Submitted by Now here’s a blast from the (somewhat recent) past: the Trinity Desktop Environment. TDE is a fork of the last available release of the KDE 3.x series, coming into existence in 2008. The project’s been under steady development ever since, and the most recent release is R14.0.3. since this is just a maintenance release, it might be more fitting to look at the release notes for R14.0.0, the base release, from december 2014.
Unlike previous releases TDE R14.0.0 has been in development for over two years. This extended development period has allowed us to create a better, more stable and more feature-rich product than previous TDE releases. R14 is brimming with new features, such as a new hardware manager based on udev (HAL is no longer required), full network-manager 0.9 support, a brand new compositor (compton), built-in threading support, and much more!
Honestly, I have no idea how many people still see value in a maintained KDE 3.x desktop, but since I’ve personally always been a fan of KDE 3 (KDE 4 never really managed to convince me), I’m glad his project is still around offering the option for those among us who want to use KDE 3.
KDE Plasma 5 is where it’s at, as far as KDE is concerned. Especially on OpenSUSE where it lets KDE be KDE.
Well, let’s face it, KDE 4 was crap, especially compared to KDE3. And if we were still at KDE4 technology today I would even understand the need for something like Trinity. But KDE5 is much better than KDE 4 in so many areas that it’s really difficult to justify something like this in the face of the many other “classic” desktop environments like LXDE, xfce, etc.
I wonder how much longer they manage to keep this up…
Alas, Plasma in KDE5 is a resource hog.
With basically nothing running, plasma can easily eat up to 500MB of RAM. That’s some sloppy coding I have to say. At the same time the entire KDE 3.5.x session, with Kmail, several open tabs in Konqueror, Akregator, Juk, Konversation and a handful of other utilities and applets running, eats less than 250MB of RAM.
Wake me up when the plasma process consumes less than 100MB of RAM. I guess it’ll never happen and at version 7, it will easily digest a gig of RAM.
I’m guessing that’s more to do with the fact that they’re trying to use QML everywhere than simply sloppy coding. As you say, my plasmashell process is running just slightly under 500MB right now. But Firefox is taking 1.2 G of RAM.
But my understanding was the problem people had with KDE 4 was not that it was a resource hog but that it was unfamiliar (and felt more unusable) and the user experience was downgraded a bit due to the instability of how their attempt to make all parts of the DE interoperate didn’t work that well in practice.
I say with KDE Frameworks 5 now running underneath most of those stability and interoperability issues are fixed.
Plasma 5.5 and 5.6 have severe problems with dual-monitors on Intel graphics cards on Qt 5.5 and 5.6. After a solid 6 months of trying as many combinations possible I finally switched to something else.
I tried using OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, Debian (stable & testing), and Arch Linux and use them all for similar workloads. The painful constant? Plasma crashing.
16 years of being a KDE user only to have to switch to something else to get work done.
I bet that you’re running one of the adblocker plugins.
I believe those are the main cause of huge RAM usage. The other is people getting confused with virtual vs resident RAM.
I use NoScript and no ad blockers and with about 20 tabs open my Firefox is using a bit less than 550 MB right now. But virtual RAM reports 2.1 GB. It is important to keep those two values separate.
I am hoping lxqt would become mature enough. It seems to be the only promising DE that is lightweight and up to date.
Indeed. It is also useful if you want a traditionel desktop rather than the tablet-like UI delivered by Gnome and Unity.
Actually I was a fanatic KDE3.* user, but when KDE4 was released, it was crashy, slow, resource hog and since then, I moved to xfce and never came back.
xfce is not as fancy as KDE or Gnome are, but it is very stable, it works and provides me all the features I need, no more, no less.
All the transparency stuff and nice windowing effects are not interesting anymore for me and my virtuals run smoother without them.
Never had to build Qt? I have a difficult time describing anything based on it as lightweight.
I was really keen to try KDE 4. But the beta version was unusable, its not even an alpha quality, I wonder why they release it and tag it as beta quality.
I am expecting to use KDE 4 and beyond because of its promises and the eye candy is a major plus. However, it was still unusable and release after release I found myself wanting back the KDE 3.x experience because trying to use KDE 4 series will often show error messages that something have stopped working.
From then on, I tend to joke myself that KDE 4+ releases motivations was not to give us a beautiful and smooth desktop experience but was to showcase bugs in software development.
