to make it not look like a flat sheet of paper on the screen.

I won't even get into the blur crap they slapped all over the UI after they copied it from iOS land either....

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[MyAlternateID]

I really can't wait until this 'mobile' fad is over, and the 'UX designers' find some other fad to chase after.

Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Hognoxious]

From the post I replied to: "Compiz, beryl, metro are mistakes, right? Wrong"

So which distro of Win 8 do you recommend?

Re: Change the channel, Marge

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux is not "about" choice. It is simply one of its greatest advantages.

It helps no one to ship crap as a default... Or to yell at them when they were justifiably put off by crap as a default.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Anonymous Coward]

When was that? They've changed the installer program and PCBSD is pretty much a Linux distro as far as outward appearances go. It's basically just FreeBSD with a nice default GUI. You can even install it to FreeBSD if you'd like.

Personally, I'm going to be going back to FreeBSD as soon as I can figure out how to get Crashplan installed. As great as Linux Mint is for Linux, it still suffers from some of the asinine decisions being made. Granted, the people running the distro have much better sense than the other major distros with regards to what is and isn't included.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[afgam28]

I'm not sure what you're referring to here. Can you give any examples of how recent versions of OS X suffer from mobilization?

Expose didn't get taken away, it just got renamed to "Mission Control" and got merged with Spaces (which was a good idea) in OS X Lion. They also made it work with multitouch trackpad gestures (i.e. you can activate it by swiping up with 3 fingers). That was probably iPhone-inspired, but it was done in a way that was very suitable for a desktop/laptop environment.

The only thing I can think of that got a bit of a negative reaction was the flat design that was introduced in Yosemite. But this has nothing to do with mobilization, it's just a coincidence that both the mobile and desktop OSes moved towards a flat design at the same time.

Re: Change the channel, Marge

[Anonymous Coward]

Discoveryd had a major hole in it I read. So they replaced it with their old mDNS until they fixed discoveryd.

Re: Change the channel, Marge

[Anonymous Coward]

"I think I got the black lung pops. **cough cough***"

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[David_Hart]

From the post I replied to: "Compiz, beryl, metro are mistakes, right? Wrong"

So which distro of Win 8 do you recommend?

Windows 10, with all of the tracking settings turned off... ;-)

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Anonymous Coward]

Try PCBSD.

I changed to FreeBSD ( last year) from linux (using linux since 1995).

I will NOT go back to linux, Systemd well there's some big time crap/junk.
Linux has just turned into to much junk, Well what is the flavor this week?

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[BronsCon]

The difference here is that he didn't get tired of the version of Unity he liked (his car's paint and wheels), he didn't like the version of Unity that was forced upon him as a replacement. That's more akin to selling your car that you love after someone bashes it all to hell with a sledgehammer and steals your wheels; depending on the severity of the damage (and with body work it doesn't take much) it may be less costly to scrap it and buy a new one.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[BronsCon]

While I generally agree with those who say Snow Leopard was Apple's best release, I also have to say that Yosemite does seem to be an (small) step back in that direction. Here's hoping that El Capitan continues that trend and we eventually end up with a faster and more stable version of what Snow Leopard gave us.

I also don't see the "mobilization" and "socialization" that some people are talking about, though I have been watching the OS become more of a consumption platform than a productive tool since Lion. They haven't destroyed it as a productive tool and, again, it seems they're starting to turn it back around with Yosemite, so I'm still using it for now. We'll see how long that lasts.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Dutch Gun]

I think there's a reason Linux Mint gained popularity, especially now with it's Cinnamon desktop. It kept things simple and traditional on the UI side, while building on what's good about Ubuntu. As PC users, we've seen the slow evolution of a fairly standard user experience on the desktop. I think there's a reason we haven't seen much "innovation" there, in a similar way to how there's very little "innovation" in the basic controls of automobiles. I think the major issues have largely been tackled, and for the most part, the interface works quite optimally for mouse and keyboard users. There's simply no need to try to re-imagine the entire process. Boring, yes. But also productive and comfortable.

When I tried out a Windows 8 machine, I actually had a harder time transitioning to it than OS X or Linux Mint. The first time I tried it, I couldn't even figure out how to close a modern app. How ridiculous is that for someone who's used Windows for 20 years? Fortunately, with whatever other issues people may have with Windows 10, the UI is sane again.

BTW, I've been trying since yesterday to reach the Trinity Desktop site to see what it's all about, and it's been down, and apparently not for just me. That doesn't exactly inspire confidence. Well, I'm pretty sure I'll be sticking with Linux Mint.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[trek00]

where a normal DE feels to me harmful, I found LXDE really useful: fast, usable and completely customizable

it is essentially a windowmanager (openbox) + a filemanager (pcmanfm) + a panel (I'm using fbpanel as substitute) + some small utils (editor, login screen, network manager, etc)

every single piece of the environment can be changed with another that you like more, letting you revive the old days "build your linux"

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Chas]

Now that I've been on OS X for 3+ years I've never looked back. Its DE doesn't throw the baby out with the bath water every 12 to 18 months.

No, you just have to worry that some turtleneck will get in a snit and Apple will change hardware platforms.

Re: Change the channel, Marge

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. Yosemite. iTunes.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[mfearby]

Gee, the old Power PC to Intel chestnut, eh? Time has shown that Apple made the right decision on that one.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[mfearby]

I may have noticed the iCloud default once but when you save it elsewhere most applications (that I've seen, anyway) remember your last-used location. So it's not a major issue.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[mfearby]

My brief look-see at FreeBSD would have to have been at least 5 years ago. But why bother checking it out again? Mac is already BSD underneath. I've got a rock solid unix with a damned good UI on top of it. I also once used Linux Mint and yet now you are having to leave it for something else. This is the story of many Linux users: having to chop and change all the time. I decided to get off that merry-go-round.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[mfearby]

Why should I bother conducting "research" into which window manager might give me a reasonable approximation of a sane and stable UI like I have on my Mac? I've done plenty of research in my many years of using Linux, and the end result was that Linux on the desktop was a fool's errand. Unless Apple decides to follow the Ubuntu/Unity or Microsoft/Metro examples, there's no point looking around for an alternative when I have no need and there is certainly no signs that there is something better out there I'm missing out on.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[exomondo]

Maybe you should paint the car with one of the very many colors that are available and put some nice wheels on it to match.

