On 5/18/24 3:06 PM, Chris M via tde-users wrote:
On Fri, 2024-05-17 at 11:19 -0500, Chris M wrote:
In regards to Nik's post about The Orgins of KDE:
I am curious to know what's the backstory on TDE?
Why is KDE 3.5 being kept alive all of these years later?
And what is TDE's Purpose?
I LOOOOOOOVED KDE 3.5 back in the day, but , I could never get KDE 3
to work right on my machine, like making it see the CDROM etc.
But, when I found GNOME2 on Ubuntu 10.10 that became my home, then
Unity, and KDE 5 for a little while, TDE for about a week, and MATE
for the longest. And now im back to trying TDE.
The reason that I asked this question yesterday, is because, I LOVED
KDE 3, but i'm scared to run TDE.
I've been reading on Reddit about TDE and read about how NO Linux
distro will carry TDE because its a liability
due to some kind of " Internet Stacks" still using KDE 3 code, and how
unsafe it is, and how running TDE would be like
connecting a Windows 98 PC to the internet without a firewall etc.
What's the backstory? The best person to ask is Timothy Pearson. He
forked KDE 3.5 to TDE. The first release was TDE 3.5.11, then 3.5.12,
and 3.5.13. There never was a 3.5.14 release, instead the first of the
R14 series was released.
The Wikipedia article has a short but fair summary of the history. Not
mentioned in the article are reasons why the original core group of
developers and maintainers stuck together. One of the reasons is the
changes from Qt3 to Qt4. Most if not all of the core group did not like
the look-and-feel of Qt4 -- the beginning of flat interfaces and dull
colors. The technical members of the group did not like the way Qt4
functioned. There was some discussion about migrating TDE to Qt4, but
the technical effort would have been too much. There was effort to
provide some support for Qt4, somewhat part of the original reason
behind the tqtinterface package.
With the so-called EOL of KDE 3.5 and the premature release of KDE 4,
the main backstory is a notable amount of contempt, hatred, distrust,
and anger among satisfied KDE 3.5 users.
For a few years TDE had some news coverage and then most of the
click-bait news folks stop following TDE. There also was a couple of
periods with little TDE development and hence, little news coverage.
Through the years I have read many pundits declare that somehow TDE is
not secure. I doubt anybody will offer an argument that Konqueror as a
web browser is secure, but just about any web browser can be reasonably
secure by disabling JavaShit -- oops -- JavaScript and other modern data
mining and tracking "features." On the same note, I don't think anybody
has designed a file manager that is in the same class as Konqueror. KDE
Dolphin is a fine file manager, but not in the same class.
Throughout the years of reading such claims about security, I have yet
to read anybody actually auditing code to show how valid their claims
might be. There is very much a prevailing attitude that Qt3 itself no
longer is secure, mostly because Qt3 is not new and shiny.
With respect to why distro maintainers do not offer TDE as a primary
desktop, there is significant political inertia with both KDE and GNOME.
Always has been. Embracing TDE would be seen by some as kicking sand in
the face of KDE developers.
The Xfce and MATE folks often get included in distros, but there has to
be somebody willing to maintain the packages. The TDE developers do a
decent job creating distro packages, but many distro maintainers still
do not offer TDE as part of their mainstream collection.
Possibly why TDE falters some with mainstream adoption is TDE remains
somewhat a black sheep. One reason is 14 years later, long after all of
the spitting and feuding ended, TDE remains a usable and viable desktop
and keeps improving. Most people predicted TDE would fade away, much
like a lot of free/libre software. Many folks do not like that TDE
remains healthy. Many do not like that TDE retains a somewhat old school
traditional desktop design rather than everything acting like a smart
phone or tablet.
Another reason for the black sheep label is living in /opt purgatory.
TDE is not easily installed into the common /usr directory because of
potential conflict with KDE. The MATE folks resolved that problem nicely
by renaming all of their binaries with a "mate-" prefix. I think TDE
could do likewise with a tde- prefix. Installing TDE in /opt creates
various issues and the complexity of the starttde shell script attests
to the hoops to jump through to avoid conflict.
There remains a strong following of other desktop environments despite
the political popularity of KDE and GNOME. I think TDE could gain
similar momentum enjoyed by Xfce and MATE. Much like why many to most
TDE users prefer TDE rather than KDE, Xfce and MATE users are former
GNOME users who dislike what happened to GNOME. One challenge is there
are many more KDE developers who can create and offer new kinds of
software. A rebuttal to that notion is many people using "old school"
software have little to no need or desire for such software.
I think the Xfce and MATE developers made one mistake. Rather than
maintain GTK 2 they adopted GTK 3 and their software suffers because
they do not control GTK development. To the TDE developers credit they
did not make the same mistake. I used both Xfce and MATE for a few
years, but adopting GTK3 nonsense ended my dance with them.
I use KDE 5 and TDE. I invested serious sweat equity to trim KDE 5 to
essentials, much like TDE. KDE 5 can be tamed but most people are not
going to invest such effort. For me, one of the cornerstones was being
able to continue using the Oxygen icon theme. Seems the KDE developers
have been trying hard for a long time to abandon Oxygen preferring the
new fad of flat icons. I use Oxygen with both KDE and TDE and that helps
provide me a consistent environment with both.
I stopped having any hopes for KDE 4 the day Akonadi was forced on PIM
users. I still refuse to use KDE PIM tools except for KAlarm, where the
maintainer sanely changed Akonadi to a plugin.
I do not know how long I will continue using KDE. I have seen changes
from 5 to 6 that remind me of the 3.5 to 4 days. For example, the KDE
developers ripped support from the System Settings to fine tune mouse
settings, somehow believing that every user now uses libinput.
With respect to response, I find KDE 5 reasonably snappy, unlike KDE 4.
Yet TDE is wicked fast compared to KDE 5. I think that feature is
something that could sell TDE to many people. TDE seems ideal to keep a
lot of dual core systems functional. Helping with that are little things
such as preloading Konqueror. I still scratch my head that after a
decade and a half the KDE folks still do not preload Dolphin.
I never grew warm and fuzzy about KDE 4, but mostly I am content with
what KDE 5 has become. Unlike the KDE 4 days, I stopped my feuding with
KDE. A new breed of developers took over from the uncomfortable KDE 4
days and this new breed of developers are much better listening to users.
TDE has a place in the free/libre world. Secure? Probably. Fast?
Undoubtedly. Functional and useful? Yes. All of those are good reasons
to keep TDE alive. Kind of like the old John Cameron Swayze Timex
advertisements of "takes a licking and keeps on ticking." I guess I am
showing my age. Possibly the biggest draw for me is I am an old fart and
I detest change for the sake of change. Might explain why I drive a 36
year old pickup truck and a 21 year old car. Plus ca change, plus c'est
la meme chose.
TDE is nothing like Windows 98. Firewalls belong at the edge of a LAN or
are an operating system function rather than as a desktop function.
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