I was really keen to try KDE 4. But the beta version was unusable, its not even an alpha quality, I wonder why they release it and tag it as beta quality.
I am expecting to use KDE 4 and beyond because of its promises and the eye candy is a major plus. However, it was still unusable and release after release I found myself wanting back the KDE 3.x experience because trying to use KDE 4 series will often show error messages that something have stopped working.
From then on, I tend to joke myself that KDE 4+ releases motivations was not to give us a beautiful and smooth desktop experience but was to showcase bugs in software development.
KDE4 was way better than KDE3 IMO. It looked 10x better, had better integration and was just as fast and less buggy for me.
Ran KDE3.x on PCLinuxOS years ago and loved it. Hated KDE4 so I switched to Gnome 2.x on Linux Mint and never looked back. Still play with Trinity though, so I hope they never give up on it. It’s KDE3 on steroids. In my opinion as worthwhile a continuation of KDE3 as MATE’ has proven to be of Gnome 2.x..
Maybe We went to far on trying to imitate brainless Desktops.
Hi Thom you said “I have no idea how many people still see value in a maintained KDE 3.x desktop” and I can only speak for myself so I will.
Trinity is very lightweight vs newer desktops like KDE 5 and Gnome 3 and is still full featured. I love Trinity I was a KDE user from the days when Mandriva (then Mandrake) used to release prerelease versions on a RedHat base. IT works the way I do I am comfortable in it and I can get things done quickly and easily in it.
Nothing against the new KDE while I didn’t care for 4.0 I find 4.5 and up to 4.13 (the only ones I have used) very capable but not to my taste. I haven’t really tried 5 so I honestly can’t comment on it. KDE 4 on many older systems including a netbook I like to carry around is very slow yet the same hardware with Trinity flies.
I don’t know how many users use Trinity if the project knows they haven’t posted it to my knowledge. There are many ports for Debian, Ubuntu, Suse, Slackware, PCLinux, and there is even people working on making it work on BSD. If you want a lighter weight full featured desktop I say give it a try. It can be installed along side KDE 4 and I assume 5 as well and you can even install both copies of apps like dolphin or kwrite if you want or use KDE 4 apps in Trinity they run fine.
More Desktops is a good thing in my eye, something for everyone.
Still the best Linux DE.
Too bad it was abandoned and now we have monstrosities called KDE5/Gnome3/Unity.
To become viable TDE needs just two things:
1) Porting to Qt 5.6.x.
2) Abandoning of KHTML in favour of something a tad more modern.
TDE is blazingly fast and efficient on modern hardware, yet very powerful.
Edit: alas, port to Qt4/Qt5 most likely will never happen: https://www.trinitydesktop.org/faq/licensing.php#idm140487997042304
Edited 2016-03-25 02:07 UTC
You might want to read this discussion: https://lwn.net/Articles/626562/
KDE 3 was so wonderful, my all time favorite I used it several years until 2008 or so… then I tried to migrate to KDE4 but It was so complicated and bloated that I migrated to horrible GNOME… and I’m being a GNOME2 user for almost 8 years now (I don’t like it but It’s the minor evil)… I really really miss KDE3 It’s way ahead of GNOME even today!
I hope the best to Trinity, I will give it a try on my RHEL6 notebook.
PS: I tried KDE5, I don’t like it. bummer
Edited 2016-03-25 04:55 UTC
Trinity is very much alive and kicking in the form of the Q4OS project.
The folks at http://www.q4os.org have been working on this for some time and provide a Debian Jessie (currently) based release. The whole thing is well thought out with some very good custom application installation scripts. The distro is a bit unusual in that many of the KDE3 customisation tools are not available by default, just a command away though.
Agreed some of the older KDE 3 apps are a bit dated, and some just don’t work any more, but as an environment where GTK apps can run in a low overhead DE that provides good eye-candy it is great.
Moreover if KDE 3 is not your bag they have provided a simple script that allows installation of other DE’s pain free.
OK it stands on the shoulders of the Trinty Desktop project and how long that keeps going is anyone’s guess – hopefully a while longer.
They are still using Qt3. I understand they were trying to switch to Qt4 but gave it up for performance reasons. That says something about Qt.