Sure, I'll do that on my project car where I'm doing it just for the fun of it but for most people in most use cases the computer operating system is a tool to do a job.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Anonymous Coward]

From the post I replied to: "Compiz, beryl, metro are mistakes, right? Wrong"

So which distro of Win 8 do you recommend?

Windows 8 doesnt have "distros" you fool. But you can replace the shell with something like litestep, pokki, retroUI, talisman, etc.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a Mac for work and I find it difficult and bulky. Don't get me wrong, they've done a lot of work, but it just doesn't fit what I do well. A few things I wish they would fix:

Make maximizing consistent
Allow me to actually close the finder using a keyboard shortcut
Allow me to quickly divide the screen into sections for my applications (I know there are some expanded tools that do this)
Make switching between windows of the same application make sense (when I switch back and forth between many terminal windows and many finder windows, it loses the order of things)
Allow me to interact with remote SFTP directories without additional softare
Be more intelligent about power management and don't suspend while I'm in the middle of downloading a large file and step away for a few minutes.

There are a few more, but honestly, I've been pretty happy with my Linux DE (Been using Gnome and have been pleasantly surprised by it.)
If anyone knows how to address a few of those issues that I've run into on the Mac, I'm all ears.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Barsteward]

Along with all the KDE4 trolls of that time, you obviously had reading and comprehension problems with the KDE 4.0 release. It was released as a development release for app coders to port their apps upto KDE4.
Some of the distros screwed up, not KDE.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Barsteward]

"Yawn. Not *another* desktop environment. " - that implies you didn't know it was an existing DE, thats the research i mean, you knee-jerked a response at the headline.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, so I run Mint at present, but I'm open to new stuff. So I look at the PCBSD handbook with a view to running initially a dual boot system with Mint, and I find:
PC-BSD does not have full read/write support for EXT4 - so I can't share my current data partitions between Linux and BSD - OK so I can still *try* PC-BSD with read-only access to my EXT4 data partitions. But this would be a read pain if I wanted to switch to it (not insurmountable though)
PC-BSD does not come with a built-in partition manager - OK, I can get round this by pre-partitoning in Linux.
PC-BSD does not install into a logical partition - must be a primary partition - huh? - but my primary partitions on my OS disc are in use already (plenty of space for logical partitions though). Stuff this, I give up.
I suppose I could install it into a VM but I'm not convinced I have enough RAM for this; and anyhow, the above stuff has already put me off. Not being able to install into a logical partition is tragically pathetic.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[vlad30]

so, do you sell your car when you get tired of the color or no longer like the wheels?

Maybe you should paint the car with one of the very many colors that are available and put some nice wheels on it to match. Sounds like someone doesn't like to get their hands dirty. Maybe Linus isn't for you.

Actually 99% of the population do sell or (wish they could replace) when they tire of some aspect of their car and pay mechanics to get their hands dirty, others like being weekend mechanics while others grew out of it and found other things to keep us busy

Same with computers an IT products

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[gfxguy]

I'm sorry, I should have continued - yes, "ugghh..." was my initial reaction, I did change it. Been using Linux since the early 90's, and I know a lot of old-timers don't like Ubuntu, but Ubuntu makes it easy - I want to program, not tweak the system to death, but at least there's some fairly easy choices.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Anonymous Coward]

> Make maximizing consistent

Mac OS X doesn't really have "maximize." The green button is actually a "zoom" button that toggles between the default state as determined by the application, and the "user state" which is how you sized the window. I don't really mind that behavior, but I wish they'd made it look like a toggle button.

> Allow me to actually close the finder using a keyboard shortcut

Not sure what you mean here, but you can't close the Finder. You can close all the Finder windows with Command-Option-W, and you can hide them all with Command-H.

> Allow me to quickly divide the screen into sections for my applications (I know there are some expanded tools that do this)

I think they were trying to get equivalent functionality with Spaces, but it doesn't work very well and the gestures to control it are hard to remember. I kept triggering them by accident, so I turned it off.

> Make switching between windows of the same application make sense (when I switch back and forth between many terminal windows and many finder windows, it loses the order of things)

The order is always consistent, but Command-Tab only cycles through applications. You use Command-` to cycle between windows within an app.

> Allow me to interact with remote SFTP directories without additional softare

That would be nice. I use Cyberduck. It's much nicer than the Finder's "go to server" interface.

> Be more intelligent about power management and don't suspend while I'm in the middle of downloading a large file and step away for a few minutes.

If you're plugged into a power adapter, I believe you can fix this by checking "wake for network access," but that's not an option on battery power.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[Chas]

Oh. No doubt.

Still does jack and shit to alleviate all the pain that it caused.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[epyT-R]

Sure it does. The finder has been dumbed down substantially since the initial releases.. It probably peaked around 10.5 or 10.6, then they started 'ios'ing the system.

Re:Change the channel, Marge

[epyT-R]

Windows 10 does not rectify those mistakes. Yeah they brought back a half usable start menu but that's about it.. Now, instead of the single confusing control panel they brought out for vista (which in turn replaced the more usable xp panel), the user must now navigate back and forth between two to get things configured..and the new one is half broken (monitor management for ex). Microsoft seems dead set against giving people the configurability they want (window metric configuration for ex) in a sane, consistent manner.

Gnome 3 is terrible and the project shows the same kind of willful ignorance of what users want that microsoft does. Of course, this didnt' start with 3, they've had this minimalism ad reductum attitude for a long time, cutting configurability from 2. This attitude also shows in other OSS projects, another big one being systemd.

OSX suffered from 'ios'ification with the release of 10.7, along with the isuite. Final cut X was dumbed down, too, and dubbed 'imovie pro' by users, and from what I saw, the name was justified.

Year of the Linux desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

For certain it will be this year now! /s

terrible website

[Anonymous Coward]

already slashdotted (is that still a thing?) also what are they doing posting huge .png files?

RIP, little shared hosting account.

Yaaa!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using TDE since KDE 4 came out and made me want to puke.

I'm off to download the new version.

I just hope they haven't added any systemd dependencies. That would suck. :(

YADE

[Hognoxious]

Choice is good.

