KDE4 menjadi barang yang telah lumrah dipaketkan pada distro-distro Linux besar. Dengan segala kelemahan dan kelebihannya, versi Major KDE ini menjadi produk yang sulit ditandingi secara head-to-head oleh pesaing Window manager yang ada. Seperti biasa, jika telah dirilis versi baru dan lebih powerful, versi sebelumnya akan lambat laun ditinggalkan. Apakah hal ini berlaku juga untuk KDE3?
Jawabannya sih tidak juga, karena sejumlah developer yang di pelopori oleh Timothy Pearson, seorang developer yang merilis Kubuntu versi KDE3.5 sebelum versi KDE 3.5 beredar luas. Project baru berbahan KDE3 itu dinamai Trinity KDE.
Silakan ikuti tulisan Bruce Byfield dari Datamation berikut:
Several weeks ago, I ended a comparison of the KDE 4 and 3 desktops by saying “Unless a project takes over KDE 3 development, sooner or later it may become unusable with the latest generation of computers.” What I had missed — free software being a large place where events move at near-light speeds — was that a project had already taken over KDE 3 development. It’s called Trinity KDE, and is organized by Timothy Pearson, who has been releasing Kubuntu releases that use KDE 3.5 for some time. According to Facebook rumor, he has been planning to revive KDE 3 for some time.
I had hoped to interview Pearson about his rationale and motives, but an expensive server crash has kept him too busy to talk, although I still hope to talk to him in the next few days.
Meanwhile, you can easily fill in the blanks about why the project is being enthusiastically received. Although the KDE 4 series has become more usable with every point release, there are still those who condemn it as too bloated, complicated, or resource-hungry. Others suggest that KDE 4 has fewer features, although that is less true with every release, and is sometimes an impression due to a renaming or rearranging of features. Still others, I suspect, are simply nostalgic for a desktop that they used for years.
The truth is, the KDE 4 series has never entirely recovered from the disastrous KDE 4.0 release — no matter whose fault that was. Core KDE developers like Aaron Seigo can now make wry jokes about that events they found personally disheartening, but others have never recovered from the gap between expectations and reality with KDE 4.0.
What we don’t know, of course, is how many would support a revived KDE 3, or whether those who disdain KDE 4 are a sizable minority or even a majority, or simply very loud. But, with Trinity KDE, we are about to find out — and witness, as well, just how complicated bringing a mostly dead desktop back to life can actually be. read more