As a developer I’d say it says more about their skills as Qt developers.
I’ve used Linux since 1997 and used all the desktop environments over that time.
KDE3 is, hands down, the most polished, usable, and stable of the lot. Everything since then has been a regression. KDE4 (and 5) might be superficially prettier, but KDE3 is faster, and more usable. Later releases have focussed upon form over function, and have lost something of what it means to be a *desktop*. The applications for KDE3 vs later releases also follow the same pattern. I was a heavy user of Amarok and other applications at this time; later KDE4 and 5 releases are unusably awful.
A few months back, I ran PCLinuxOS from a live CD. Launching applications like Konsole, from a CD, was virtually instantaneous. I’d forgotten how responsive things could be. I wait several seconds for that on a KDE4 or 5 desktop running from an SSD. Modern desktops are sluggish and bloated beyond belief. And let’s not even get started on GNOME3. I despair at the complete trainwreck which is “modern” desktop environments and current Linux development in general. We’ve taken several steps back, and a few to the side.
I’d happily go back to using KDE3 as my primary desktop if it’s available for a current Linux distribution. PCLinuxOS is fine, but it’s not current (my new GPU is unsupported), and it’s missing a lot of stuff I need for work.
Looks like they have Debian and Ubuntu packages available, so I think I’ll be checking this out sometime soon. Maybe I’ll try building it on FreeBSD too if it’s not in the ports.
It may not work as is on FreeBSD. As the article mentions a switch from HAL to UDEV and FreeBSD has no UDEV emulation, it’s likely at least part of the system will not work.
As far as I know, the only BSD system that has any udev support is DragonFly.
“I’ve used Linux since 1997”
Piker, I’ve used Linux since 1993.
“and used all the desktop environments over that time.”
I doubt that, very much. Did you use Great?
“KDE3 is, hands down, the most polished, usable, and stable of the lot.”
Nope, that’s just the rose-tinted glasses gassing.
“Everything since then has been a regression.”
It’s nice to have an opinion, but you’re wrong.
“KDE4 (and 5) might be superficially prettier,”
That’s not the main difference, the main difference is how the KDE libraries have become easier and better to use to develop useful applications with each generation.
“but KDE3 is faster, and more usable.”
But less functional.
“Later releases have focussed upon form over function, and have lost something of what it means to be a *desktop*.”
No, they didn’t. That’s just your prejudice, sorry, I mean, confirmation bias speaking.
“The applications for KDE3 vs later releases also follow the same pattern.”
No, they don’t. But, hey, have fun painting with Krita 1.6 — don’t look at what’s going to be in 3.0, just stay with 1.6! There’s a reason I asked the Trinity people to rename their Krita 1.6 fork to something else.
“I was a heavy user of Amarok and other applications at this time; later KDE4 and 5 releases are unusably awful.”
I guess that thinking that makes you feel better about yourself. You never contributed anything, but, hey, if you complain, it’ll show the world you’re just so much smarter, so much more knowledgeable than the people doing the work! No need to be part of the community, you were a _heavy_ user, and therefore a guy whose opinion carries weight.
Pity it doesn’t work that way…
“Piker”? Not exactly the mature response I’d expect here.
I’ve used all the major environments extensively, and most of the minor ones. Obviously not every niche little thing. Who would be so obtuse as to read that into what I wrote?
It’s not really “rose-tinted glasses” when you can fire up this stuff on contemporary hardware and directly compare it with the current equivalents. Sure, individual bits like Krita might be better, but overall it’s regressed badly. I use and occasionally write desktop applications, and from the point of view of a user wanting a productive environment, KDE3 is vastly better, though some parts are naturally a bit dated. Plasma is slow, often due to deliberate animation delay which interferes with your use of the system, and in KDE5 it’s dialled up a notch further. That’s specifically plasma, not plain Qt5 gui/widgets, which are fine as standalone libraries.
As for not contributing, I’ve been developing free software for over 17 years, was an active Debian developer for over a decade, and have contributed to desktop-related stuff during this time (though it’s not my primary focus). You’ll find GTK+ work from me back in the earlier 2.x days if you look, for example, though nowadays Qt5 is what I mainly work with. I have dedicated a vast amount of my personal and professional life to contributing to free software development across a wide range of projects.
ignore, I replied to the wrong post.