I think Gnome 3 sucks, but having figured how to get Mate to pretty much work how I like, am I going to start from scratch with something else? That'll be the same for the poor benighted fools who use Cinnamon, LXDE, KDE etc.

It'd have to be really awesome to be worth the time investment.

Why not clone OS X?

[countach]

There was a time when people thought Linux would become a contender on the desktop. That basically hasn't happened, and it's not going to happen in a big way. Thus linux users are starved for good native apps (kinda a chicken and egg thing going on too).

Now if you ditched KDE and Gnome and simply went with a full on clone of OS X, suddenly a whole ton of apps would come to Linux, whether it be running OS X apps as-is or whether you convince developers to do a simple recompile for Linux. Whether you like OS X or don't like it, the reality is this would boost Linux, bring apps, and give a shoe in for a possible desktop future for Linux.

And the reality is, OS X is actually quite good. Apple developers have always quite liked developing for the platform, users apparently like it, so nobody would be terribly upset.

Or you can keep running with the failed KDE/Gnome wars.

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[jones_supa]

I'm seriously starting to look at Macs as well. Linux needs constant tweaking to keep it running properly, and Windows 10 is ugly and filled with spying features.

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[chipschap]

There was a time when people thought Linux would become a contender on the desktop. That basically hasn't happened, and it's not going to happen in a big way. Thus linux users are starved for good native apps

We are? I have everything I need to do actual work. Maybe I don't have the latest 3D first person shooter or what have you, or a word processor with a ribbon interface that packs in 1,000 superfluous features, but I can easily get done what I need to get done to be productive.

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[chipschap]

Linux needs constant tweaking to keep it running properly

Really? Could have fooled me. It works out of the box to do everything most people need.

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[bigfinger76]

That has not been my experience with Linux.

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[Anonymous Coward]

> I'm seriously starting to look at Macs as well.

I have to "look at Macs" all the time: my $EMPLOYER *is* a Mac shop. Luckily they let me use whatever I want on my box, since I'm in charge of backends. My choice as an "DE"? It's FVWM.

Yes, yes. I installed (and tried) all of 'em. Gnome. XFCE. For a short time even some KDE.

Mac? Shudder. Feels like in jail. With white-tiled walls. Asylum perhaps?

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[serviscope_minor]

Constant tweaking like what?

I find it (along with every other OS) needs a bunch of tweaking on installation: bringing over .bashrc, setting up preferences, getting favourite/necessary programs installed etc etc.

But once that's done, keeping ubuntu running is just a question of occasionally typing "sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade" and perhaps once every two years, bumping from one LTS release to the next. I gather if you're a WIMPy sort of person, that happens with a few mouse clicks instead.

IOW, installing security updates and occasionally upgrading to a new major version, though the latter is strictly optional. That's exactly the same as every other desktop OS.

Keeping Arch (and I suspect Gentoo) running in the face of regular updates is sometimes a bit trickier, but they're explicitly distros for hacky people who like to hack and be right on the leading edge. You have to be pretty explicit in your choice to wade through the Arch installation manual rather than just dump an ubuntu install image in the drive.

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are people working on this as we speak: http://gnustep.org/

It is not very popular because people who run Linux generally don't want a clone of the Mac desktop. The point of free software is freedom. People can do what they want. It's not about picking one thing and ramming down the throats of everybody who uses a computer. It's definitely not about taking market share and making sure everybody is doing the same thing.

KDE and Gnome are hardly failures. There are many, many people who use each and love it. There are many developers who love developing it. Many other people don't like it. That's OK. In fact, if I were to say one thing that has been disappointing about these projects (and Compiz/Unity as well) is adopting the attitude that Apple/MS have: My way or the highway. Luckily in Linux the highway is well built with many interesting stops along the way.

Personally, I have run a Gnu/Linux box since 1992. I currently do not have KDE, Gnome, Unity *or* GnuStep (though I have used all of these in the past). I'm very happy with my set up and my computer works just as if it was meant to use what I'm using now. Because it was. Imagine having a system where *you* choose.

I don't think I would ever be happy with a Mac. YMMV.

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[serviscope_minor]

Now if you ditched KDE and Gnome and simply went with a full on clone of OS X

Yuck no!

We've already been through this once when people were trying to clone Windows and it sucked then. The OSX envy sucks just as much. Seriously, I know where I can buy a mac and I choose not to. I use Linux because I like it and think it's *better* than the competition.

All the windows or OSX envy does is make Linux into a second rate knock off of OSX or Windows. It'll never be a one-for-one replacement and it stops it from being good on its own terms.

Sure we won't get as many users as if we somehow managed to replace OSX, but firstly that's never going to happen and secondly trying to be a knockoff is probably worse because then it's not better in any way, so you really may as well just use a mac.

Now if you're referring to OpenSTEP's effort to clone all the class libraries and a MACH-O binary loader, then sure, I have no problem with that. Seems like an OK idea to me.

Or you can keep running with the failed KDE/Gnome wars.

Or just use FVWM if you have taste.

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux is a piece of shit out of the box but you can sculpt it to whatever shape you want.

That's going in my quotes file.

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[Anonymous Coward]

It'll never be a one-for-one replacement and it stops it from being good on its own terms.

The same could be said about Chrome and Firefox.

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[Blaskowicz]

I'm finding support is going backwards for my old nvidia graphics with the newer kernels and Xorg. Also I disabled the desktop long ago and can't get it back (it can display a wallpaper though), not a real problem but the workaround would be to delete the DE's user files.
I removed a dead hard drive and the system hanged on boot. The "graphical" boot prevented the message "Press S) to skip, M) for maintenance" from appearing. Fortunately I somehow knew that I had to press "S" (and to edit the fstab to comment out the dead hard drive)
Running two sound cards (onboard and card) would perhaps be useful (the card's input doesn't work, haven't tried under Windows), but I refuse to try (given that pulseaudio doesn't run if I use the onboard). Perhaps I'll get an old SB 128 and try.
I'm unable to boot my small DOS partition (not very much needed, but I had an easy way for an XP/DOS dual boot. If I could I'd reboot and play Duke Nukem 1 or something with the PC speaker, just so that I at least play something with nothing getting in the way. Perhaps with a SB 128 I would have enough DOS sound to play Dungeon Keeper even)

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[tomhath]

Linux is a piece of shit out of the box but you can sculpt it

I thought people sculpted clay and polished turds. I learned something today.

