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Trinity Desktop Environment – a modern KDE3 fork

trinitydesktop.org

21–30 of 93 posts

Re: Trinity Desktop Environment – a modern KDE3 fork

#21
post #9

[flagged]

> Why does it seem basically impossible for a Linux desktop environment to not look like it’s frozen in time from the early 2000s in terms of sharpness/polish/slickness

I agree with you, but I don't think age or time are the fundamental issue here.

Windows 98 is is 25 years old, and still looks better than almost all Linux desktop environments today, or Linux environments 10 years ago, or 20 years ago. Hell, it looks much better than Windows 10.

In my opinion, the visual appeal of an interface has little to do with age, and everything to do with: consistency, spacing and density, care for detail and, over everything else, good taste.

Sure, today we have a higher "ceiling". i.e. the best possible interface today is better than the best possible interface 30 years ago, thanks to better display technology, better input devices, etc. But we are nowhere near reaching that ceiling. It doesn't matter if my screen has 10 million pixels and can output 8 billion different colors if the UI that I display on it was developed by someone with the aesthetic sense of a 12 year old.

Re: Trinity Desktop Environment – a modern KDE3 fork

#22
post #9

[flagged]

> like it’s frozen in time from the early 2000s This is quite literally frozen in time from the early 2000s, intentionally so too. Some of us prefer it that way. If you want a modern UI Gnome or KDE are your choices.

Budgie on Solus, and Zorin OS DEs look pretty nice to me

Re: Trinity Desktop Environment – a modern KDE3 fork

#23
post #9

[flagged]

Dude this is trinity desktop: That’s kinda the point. Trinity desktop is basically a kde fork from the early 2000s that’s still maintained for use in modern distros by some guy.

I gotta say with so much slowdown in newer windows, macos, Linux desktop ui toolkits compared to stuff that ran lightning fast in 2004 stuff like this is refreshing.

Re: Trinity Desktop Environment – a modern KDE3 fork

#24
post #9

[flagged]

The linked DE is specifically a fork of a DE from 2002[0], so that would be why it looks like a DE from the 2000s. I imagine anyone wanting to use something like this has a fair bit of nostalgia for that style.

KDE Plasma[1] is the more modern-looking solution, but the aim of the DE is to do one thing well: provide a solid desktop environment. The stock styles look okay but can be customized in almost any way you like.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Desktop_Environment_3

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDE_Plasma_5

Re: Trinity Desktop Environment – a modern KDE3 fork

#25

KDE3 was the last Linux desktop environment I actually liked using, so I try to use this when it’s possible.

Their maintained fork of Amarok 1.x really makes it worthwhile for me. Also, dcop is probably the best GUI automation tool I’ve used.

I once wrote an entire application around dcop. Actually it was a tool for plotting your amarok songs on a 2D kde window grid and it allowed you to make little gestures and squiggles to determine what songs amarok would play. It was a pretty fun project.

Re: Trinity Desktop Environment – a modern KDE3 fork

#28
post #9

[flagged]

Most of the major desktops can be configured to look very similar to macOS by changing the fonts, icons, themes.

This is the case for Gnome, KDE, XFCE and probably others too.

You can install whatever font macOS is using, then get icons that look like the ones from macOS, cursors, then a GTK or Qt theme. And now it will look essentially the same.

Re: Trinity Desktop Environment – a modern KDE3 fork

#29
post #9

[flagged]

The linked DE is specifically a fork of a DE from 2002[0], so that would be why it looks like a DE from the 2000s. I imagine anyone wanting to use something like this has a fair bit of nostalgia for that style. KDE Plasma[1] is the more modern-looking solution, but the aim of the DE is to do one thing well: provide a solid desktop environment. The stock styles look okay but can be customized in almost any way you lik…

> a fork of a DE from 2002

Not 2002, 2008. Trinity was forked after KDE3 was EOL.

I'm curious if they are keeping DCOP alive or have they embraced dbus?

Re: Trinity Desktop Environment – a modern KDE3 fork

#30

KDE3 was the last Linux desktop environment I actually liked using, so I try to use this when it’s possible.

Their maintained fork of Amarok 1.x really makes it worthwhile for me. Also, dcop is probably the best GUI automation tool I’ve used.

Amarok was the first app in Linux that was better than the Windows counterpart. My non-technical friends would ask how could they use it. It was the killer app for the Linux Desktop at the time.

> Also, dcop is probably the best GUI automation tool I’ve used.

Everytime I have to use dbus from the CLI I think to myself, dcop died for this?!

To me the best GUI automation tool (in Linux at least) was Kommander, another KDE app that didn't survived the KDE3-4 transition. A pretty decent 'low-code' tool that unfortunately didn't make it to KDE4.

I used KDE4 up to 4.2, when it supposedly 'got good'. It wasn't bad by any means. But KDE3 was better.

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