On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 6:53 PM, Timothy Pearson
<kb9vqf@...> wrote:
> A hypothetical poll for users here....
> If TDE were to close down, which desktop would you use instead?  You would
> be allowed to abandon Linux entirely in this scenario. ;-)
> Please state why you have not already switched; i.e. what item are missing
> or suboptimal in the other environment.

I've been using Linux since 1999.  My first was Red Hat v5 which had
gnome or something.  Gave up because I didn't like it.  Then I found
S.u.S.E. v5.3, which had KDE 1.x.  Wow!  this is what I was missing.
Having come from a DOS and then OS/2 background, KDE was a lot like
the Workplace Shell.  I could get things done easily and the desktop
made sense.  Over the years I've used many distros and tried many DEs.
 I still stick with openSUSE and KDE3(thanks the to hard and dedicated
work of the KDE3 repo maintainers).  I've debated trying TDE, but
haven't because of a lack of openSUSE support and because the current
KDE3 works fine for me.

When KDE4 was introduced in openSUSE 11.0, I repeatedly showed that
KDE4 was slower and more resource hungry than KDE3(and because it had
both, openSUSE used some KDE4 libs & installed some KDE4 programs by
defaut, so that caused KDE3 to use more libs/memory/resources than
KDE4 by itself).  I also despise the whole shift of the KDE4 team.
WTF?  I don't need a desktop with bling and garbage.  And telling me I
CAN'T have a regular desktop, that their new desktop idea was better.
And that I was wrong for not agreeing with them.  Who the hell do they
think they are?  If I wanted that kind of desktop I would use Mac OS
X.  Then having so many KDE4 adopters tell me that I was wrong for
prefering KDE3 over KDE4, especially considering how buggy and
unstable and feature incomplete KDE4 was.  I helped insure that
openSUSE 11.1 came with KDE3 BECAUSE of KDE4's issues.  However, and
understandably, the openSUSE devs dropped KDE3 support because of lack
of resources for both.  My server is still running 11.0/KDE 3.5.9.

Would I give up linux?  Nope.  Will continue to use it no matter what
for the foreseeable furture.  I've looked at LXDE, and while it's
usable and light, KDE3/TDE is by far a better setup.  Also, I use
KWord alot (on WinDoZe I use Wordpad - does all I need).  LXDE is a
good choice for an older laptop with low RAM and Firefox.  Using
Firefox with KDE uses more resources, where LXDE is gtk2 based, so it
has a slightly lower footprint from what I have found.  It's all I
need on such a machine.


> I am curious as to why TDE still exists and need some concrete examples to
> fall back on to counter detractors.

TDE exists because the open source model allows people to fork stuff
because they don't like the direction it's going.  A small minority
didn't like the direction of KDE4.  Others just used KDE4 because it
came with the newer versions of the distro and they learned to
tolerate it and even like it.

As for comparisons, I wouldn't bother.  You're not going to convince a
KDE4 user that KDE3 is better nor a KDE3 user that KDE4 is better and
so on.  Obviously you USE TDE and you started the project to maintain
it so it could continue and grow.  That's all the reason you need and
all the reason I need.  I would invite them to give TDE a try.  If
they don't like so be it.  It's obviously grown and improved since
3.5.10, so they may find they like it.  If they don't, then that's ok
as well.

Just my not so humble opinion.