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[countach]

It will never work out of the box like OS X, because of hardware.

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[countach]

I suspect those LTS bumps are way more painful than on OSX.

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[Zobeid]

It's called GNUstep, and it has languished for many years because it's not as smexy like the KDE/Gnome wars.

Also. . . If your goal was source compatibility -- or even semi-compatibility -- with Mac OS X, you'd be forever chasing after a rapidly-moving target.

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[serviscope_minor]

In what way is a reinstall/upgrade every 2 or even 4 years cnstant tweaking? Which as you may remember was the original point.

I've had successes and failures for every major line of operating systems upgrading to a new version. You can search for "OSX upgrade failed" if you like to find a bunch of examples where OSX doesn't upgrade cleanly.

Of course you can find the same for ubuntu too. But in the case when it works, it's a question of running:

do-release-upgrade

(or clicking on the right thing if you're WIMPy), so it seems to be an odd claim that it's "way more painful" than on OS.

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[serviscope_minor]

Double reply:

Ubuntu also has another nice option. You can simply re-install from scratch without blowing away /home even if you only set up one partition, so recovering from a failed upgrade is also trivial.

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[reboot246]

You get better results with turds if you sculpt them first and then polish them.

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[Anonymous Coward]

Others have mentioned GNUstep, but it isn't just about that. RMS was trying to recreate NeXTSTEP/OpenSTEP!

GNU Mach
GNU Hurd
GNUStep

Once NeXT came out, it was the RMS freedom copy machine in action.

Linux helped push a lot of GNU stuff, but it never got RMS his vision of having a completely free NeXT. For those that don't know, OS X is the continuation of NeXTSTEP.

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[Anonymous Coward]

> I'm finding support is going backwards for my old nvidia graphics with the newer kernels and Xorg.

Don't use the Nvidia drivers, use Nouveau. It works great (I have two old cards). Just make sure your apps don't use OpenGL 2.0. In KDE4, press Alt+Shift+F12 to disable GL effects, then try OpenGL 1.2 or XRender in Settings / Desktop Effects / Advanced. Nouveau is so nice...

> I removed a dead hard drive and the system hanged on boot.

Boot with a live DVD, or CD, backup things (which you should do anyway in a machine so flimsy) and reinstall Linux on another drive. If you need to boot from a CD or USB drive and your BIOS does not allow that, use PLOP Linux -- it helps booting from a external USB pen drive or USB CD drive.

> Running two sound cards (onboard and card) would perhaps be useful (the card's input doesn't work, haven't tried under Windows), but I refuse to try (given that pulseaudio doesn't run if I use the onboard). Perhaps I'll get an old SB 128 and try.

Maybe your sound card is damaged or is incompatible with Linux (quite improbable). You may find USB audio for purchase (small speakers normally used for notebooks in trips): it's a solution which gets digital sound via USB to audio hardware outside your computer (you'll have to configure it with KDE's multimedia settings or Pulseaudio volume control).

> If I could I'd reboot and play Duke Nukem 1 or something with the PC speaker

DN is great, I'd suggest Quake or Nexuiz if your machine can handle it. But DN was funny. Try Shadow Warrior -- more or less the same fun.

Dude, you maybe attached to that machine, but I'm sure you can use it for other things -- a firewall (like me), a printer server, a file server etc. An old but more recent machine (say from 2008) might be a better option. Just test it with a live CD before buying: for that I recommend Xfce-based ones, like Linux Lite, SolydX, SparkyLinux, Handylinux etc.

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[_merlin]

OSX supports doing that too, since at least 10.3, possibly from 10.2: it's the "Archive and Install" option.

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used FVWM2 for many years now (on FreeBSD no less) and I'm not even a wonk-nerd with a neck beard. Works well and doesn't try to second guess me a la the Big Two. I can also stay out of the Gnome/KDE event horizon as well. Except for Apps, but apps aren't DEs.

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's claim about Linux requiring constant tweaking is absolute bullshit. I don't know anybody at all anywhere having to continually tweak it. WTF are you doing with it? Why would you lie?

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[Blaskowicz]

Thanks for caring, my intention was to rant and point out a few issues (PC stuck when removing a data hard drive is the silliest.
Nouveau works but without 3D acceleration these days, though I shall try going back to the 3.13 kernel.

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[fisted]

the reality is this would boost Linux, bring apps, and give a shoe in for a possible desktop future for Linux.

And why exactly would existing users care about "a possible desktop future" or running OS X "apps"?
Good grief.

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried OSX for 2 weeks. Hated it. Seems they required funny keyboard shortcuts not used by any other OS.

If you like OSX - look at Canonical's "Unity".

After 2 weeks with OSX trying to do everything I normal do daily, I gave up. It was just too hard. What I really hated most was how Apple renamed common things to something else. Why isn't CIFS called CIFS everywhere? Why isn't ssh and sftp called those things? Drove me crazy.

I'm back to loading Ubuntu Server, then adding openbox for the GUI. Just tried i3 and awesome - eeeewwww. They are worse than OSX! Tried KDE, LXDE, XFCE, Mate, Cinamon, and about 10 others.

What I really want is fvwm-crystal, but without the ugly window frames.
openbox is ok, but the XML config file sucks. Give me yaml or ini-file, please. I'm not asking for a config editor - don't want that - using any normal text editor to alter the config is mandatory to me.

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually since 10.5 or so they simply removed the 'Archive and Install' as an option; it became the default installation process. If you install on a volume with an existing OS X it keeps everything, if there isn't an existing install it builds it from scratch. If you want to nuke&pave an OSX install you have to erase the volume from within the installer.

Re: Why not clone OS X?

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about? I use ssh and sftp in command line all the time, using those names. They haven't changed the names. The utils are still the same name as every other distro.

If OS x was "too hard" for you then perhaps you need to give up on computers. My 63 year old 9th grade educated dad uses OS X all day. Granted not doing heavy lifting but still using it like a normal user would.

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[Leslie43]

There was a time when people thought Linux would become a contender on the desktop.

There was a time?
I still meet people who think it's just around the corner, not to mention every new Windows release brings those expectations.

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[theArtificial]

Why not roll them in glitter?

Re: Why not clone OS X?