Edited 2016-03-26 08:04 UTC
And who really need more functionality than KDE3??
Let me tell you who: Linux nerds.
The same people who buried any chance of Linux desktop success with their fanatical “more functionality” mantra. Everybody knew KDE4 was shit, but they insisted with the functionality and the re-write the world attitude.
Paraphrasing to Borges: “Linux nerds are not good or bad, they are uncorrectable”.
Both Trinity and the original KDE3 are available for openSUSE:
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/KDE3/
(Here’s a live CD of the latest openSUSE Leap with KDE3: https://susestudio.com/a/VU5ypu/opensuse-leap-42-1-kde3-live )
And here’s Trinity for openSUSE Leap:
http://mirror.ppa.trinitydesktop.org/trinity/trinity/rpm/opensuse42…
(Live CD for testing: https://susestudio.com/a/VU5ypu/opensuse-leap-42-1-tde )
I like ancient computer hardware and unnecessary optimization as much as any dork, but come on people. Enough with the light weight fetish. Real desktops have dozens of processes running for services you have never heard of and render their flat design in glorious vector graphics.
Buy a 5 year old PC off ebay, put an ssd disk and a couple of 4GB memory modules into it and you are all set for running latest and greatest from KDE.
If I have an above average spec PC, I might reasonably expect the performance of a contemporary desktop environment to be adequate, if not excellent. That’s unfortunately not the case.
If I take an older environment like Trinity and run it on the same hardware, it’s blazing fast. And not just a little bit faster, but like an order of magnitude or more.
For KDE3 at the time of its release, on hardware contemporary for the time, it was obviously slower than on current hardware. But it was still better performing relative to what we see with a modern desktop environment on modern hardware. And I’m not singling out KDE4 or 5 here; Unity and GNOME3 are also shockingly slow for what they are doing.
Some of that is inefficiency and bloat, but part of it is perceptual due to the “UX” trading immediacy in interaction for animation effects which necessarily introduces small delays which are counter to efficiently executing actions. Look at the KDE5 kickoff launcher for a bad example; it requires hovering and waiting on transition effects rather than clicking. This makes using it both frustrating and inefficient. You can turn off some of this, but not all. When you consider the effect of this bad interaction over the entire environment, it makes the whole thing mildly unpleasant to use (but it *looks* great). KDE3 didn’t do much of that, and for the bits it did have, you could turn the whole lot off entirely.
When I’m using something all day, every day, the flashy stuff is a distraction. I’m quite serious on that; I like cool graphics as much as the next person, but for routine use it gets old fast. After KDE3, I tried to use 4 for several years. I’ve also recently tried 5. But day to day, I’ve ended up using i3 most of the time over the last 24 months. RSI meant a severe economy on the needed keystrokes to perform actions, and it’s the most efficient setup I’ve had so far. No waiting around hovering over stuff waiting for the computer to do stuff for no reason; that was genuinely agonising. If it’s not efficient to use, it’s a usability failure.
Almost any PC bought in the last 5 years should have no issue running any modern linux desktop (or windows for that matter).
Also you’re not forced to upgrade, if a desktop version works for you, keep using it.
It just gets real tedious having to read the same BS about bloat and what not. Now KDE3 is the “gold” standard for low resources and responsiveness. But when it was released, y’all were bitching about how it was a reource hog and unresponsive compared to KDE2. Which when released y’all panned for being a resource hog over KDE1. Which when it was released y’all bitched about how bloated it was compared to TWM. And on and on and on.
Some people just can’t cope with the reality of a field that advances exponentially. Good luck trying to stop time, you’re just going to be left behind.
Can’t argue with that. I’m just not seeing too slow transition animations in KDE/Plasma 5. Granted, I tweak a lot of look and feel settings, so I may have changed those. The hovering thing in Kickoff for one seems fast enough, but annoys me for other usability reasons, so I turn it off (the setting gets saved now).
I don’t even use the Kickoff Launcher. I just use Alt+F2 (is that krunner? I don’t even know the name because it’s unintrusive) and I get to anything I want as soon as I type, and often without having the exact correct name.
Except they don’t work that well with machines that have 8GB of ram and an SSD.
It probably the GPU on this machine, but Windows 10 runs faster than Gnome 3 & KDE in terms of responsiveness.
