Release Notes For R14.0.0

Introduction

The Trinity Desktop Environment is a complete software desktop environment designed for Unix-like operating systems, intended for computer users preferring a traditional desktop model, and is free/libre software.

Unlike previous releases TDE R14.0.0 has been in development for over 2 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!

Version scheme change

Also new in this release is a change from the KDE v3.5.x series versioning. In line with our new, separate identity, and to avoid incorrect comparisons with KDE SC based on version number alone, we are dropping the old versioning scheme and replacing it with our new R-series versioning scheme. Each new release from this point forward will be identified with three numbers prefixed with an R (standing for "Release"); the first number is the major series, the second is the minor series, and the last is the Stable Release Update (SRU) identifier. A stable series will be indicated by a single Rxx.yy identifier, e.g. R14.0. Major overhauls of the codebase that significantly and permanently change the way TDE functions, such as the transition from HAL to the TDE Hardware Library or the new style engine, will only occur when the major series number increments. Normal, incremental development, including new features, will be indicated with an increment of the minor version number. Bugfixes backported to a stable series (Rxx.yy) with no new features or changed functionality will be indicated via an increment of the SRU identifier alone.

Installation instructions

Installation instructions and binary packages are immediately available for Debian and Ubuntu. Packages for RedHat/CentOs, Fedora, Mageia, OpenSUSE, and PCLinuxOS are still being built by their respective maintainers and will be made available at a later date.

Live CDs with TDE R14.0.0 preinstalled are available on the LiveCDs page.

Major Improvements from 3.5.13

The following is a list of the major improvements TDE R14.0.0 includes.

New HAL-independent hardware support based on udev. HAL support is still available for those systems (such as *bsd) that require it.
Significant renaming of applications, libraries and packages to avoid conflicts with other desktop environments (most notably KDE). This allows TDE to be installed in parallel with other desktop environments without significant negative interaction.
Upgrades to TQt3 (TDE's fork of Qt 3.3.8) include a new, modern style engine, multi-threading support, and improved speed and stability.
Support for network-manager 0.9 and newer.
Switched compositor from Kompmgr to Compton-TDE, a fork of Compton with TDE-specific features.
Added builds for armel/armhf architectures on Debian and armhf on Raspbian Wheezy.
File mimetype detection system now based on libmagic.

Other important changes

This is a non-comprehensive list of other significant changes made in R14.0.0.

Significant branding overhaul and restyling.
Further improved XDG compliance.
Additional theme engines available.
Continued migration from autotools to cmake.
TDE integration support for LibreOffice available and maintained in upstream GIT.
Improved Secure Attention Key support.
Added optional Mac-like window switching.
Kate sort plugin now available.
Tasks are now manually rearrangeable in the taskbar.
Added Show Icons Only option for taskbar.
Improved application crash report framework, now also including source code commit references for better debugging.
A mouse double-click speed test option in the control panel.
A smooth crossfade effect is now available when changing the desktop wallpaper.
Improved project documentation and localization.
Added experimental PowerPC and MIPS builds on selected distributions (currently Debian/Wheezy)

For a more detailed list of improvements please refer to the TDE R14.0.0 Release Notes (available here or by typing help:/khelpcenter/releasenotes in Konqueror or khelpcenter help:/khelpcenter/releasenotes from the CLI).

New applications

The following applications have been added in this TDE release.

GTK3/TQt Theme Engine
Kasablanca
Kate sort plugin
KBibTex
KBiff
KControl Autostart
KControl LDAP Manager
KDbg
KFTPGrabber
KLCDDimmer
KNmap
KRecipes
KScope
KSensors
KShowmail
KShutdown
LDAP/Kerberos Toolkit
MPlayerthumbs
Qt4/TQt Theme Engine
Tdeio-ftps
Tdeio-sword
TorK

About TDE

The Trinity Desktop Environment was born as a fork of the K Desktop Environment version 3.5, which was originally written by the KDE Team, a world-wide network of software engineers committed to Free Software development. The name Trinity was chosen because the word means Three as in continuation of KDE 3. Since then, TDE has evolved to be an independent and standalone computer desktop environment project. The developers have molded the code to its own identity without giving up on the efficiency, productivity and traditional user interface experience characteristic of the original KDE 3 series.

The TDE project was founded by and is still led by Timothy Pearson. Timothy is an experienced and skilled software developer and was the KDE >= 3.5.11 support coordinator/developer for previous Kubuntu releases.

Contributing to the project

The TDE development team is small but friendly. Anyone wanting to join the development process and help create the next TDE release is welcome! If you wish to participate, please take a look at the Get involved page.

User Feedback

Feedback from our users is an integral part of a large, user experience-oriented project such TDE. Whether you want to report a bug, suggest an improvement or simply let us know your opinion of TDE, please feel free to contact us. Two good places to start are the project's mailing lists and bug tracker.

Helping the TDE Project

Creating TDE requires significant computing resources and bandwidth; please consider helping to keep us online with a donation on our donations page! Without your financial assistance TDE would not be possible.

Press Contact Information

Project Founder/Administrator: Timothy Pearson, kb9vqf@pearsoncomputing.net