[fluffernutter]

It's not that osx is too hard, it is just more inefficient than any other window manager. Take the menu at the top as an example. Regardless of where your working window is, you need to move the cursor to the top of the screen to chose an option. I find doing that over and over again is exhausting. On the contrary, Windows and Linux have running tasks and the start menu at the bottom of the screen but you don't need to go there very often. In fact most start menus now you can use simply by pressing the windows key and typing what you want. Osx has plenty other frustrations as well. I find that applications never really maximize properly. The finder window only maximizes vertically in Yosemite, leaving most of the desktop visible. The other day I was trying to maximize xcode on my non-widescreen display and xcode would only stay in a widescreen ratio. I couldn't even resize it down to the bottom of the screen. Also to my knowledge there is no quick resizing feature to only take half the screen as in Windows when you slide to the left or right edge. These are things that I really miss when I use osx, to the point that the OS frustrates me to no end. Also there seems to be so much focus on the touchpad and gestures, but if your programming it doesn't make sense to move your hands to the touchpad so those functions are almost useless for me.

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[mfearby]

You'll be glad you did if you do get a Mac. Machines will last you 5 years and the OS is so stable. In fact, I started with a Mac Mini for 1 year then upgraded to a Macbook Pro, and used Time Machine to transfer everything from one to the other. There is absolutely no way I would trust such a thing on Windows but with Mac, I'm still using my profile copied from that Mac Mini and I've had no problems whatsoever.

Mac is an excellent Unix with a desktop that's done right.

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[mfearby]

Using various hardware over the years I would, from the time to time, experience complete X lock-ups. That was another reason I ditched Linux for a Mac. I've had no hardware/software issues at all in the past 3+ years. With PC hardware you never quite knew what was at fault.

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[mfearby]

After about 12 months an LTS release really starts to feel dated and you find yourself wishing you'd had newer packages from the various testing/unstable branches, which come with their own host of problems. It's a constantly moving feast of nightmares. Apple has solved that problem for me.

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[JThundley]

Yeah but then Apple fights you every step of the way. Remember what happened with the clones? They'd throw roadblock after roadblock after a team trying to make an open source OSX.

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you seen elementary? It looks pretty much like a clone of OS X to me.

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't use the Nvidia drivers, use Nouveau. It works great (I have two old cards). Just make sure your apps don't use OpenGL 2.0.

Are we seeing why the Year of the Linux Desktop never came? Or why people say it *still* isn't ready for the desktop yet?

In KDE4, press Alt+Shift+F12 to disable GL effects, then try OpenGL 1.2 or XRender in Settings / Desktop Effects / Advanced. Nouveau is so nice...

What a great user experience. Even if they get that far you dont think they would be wondering why their Linux system is having trouble managing graphics acceleration beyond what was released in 1998? So nice.

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I can tell, acceleration works well even with OpenGL 1.2 -- and I used a current kernel with Nouveau... no problems whatsoever.

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only visually. It's Ubuntu underneath, which is a non-starter for me. If they'd based it on BSD, I'd be interested in taking a closer look.

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[serviscope_minor]

Apple has solved that problem for me.

So wait, Apple have solved the third party package update problem by not updating third party packages and that's a solution? Or is it like the App store where packages randomly change and can therefore break at literally any time?

testing/unstable branches, which come with their own host of problems.

There's also the backports repos which seem pretty trouble free to me.

Re: Why not clone OS X?

[tlhIngan]

It's not that osx is too hard, it is just more inefficient than any other window manager. Take the menu at the top as an example. Regardless of where your working window is, you need to move the cursor to the top of the screen to chose an option. I find doing that over and over again is exhausting. On the contrary, Windows and Linux have running tasks and the start menu at the bottom of the screen but you don't need to go there very often. In fact most start menus now you can use simply by pressing the windows key and typing what you want. Osx has plenty other frustrations as well. I find that applications never really maximize properly. The finder window only maximizes vertically in Yosemite, leaving most of the desktop visible. The other day I was trying to maximize xcode on my non-widescreen display and xcode would only stay in a widescreen ratio. I couldn't even resize it down to the bottom of the screen. Also to my knowledge there is no quick resizing feature to only take half the screen as in Windows when you slide to the left or right edge. These are things that I really miss when I use osx, to the point that the OS frustrates me to no end. Also there seems to be so much focus on the touchpad and gestures, but if your programming it doesn't make sense to move your hands to the touchpad so those functions are almost useless for me.

Well, if you think in terms of Windows, it's less efficient.

But there are no hard and fast rules in UI design, which is why you have differences like OS X and Windows. It's the same reason why we have 240V and 120V electricity, 50 and 60Hz, and various TV standards, etc.

First - menu bar on top of screen. By Fitt's Law, that makes the menu extremely easy to get to, which is important when you have menus that stay static (Apple menu, for example). It also avoids one of Windows' annouances - where the close button happens to fit on the corner so if your mouse hits that corner and click, you close the document/window/app/whatever. An infinitely sized close button is annoying, to say the least.

The second aspect to Fitt's Law is that a moving menu like you see in an app is you have to slow down and stop at the desired menu, but since the menus are attached to windows, they're a small target. With OS X (and GNOME/Unity), the menu is just up and you can aim for the vertical column you want without worrying about the Y location of the pointer. It may be less efficient, it may not. Depends how good your motor control is.

Maximize, well, on Windows, Maximize is either useful or completely useless. If you have a low-res screen, say under 1080p (1920x1080), it can be useful because the limited resolution means you have limited amount of space to see everything, so maximizing is useful to see mas much of the app as possible. But on higher-resolution screens, it completely wastes real estate. Take a 4K screen - maximize is completely useless because I don't care for a 3840x2160 sized terminal window (I maximized an xterm one day.. was something like 600 characters x 300 lines...). In fact, Window management is extremely frustrating becauxe Windows 7 only has two hot windows, so I can see stuff side by side. Well, 1920x2160 windows aren't terribly useful on a lot of things.