Unity which is fairly nice to use IMHO, runs at a snails pace if you don’t have an AMD or Nvidia card.
Does KDE 5 run on anything except Linux?
Lightweight for me is about battery life. You are right my desktop can run any modern desktop no problem. When on my laptop there is no reason for 300 processes if I am running a terminal. I need to work the whole day sometimes no where near a plug. Doesn’t happen often but when it does it means I am traveling with my netbook. A lightweight desktop means the difference between 6 hours and 10 hours of battery life.
Seems to me that Trinity is a great option for older systems (and newer if lightness and speed are the bottom line) but I love Plasma 5 (whereas I never liked 3x or 4x).
On a modern laptop it’s beautiful; feels more integrated and the new features are enjoyable. Guess I like eye-candy. Love the refinements offered in the latest release. If modern laptops are going to be as powerful as they are, why not make use of that power?
As for multi-monitor support: I don’t generally use it, but the support seems to function better (on the Intel based systems I’m using) than Ubuntu’s Unity.
Edited 2016-03-26 16:18 UTC
Developers never felt quite confortable on this:
https://www.kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php
“The core libraries of Qt (Essentials) and all existing LGPL-licensed Qt add-ons must continue to be available under the LGPLv3”. Licensing is alright, but [Same as Java] to much of the Core Code was treasured. Too much, too much depending on the short term needs and mood of a few ones.
Basic developer Tools -and anything below their stack- should go GPL, not LGPL. If MicroSoft true to his new say, shouldn’t object this.
Linux wins open and permanent applications and the New Windows gets free and permanent applications. Those could grow in functionality and services as Commercial applications.
Permanency is essential to markets as they mature. Time is their most precious resource.
It’s so weird to me reading all these comments about KDE4 being terrible. I have found it to be quite exceptional, and it runs very stable for me. I love the customization and features. Yes, it takes longer to start up than many of the other desktop environments, but every time I use Unity or XFCE, etc., I always find myself missing so many of the features I have come to love about KDE (Plasma).
I would never want to go back to KDE3, as the desktop has come a long way since then. I am really looking forward to Kubuntu 16.04 with Plasma 5 (and the Neon project!).
Edited 2016-03-26 17:58 UTC
As regards Trinity, see Internet Rule:
36. No matter what it is, it is somebody’s fetish. No exceptions.
As regards Plasma5, see Internet Rule:
15. The more beautiful and pure a thing is, the more satisfying it is to corrupt it.
It’s kind of Pavlovian, esp. as regards Linux DEs. No praise, for any DE, will go unpunished–and punishment will be swift and there will be collateral damage (understood as other DEs).
A.) If a DE is disparaged, the others are worse.
B.) If a DE is praised, the others are better.
Maybe Linux forums needs its own Internet Rules… 😉
10 years ago KDE was becoming the preferred Linux desktop, every major linux distro used it, even Linus Torvalds used it. GNOME was a very distant second… then KDE4 happened and even the GNOME-haters migrated to GNOME!!
That’s a fact. Not a fetish, pure reality.
Linux people have a tendency to re-invent the wheel and KDE4 was the worst wheel ever created. They fucked it up. Get over it.
And now it’s okay and works quite well.
Get over it.
http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2012/Aug-29.html
Edited 2016-03-27 08:42 UTC
And yet people conveniently forget how difficult it was to move from old Windows to Windows XP, in effect also giving rise to the meme to always wait for SP2 of any MS OS release. People forget what a pain it was to move from old Mac OS apps to OS X when it first came out.
If anything this goes to show people simply aren’t mature enough to recognize when they’re once again falling for the good-old-days fallacy. The only difference between Linux and commercial OSes is that you don’t have a choice when they decide to once again break everything. So you learn NOT to complain and just bend over and accept it.
People don’t complain more than when it’s over something that gives them choice for free. They complain because they are allowed to complain, basically.
It was difficult because a lot of programs didn’t use the right APIs.
Anything that worked on NT4 and 2000 worked fine on XP (and I bet still does today).
I didn’t use MacOS 9, so I won’t comment.
Until Windows 7 came out, I was using Linux specifically Suse Redhat 7.3 – 9 and later Suse 9.2 and OpenSuse.
Gnome 2 and KDE 3 worked fine, then everything went mental yet again and suddenly nothing worked yet again … and I just gave up.
