Blast from the past - KDE 3.5

[GreyGeek]

The KDE 3.5 DE was a lot of Linux users favorite desktop. It was mine as well. When Trolltech moved to Qt4 it did not have the staff and resources to support both the Qt3 and the Qt4 API. They were totally different in their programming approach. This difference required developers to make a choice because the two API's were totally incompatible. I had adopted Qt3 for my GUI app development but was on the verge of dropping it when Qt4 was released and Trolltech returned to sanity in C++ development.

This led to KDE 4.0 and a lot of grousing by some KDE users who did not like the rapid changing and experimentation that took place during this time. Eventually these users forked KDE3.5 and formed Trinity. Qt4 became Qt5 and now we have the best DE on the planet with Plasma 5.

However, Trinity has been busily at work over the last ten years and have done a lot of polishing. I don't even know if they are still using the Qt3 API but what they've produced, with the appropriate GUI DE settings, looks and feels exactly like Plasma 5 but with the Candy Apple button look. Here is a video explaining how to install it and adjust the look and feel:

[claydoh]

Does it bring back the nostalgia of the hodgepodge of hacks and workarounds that hid just below the surface? I imagine they ported all that mess, along with the good bit?
They seem to still be using their forked Qt 3 libraries

Much as KDE 3.5 is my #3, or #4 favorite desktop ever, there were plenty of times in that era I could crash the while desktop by doing a normal thing at the wrong time.
The lead dev of Trinity came off (to me) as standoffish, and seemingly rejecting offers of help from different KDE folks at the time. Plus Trinity was actually worse than KDE 4 at the beginning. and for a long time after. it put a bad taste in my mouth, and my recollection from that time seems to be similar to my early dealings with Texstar/ PCLOS.

Now, don't think that I hate keeping old crap, or old diamonds alive. Quite the contrary. My #1 fave desktop ever is BeOS, and I have followed it's ground-up remake Haiku OS ever since it was an early, steaming pile of poop.

[Fred47]

The real problem with KDE 4 was that it was released as a beta, but labeled KDE 4.0 which confused many. I think it was 4.3 that finally became stable, but of course it took awhile before all the grossing settled. I guess there is some still using Trinity, but there are those still using DOS and I had a friend who used an Amiga until his death.

[claydoh]

That is somewhat of a myth - one started by a KDE dev or devs, *after* the flack they got from the radical departures, and fairly buggy stuff. And they heavily pointed fingers at Kubuntu for being "too early".

Sure, at the time, an "X.0" sometimes was used to unofficially denote a 'beta' in some applications, but nowhere did the KDE 4.0 release ever mention this, and iirc nowhere in any devel mailing list or IRC channel I was a part of was this concept put forward.

Kubuntu did release 4.1.2 as the default desktop on 8.10, with 8.04 having the last KDE 3 release (as well as a separate Remix preview iso with KDE 4.0). Being LTS, Hardy Heron was able to provide users with KDE 3 for three years. Distributions had to get KDE 4 out there at some point, and post -LTS made perfect sense for Kubuntu (I was there, though I was not a decision maker).

But yes, it was a cluster. But we also forget, or didn't notice, how brittle KDE 2/3 had become.

[jglen490]

Yep, that was one of those "interesting times". Glad we are past that, we have what we have, and there will always be something better the next time.

Every time I go back to some old OS thing that I thought was really cool at the time, I realize just what a piece of crap it actually was

Moving on is just better.

[GreyGeek]

I never adopted Kubuntu until 9.04 Alpha, so I wasn't aware of its 3.5 heritage.
The reason I posted this about Trinity was that in the video it became obvious that the best settings were those that emulated the Plasma desktop. I found it ironic that after all their forking, fussing and complaining they ended up mimicking Plasma.

[jglen490]

Screwy, ain't it?

[Fred47]

At the time 4.0 came around I was using Mepis and they were pretty clear that it was still in beta. The developer never really got it going and quit. I hung onto 3.5 as Mepis morphed into MX and I eventually went to Chakra because I am steadfast KDE user.

[GreyGeek]

At the time 4.0 came around I was using Mepis and they were pretty clear that it was still in beta. The developer never really got it going and quit. I hung onto 3.5 as Mepis morphed into MX and I eventually went to Chakra because I am steadfast KDE user.

I ran MEPIS for about a year, when it was called SimplyMEPIS and was in the process of switching from Debian to Ubuntu as its base.

Before MEPIS I was sticking to RPM based distro because of my experience with SuSE from Sept of 1998 to Nov 2004. When Novell purchased SuSE and joined the Dark Side I began casting around for a new distro. I returned to RPM distros and tried Mandrake, Mandriva and then MEPIS. For some reason Woodford took a leave of absence and that distro got flaky. That's when I tried PCLinuxOS in 2007. During that year it held the #1 ranking on Distrowatch until Ubuntu unseated it. There was a campaign in the PCLinuxOS forum for users to repeatedly go to Distrowatch and click on PCLOS. But, it was an excellent distro as long as "TexStar" was at the helm. TexStar (Bill Reynolds) lived in Texas and when hurricane Ike hit his house in 2008 there was enough damaged that he took a year off to fix it. While he was gone the distro suffered from poor work and a lot of political infighting as some folks jockeyed for leadership positions. That's when I baled. My next distro was Kubuntu 9.04 Alpha in Feb of 2009. I had gotten familiar with the dpkg package manager using MEPIS and really liked it, so moving to Kubuntu was a bonus.

[Snowhog]

Kubuntu Linux. The unsung hero of Linux. My observation.

[MoonRise]

From almost Day one here for Kubuntu use and that included that trials and tribulations going into KDE4. Not once did I abandon Kubuntu because of that migration. It was necessary to leap KDE forward and I think it benefited KDE to have some wider input. I know I made a few.

[jlittle]

... trials and tribulations going into KDE4.

For me, I didn't like KDE3 to KDE4, but KDE4 to plasma was far worse; "trials and tribulations" would be apt. I regret not staying with 14.04 while the worst of that played out.

[sithlord48]

Its amazing to see how many things in KDE 3 really are sub par. Plasma was a vast improvement over the old desktop and while it did take sometime and most everything needed a rewrite. Moving from Qt3 to Qt4 was not just a simple port job. Its amazing to see just how many of the KDE3 things that were so great then are just bad now . look at the info center for the control panel . or how konqueror would try to be the file,web browser and document viewer. There is so much left to be desired Its amazing to see how much more polished KDE has become since then.

[GreyGeek]

... Moving from Qt3 to Qt4 was not just a simple port job...

Nope, it wasn't. Qt3's API was not polymorphic. In Qt4&5 the QObject is the base class of all Qt objects.
It has properties and methods which can be subclassed. And, unlike Qt3, Qt4&5 do not use the Designer to write the entire app. The Designer is only used to create the GUI interfaces in an application and the development process is classic C &C++ methodology.
Writing apps in Qt4&5 is a joy.

[sithlord48]

unlike Qt3, Qt4&5 do not use the Designer to write the entire app. The Designer is only used to create the GUI interfaces in an application and the development process is classic C &C++ methodology.
Writing apps in Qt4&5 is a joy.

UI files.. my main issue comes from the fact they can have their own connections and don't get me started on finding a "on_objectName_signal" methods within a class. (those made from clicking "goto slot" in designer)

Qt4+ is a real joy to code with.