On OS X, the behavior of "maximize" is "try to show all the window contents" - it's not to occupy the entire screen, but to show as much content as possible for least scrolling. On some apps, like iPhoto where your gallery is big, that means using the entire screen. On others, it really depends. A web browser will generally expand vertically because the content goes up and down, and rarely left and right (though in small windows, it may expand horizontally to minimize scrolling). On a Finder window, that means expanding depending on the current view - if it's a collection of icons, it'll be as big to cover the icon extents. If it's a list view, it'll be as wide as the list details, and as tall as necessary to avoid scrolling. If a folder with few files, it

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, you could just use the actual OS X and save a whole load of development time and effort.
Seriously, if you just want to run OS X apps, why are you running Linux? Just use OS X for Pete's sake!

Re:Why not clone OS X?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been debating myself about moving from Ubuntu (I actually believe Unity/Ubuntu is a solid, if far from perfect, desktop, worthy of having a mainstream-ish future) to OS X (which is, again, a solid UNIX desktop, but also far from perfect even if its mainstream future is a sure thing).

Running OS X apps on Linux would be fantastic, but is not going to happen. Porting cocoa is not an easy task, and no one is going to put that kind of money on it.

Trinity is the good old stuff

[bobeil]

Trinity is the KDE 3 Desptop Environment. That was the time when Linux was still better than Windows. Better then Windows XP even. KDE 3 has a fast and sleak 2D desktop, not this sluggish 3D compositing. It even runs fast on top of VNC. All the applications are well thought out, in place, and working. Not this premature rubbish of Gnome 3 and KDE 4 or 5. It is stable and mature and has everything that a productive desktop needs.

Trinity is for GOD

[Anonymous Coward]

You are all GOD. GOD says "Let there be light!". "Let there be light!" GOD "Let there be light!"! "Let there be light!" says the GOD. YOU GOD!!!

vtwm ,baby, vtwm

[Anonymous Coward]

More than 2 decades old, stable as heck, It Just Works(tm).

which features did we lose?

[umafuckit]

We may have gained some things with Gnome 3 and Plasma 5, but we lost a lot of good features too. TDE brings them back

I was a big fan of KDE 3, but it's been years since I used it and if you asked me now I couldn't tell you which were the features that have been lost. So which are they?

Re:which features did we lose?

[Anonymous Coward]

Key missing feature: simplicity.

For better or worse, "activities" is a confusing concept. It takes an abstract concept (the desktop) and another level of abstract concept ("workplaces") and adds YET ANOTHER level of abstract concept (an "activity") which fully requires the first two levels. The main session is itself an activity, which starts to become really mind-twisting unless you already know what an activity is.

KDE also has two different concepts for application: that of a traditional application and that of a "widget". This puts extra burden on users to get a global overview on how the system works.

They are other important "features" missing too. But I think simplicity is the main drawback, and for both activities and widgets, it's debatable if they pull their weight, so to speak.

Re:which features did we lose?

[fnj]

Key missing feature: simplicity.

For better or worse, "activities" is a confusing concept. It takes an abstract concept (the desktop) and another level of abstract concept ("workplaces") and adds YET ANOTHER level of abstract concept (an "activity") which fully requires the first two levels. The main session is itself an activity, which starts to become really mind-twisting unless you already know what an activity is.

KDE also has two different concepts for application: that of a traditional application and that of a "widget". This puts extra burden on users to get a global overview on how the system works.

They are other important "features" missing too. But I think simplicity is the main drawback, and for both activities and widgets, it's debatable if they pull their weight, so to speak.

So, in other words, you can't come up with a SINGLE EXAMPLE of a missing feature. I figured you would fail. No one has yet come up with a list of these mysterious missing features in KDE4/5 that were present in 3. I think I can recall some configuration settings that were in 3 and are missing in 4/5, but again those are not really "features".

Simplicity is not a feature. It is an attribute; one which in fact implies fewer features.

Re:which features did we lose?

[mescobal]

One example (among many): you can tweak every aspect of the "look" and "feel" (icons, fonts, etc) AND save it as a "Theme" you can load anytime. You can do this *without* a third party application. It's an "out-of-the-box" feature.

Re:which features did we lose?

[Gavagai80]

I don't use activities, and KDE 4 has never tried to make me use them. There's no need to use widgets either. What's the problem? KDE has always been about having options, Gnome was the place to go for simplified lack of choice.

Re:which features did we lose?

[Anonymous Coward]

KIO handlers don't work nearly as well as they used to.

KIO used to be able to pipe a file over ssh to a program that had no ability to understand SSH, and it worked. Now all the programs must support ssh urls natively. :/

Re:which features did we lose?

[mister_playboy]

I don't use activities, and KDE 4 has never tried to make me use them.

Actually, at least some variants of KDE 4.x had the workspace pager replaced by the blue/red/green activity balls in the taskbar by default. I remember this especially because I had to go read up on what an activity was!

It was simple enough to change that, but I definitely count that episode as trying to "make me use them".

Re:which features did we lose?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are looking very hard for things to call out as complex.
There might be a widget for activities on the bar thing when you login for the first time, but you can rip that out and never need to see anything activities related.
Applications have their windows, just like in every other DE and widgets are tiny useful things you can bolt on to the bar or desktop background. Being confused with having both would be like being confused with having a car and a pair of shoes.

Amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost everyone commenting here is an idiot practically. Saying stupid bullshit like, "Oh wow! Another DE, good thing I went to Mac!" or "I got mad when I used Ubuntu and they switched to Unity!". It's quite incredible, as for one, if you don't like that Unity sucks (and yes, it does) then either install a new DE or a new distro. And if you think news about a DE is a way to justify you tell everyone Mac OS X is better, then you're even bigger moron. How about we talk about TDE? You know, what the news post is actually about.

Re:Amazing

[udippel]

Almost everyone commenting here is an idiot practically.

It takes one to spot all, as the saying goes ...

Re:Amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

How about we talk about TDE?

How about you take your own advice instead of getting your panties in a bunch over other people's posts?

Re:Amazing

[mfearby]

How about we talk about TDE?

How about you take your own advice instead of getting your panties in a bunch over other people's posts?

You really do have to wonder why some people are so precious about free speech. He could have chosen to ignore the threads he disliked, or he could have chosen to contribute something valid and useful. But no, he went straight for the dummy spit :-)

slashdotted

[calin2k]

google cached version of the site: http://webcache.googleusercont...

Re:slashdotted

[nateman1352]

Woah. I can't remember the last time a website actually got slashdotted.

Re:slashdotted

[fisted]

A few weeks ago?

Did you bother to read the post...

