One of my favourite software projects got a brand new release – the Not so Common Desktop Environment (NsCDE) 2.3 has been released. NsCDE brings the look, feel, and behaviour of CDE to the modern Linux desktop through a combination of themes, scripts, FVWM customisations, and a lot more. This new release brings the usual bugfixes, but also new features – like Qt6 integration, CSS updates for newer releases of Firefox and Thunderbird, and more.
Can someone explain to me why, other than “I want my computer to look old AF” you would use this over other DEs? Does it have any practical advantages?
Because I use Q4OS on my truly ancient EEE PC and even on a APU as weak as the AMD Bobcat Trinity DE is blazing fast while giving all the modern (If by modern you mean Win2K but to me that was the pinnacle of functional clutter free DEs) comforts while still being light enough to let me watch 720p YT. Would this DE give me any advantage other than nostalgia for the early 90s?
What @Morgan said.
Trinity is KDE3, right?
For me, KDE3 was a bloated mess of a desktop, even worse than KDE2, which could be tamed and tidied up, as shown by Xandros. I liked KDE1 but since then every version has got worse. (5 tamed it a little but is still a mess.)
I am not especially fond of CDE or NsCDE, but I tried them:
https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/28/battle_of_the_retro_desktops/
If that’s what you like, it’s a good recreation and it’s more versatile and customisable and flexible than the Real Thing… So why not?
Yeah the problem with KDE1 is fonts suck… KDE2 AFAIK added better font rendering.
But yeah… KDE1 otherwise is pretty much all you could ask for. As well as being a very slick poweruser desktop. I ran it for a bit in 2019… and still have it installed but can’t update it because the repos on github it was pointed at are gone. And the kde-sunset overlay on Gentoo doesn’t built correctly either. Kind of a dumb issue…
I’m going to give it a go and see how it feels. What CDE used to do so well was it was consistent. This aspect of it REALLY appeals. Far to often I find the desktop makes has behavioural quirks which are frustrating. As a DE, it was fast, low memory and did what it needed to do without bells/whistles.
What I am not so sure of is that some of the bells/whistles are things I find really improves the experience of use. In particular anti-alias of fonts.
(Replying to bassbeast, not sure why it posted as a top-level comment)
You answered your own question. You want your computer to look as old as Win2K, which is your “pinnacle”, so you use Trinity DE. Other people want their computer to look as old as CDE, which is their “pinnacle”, so they use NSCDE. It’s not a difficult concept to grasp.
I experienced CDE on X terminals running on an HP9000 system, almost 30 years ago.
Even then, it was ugly, dated, awkward and limited.
I guess if you’re in love with carpet flooring and formica furniture, CDE might actually fit you well.