I was at uni during the time and being on the Software Engineering course almost everyone used Linux is some form or another, after work placement most had given up and just choose Windows 7.
Edited 2016-03-27 19:17 UTC
The field is crying for a little more professionalism. We are still treated like tugs on verbal contract.
All BS!
For example: Mountain Lion wasn’t able to run old OSX PPC binaries, because they removed Rosetta long before.
Miguel is only BS by now. Stupid MS shill.
No it isn’t. Top argument there mate. Rosetta was binary translator not an API … FFS.
Breaking APIs means that everyone has to change their code to suit which is churn.
Microsoft have fucked up royally on the .NET Core 1.0 release.
http://weblog.west-wind.com/posts/2016/Jan/21/Microsoft-renames-ASP…
And it creating churn for those who ported their code to the later betas and Release Candidates.
I was going to port a lot of my .NET code to ASP.NET 5 but until they sort this out I might as well just concentrate on Mono and .NET 4+.
This is exactly WTF happened with the KDE 3 and Gnome 2 … everything changed and nothing fucking worked again.
To be fair, he didn’t say anything about PPC and Mountain Lion was still able to run older Intel OSX apps that came out with Tiger 10.4.
Could it be that you started using it after they’d polished out the bugs, while others had bad experiences around the misunderstood 4.0 launch?
Quite accurately so. I was aware there were some rough edges in the early KDE4 versions, so I stayed on PCLinuxOS with KDE3 for a bit before eventually migrating over to Kubuntu LTS with KDE4, which is the path I have been on ever since. It’s looking as though my migration to Plasma 5 with 16.04 is going to be at the right time as well, based on what I have been reading.
Edited 2016-03-27 05:40 UTC
Yes KDE 3 was ok but since then not so good. I have been using Linux since Red Hat 3; it was offered when I was with IBM. Currently using Ubuntu 15.10 64 bit on a very old (2007) Dell Vostro 200 unmodified/not overclocked, 4GB memory & 1TB disk. Unity is awful but works once you get used to the quirks. I can do everything I need to do including Mixxx, Audacity, Brasero video ripping and Libreoffice without falling apart.
Which brings me to another issue, should anyone like to comment: My old Vostro 200 runs faster than my grandson’s brand new i7 Dell Insperion laptop. I cleaned the bloatware and still his laptop is creepy slow running Win 10 Home. I also run (dual boot with Ubuntu 15.10) Win 10 Pro 64 Bit on the Vostro. Does anyone have a clue why the new “ah gee wiz” machines are creepy slow???
George Hilliker
I suggest you use some antivirus on his computer. 99% of time people complain with me about slowness the culprit(s) is(are) related to something they downloaded from Internet and installed .. and the thing came bundled with digital annoyances.
Also, while you are at it, setup an account with low privilege level to be used daily and leave another for maintenance activities. It fix the majority of troubles for most people.
If you can, make a bootable pendrive with tools to fix things, it is better than fight to fix things on a very compromised system.
SSDs make more of a difference than anything else these days. I have an i7 laptop from work and an i5 laptop of my own.
The i5 feels faster because of the SSDs.
“I get the value of modular systems and the ability to string together stuff, but when important code is totally reliant on layers upon layers of third parties, that seems ridiculous. If you want to reuse the code, why not just bring the code into your program, rather than making a dependency on something so basic?
“Kik-Gate” case is spilling beyond JavaScript.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160324/17160034007/namespaces-in…
“Finally, stringing APIs together and calling it programming doesn’t make it programming. It’s some crazy form of dependency hacking that involves the cloud, over-engineering things, and complexity far beyond what’s actually needed.”
This lovely whack comes from David Haney.
Sorry but this is bullshit.
Even if you are developing for the browser, there is a lot to be said for having lots of little micro libraries.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Gl…
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Gl…
These are part of ES6 (most browsers and I believe node aren’t ES6 as yet).
I could write:
Every-time I wanted to see if one string included another. The other option is that I could include MDNs code as part of my front end build code so I knew the string prototype was safely extended with the ES6 function.
You also have to remember that a lot of frontend developers usually do stuff like UX, design, CSS and some JS and don’t want to have to care (quite rightly) with dealing with this stuff.
Edited 2016-03-28 15:24 UTC