[gilboad]

Or simply pressed "send" without thinking?
TDE is not "another desktop environment". TDE a maintained fork of KDE 3.5, with the expressed intent of maintaining the look-and-feel and functionality of KDE 3.5.
If anything, you should be congratulating them instead of condemning them as they are doing the exact opposite of what Unity is doing. Maintaining a working DE while adding subtle changes.

Oh, and for the record, Speak for yourself. My startup has ~10 employees running Fedora and thus far (6 years) it has been working great. At least in my case, Linux (KDE 4) *is ready* for the desktop.

Re:Did you bother to read the post...

[mfearby]

No, I did not RTFA. The slashdot summary was quite sufficient to indicate that it would be a yawn-fest, but your contribution has confirmed it. I remember using KDE 3 when I thought GNOME was a toy but then KDE 4 came out and when it was shown to be a disaster, I eventually settled on GNOME and realised that simplicity is good. I actually should thank Ubuntu and GNOME for preparing me for Mac OS X, I suppose. The "no features for you" nature of Nautilus helped me cope with the Finder, and various other efforts to strip out features in Ubuntu made me appreciate the no-nonsense interface of OS X. So it's not all bad :-) There is a happy ending!

Re:Did you bother to read the post...

[gilboad]

Be that as it may, you said: " I gave up on Linux when Ubuntu ruined everything with their Unity rubbish" and somehow connected it to TDE being "yet another desktop environment" when in-fact, TDE is as far as it gets from Unity.
Had you said KDE 3.X drove me to OSX, your point might have been valid.

- Gilboa

Reactionaryism Ain't What It Used To Be

[Anonymous Coward]

n/t

Come on, yet another alternative ... .-(

[udippel]

This is not good news. I'm a FOSS person, and love choices. Though I'd have loved to actually see the 'year of Linux on the desktop', and the confusing DE-mess (confusing to the new user, at least) was one of the reasons for it to not happen. The wannabe convert was so glued to the concept of 'the interface is everything' that she couldn't grasp the concept of 'the interface is just another layer'. And that 'learning' of 'yet another interface' was perceived as 'just too much'.
That's the drug dished out by Windows, mostly, that some silly icon on a screen is the application. And the task bar was never a good workbench in Windows in order to understand that you take applications like tools from a toolbox. And you put them back, if you don't need them temporarily.

So wars were fought about Desktops, and rather introvert nerds designed DEs like there was no tomorrow. And while I'm on KDE for many years now, they ought to have been hanged for the early Plasma versions. Likewise those who messed up Gnome. My preferred DE was the Gnome 1.4 of last millennium. It did exactly what I wanted it to do. Gnome 2 got me to KDE, and Plasma to XFCE. And Plasma after 4.5 back to KDE.
How the heck can anyone expect a 'Linux on the desktop' if desktop design decisions are handed over to nerd developers with nothing but time and ideas on their hands? And no governance that stops silly 'rewrites' and 'redrafts' of whole concepts for ever more shiny applets and widgets? The latter is fine, but not in mainstream DEs like Gnome, KDE. The W95 design has been with us for almost 20 years, with minor additions, and those were already perceived as 'too difficult' by many Windows users.

So what we get with TDE is a fall back for which I bet that there is no future. It can't because the only change necessary is the one that was done on Windows, and is currently done with Plasma 5: adopt a DE that can be unified for desktops and small screens. And exactly that is not done on TDE.

In a nutshell: TDE is the desktop (fork) that nobody needs.

We need a reboot of KDE 1

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been trying out old Linux distros recently,a reboot of the original KDE would be fun

I used to DE hop.

[wjcofkc]

I remember that once upon a time I used Gnome 2 for a very long time. It was my definitive go to DE. Now this is my opinion, but in the years that followed, the usefulness of DEs took a nose dive into (not always but still crap) bloated garbage with "enhancements" over previous versions of you name it. I spent years hopping from one DE to another, version after version hoping to find something lightweight and that I could actually be productive in. Pantheon and XFCE come close, but aren't my cup of tea for various reasons. Anyway, I've tried them all repeatedly over the years. As someone who spends most of their time working across multiple terminals it occurred to me, "Do I really need a full DE?" A couple of months ago I took the plunge and dived into Awesome Window Manager - most assuredly not a DE. I am absolutely in love with it and now wonder how anyone survives without a tiling window manager.

i3 is really nice too, but I settled on Awesome.

Re:I used to DE hop.

[Anonymous Coward]

Completely agree. I don't see the point of a DE, and I'm a bit suprised that there seems to be so few of us out there.

For the development work I do, what more do I need than an editor, a terminal and multiple virtual desktops? Definitely no session manager, file manager, * manager. No "start menu" or any of the other real estate thieves. No pretty graphics, animations or transparent windows. Just for fun, I ended up writing my own minimal window manager, but window managers like oroborus, evilWM and awesome should work equally well.

Probably a sign that I'm old, but if I really need a desktop environment, I might as well use WIndows. Not that I like it, but to me they are all differet shades of shit (or perhaps I should say bloat).

Re:I used to DE hop.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Do I really need a full DE?"

I have been using Awesome for several years now after realising the same thing. I always disliked overlapping windows. If I recall correctly it was Windows 3 that had a command to tile all open windows, which I used a lot, and Windows 95 that got rid of that. I also disliked putting icons on the desktop almost from the moment I had the option. I always thought it a bit weird to think of a hierarchical file system als a nested collection of folders, I don't need an inadequate metaphor for something I can understand. More recently, after I switched to Linux (I have used Debian exclusively on my own machines since around 2000), I increasingly started navigating through directories and doing file management tasks using terminal windows. I don't need file managers anymore, nor anything linking file types to programs, I just start a program from a terminal window with a file path on the command line. At some point it dawned on me that I disliked or simply stopped using just about everything that's part of the desktop metaphor. In the meantime desktop systems were getting increasingly bloated and seemed to become playgrounds for people who feel they need to make graphical statements rather than tools to do work with. So why was I using a desktop system? I looked what else was available and I found that tiling window managers are an excellent match for my preferred way of interacting with computers.

Re:I used to DE hop.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've said for a while now: Computer UI's, Web Design, Audio, Useability and reliability all peaked in 2007-2008. Since then we have all been treated to a increasingly farcial "beta" of the Tablet/iDink industries attempt to turn computers into Fischer Price toys. Future genertions will look back on the last ten years as a stagnation point of software on all fronts.

Re:I used to DE hop.

[wjcofkc]

If I recall correctly it was Windows 3 that had a command to tile all open windows, which I used a lot, and Windows 95 that got rid of that.

Funny enough, I was discussing that very same matter with a co-worker last Friday.

Re:I used to DE hop.

[wjcofkc]

I would mod this insightful if I could.

Re:I used to DE hop.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used dwm for a few years now and love it

Re:I used to DE hop.

[Anonymous Coward]

except it's not. I think design peaked with Chicago. That was the best DE including Desqview, OS2, Irix, GEOS and whatnot. Flat GUIs are ok and even needed for touch devices but for desktop the 20 year old taskbar + start menu is still king.

Re:I used to DE hop.

[WndSks]

The tile all windows command is not gone, just right-click the taskbar...

It's also has repos for

[present_arms]

CentOS PcLinuxOS Fedora Debian etc etc I released an updated ISO yesterday, things are really stable at the moment. and there is still things KDE3 can do that 4 can't and it's fast to boot* * the inverse is also true, some things kde4 can do that 3 can't, horses for courses.

Re:Come on, yet another alternative ... .-(

[fnj]

So what we get with TDE is a fall back for which I bet that there is no future. It can't because the only change necessary is the one that was done on Windows, and is currently done with Plasma 5: adopt a DE that can be unified for desktops and small screens. And exactly that is not done on TDE.

In a nutshell: TDE is the desktop (fork) that nobody needs.

Complete unadulterated bullshit. Nothing could possibly need doing LESS than "unifying" desktops and small screens. They are completely different animals, which need completely different look and feel. Sorry, but nothing I do on my phone is in any way parallel to the things I do on my desktop.

TDE, as a maintained and updated version of KDE3, a fine DE, is exactly an option we DO need.

Re:Come on, yet another alternative ... .-(

[udippel]

Thanks for your kind words! (b***s***).
I beg to differ, because I foresee - not actually, but it will come - the day when I take a smartphone with me all the time, and plug it into a dock at home or work, to continue where I have left off.
Currently I am not there, though I own a lenovo ('S') with docks at home and at work, so that I can carry this (still in a backpack) to wherever I go, including holidays, to always have with me what I need and want, with actual relevant data in the cloud.
This suits me totally, except of the size of the current machine and its weight. Once a smartphone is powerful enough (8 GB of RAM, multicore @ 2 GHz, uHDMI - am not a gamer) and allows me to apt-get like my desktop, I'll be the first person to buy it.
When I'll be on the road, in a bus or train, it'll be a normal smartphone, and when docked it will be a normal PC with monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers connected to the dock. And, no, I don't consider clutching any smartphone against my ears when phoning as comfortable, so when docked, a basic free-hands phone application will be my piece of the cake.
Logically, a unified interface would be the DE of choice, adapting to the screen size intelligently, not just scaling up icons to a threatening size like Unity. Not like Plasma 4 with almost nothing visible on smaller screens due to just non-scaling ('Search and Launch'). While I hate the old 'Metro' interface, it goes the first steps into that unified direction: On Windows Phone 8.X it is a usable interface, and it tries to become usable also on a large desktop screen. I can only hope that Plasma 5 will go into that direction, too, and just be much better.

Xfce has all the features.....

[duckintheface]

of Gnome 2 or the older standard desktops.... without being particularly slick and pretty. Xfce has the most customizable desktop because you can easily create launchers for apps, files, and urls. And you can define panels and dock those launchers into the panels..... something that Gnome never really offered.

Cinnamon is prettier and Unity is more "space-age" in its appearance. But when it comes to functionality, Xfce gives me what I need.

Maybe it's just me

[jwymanm]

But I like the latest Gnome, especially out of the box as Antergos, http://antergos.com/ provides it. Gnome shell with extensions works great. I have it configured just like MacOS X (which I am using as I'm on my mac mini right now to post this). I run Antergos on all of my laptops and on ultrafit 64gb sandisk usb drives I can stick into any computer. Extensions install in a single click using firefox. It's blissful and all OSS heaven.

Re: Come on, yet another alternative ... .-(

[Anonymous Coward]

A unified desktop is never the answer. I hope people stop thinking the way you do. You all in one nerds are destroying our desktops.

I liked KDE2 more

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly. KDE2 on Knoppix was the first thing I touched Linux through. I felt sad when KDE3 came to replace it.

Re:Come on, yet another alternative ... .-(

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but nothing I do on my phone is in any way parallel to the things I do on my desktop.

That's your problem: you are completely out of touch. You might be an old person and only make phone calls on your phone but --- for example --- I browse the web and write email/IMs on my phone *and* my desktop and there are things like photo and video editing as well, simplified depending on the form factor but the same content is available on all devices. The desktop UI supports touchscreen interaction because sometimes I'm using a computer without a keyboard (often a convertible laptop) so the user experience there doesn't have to be vastly different to my phone just because my phone is smaller.

TDE, as a maintained and updated version of KDE3, a fine DE, is exactly an option we DO need.

And MATE and Xfce and E17 and LXDE and Cinnamon and the dozens of others ... how many more do we really need and why do we need more and more of the damn things?

Stop fiddling, get on with the work.

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to concern myself with customizing desktops, but with years of fiddling after upgrades, I came to the conclusion that it would save a lot of time if I adjusted instead. I now pretty much only use the standard desktops on Windows 7, Mac and Ubuntu. As long as I have quick access to the tools I need, I'm productive.

Re:Come on, yet another alternative ... .-(

[Reziac]

I totally hate the phonification of desktops. Surefire way to get me to use something else.

As one who prefered KDE to all other linux DEs thru 4.x, but dislikes 5.x (and in my latest distro test, PClinuxOS was one of my 4 or 5 "finalists") -- now downloading the ISO of PClinuxOS-with-TDE to give it a look.

KDE5 looked to me like change for the sake of change, or because Win8 and smartphones did it, not because it was more functional on a PC. Nowhere near the sharkpit Gnome is hovering over, but still headed the wrong direction. :(

Don't see what the big deal is

[jaq1an]

looks like KDE to me and that thing is a hog. I'll stick with Gnome.