I came here today expressly to make sure that The Vector Linux community is aware of the Trinity project, because I know of no other distro that is as well situated to give users the option of sticking with KDE3.5. Timothy Pearson (AKA "Mad scientist" has been stubbornly working to keep KDE3 alive, but without the help of some plucky little distro to buck the trend, it's never going to amount to much. And that would be a shame, because the users are out there.
Personally, after a whole lot of griping, I like KDE4.4 just fine in my Slackware and Kubuntu systems, but with my older machine, I still enjoy using Konqueror 3.5 as the default browser with Vector Light, the one that I open with that icon on the ICE WM desktop. Of course, it's not just a web browser, it's a powerful and configurable Desktop GUI. In KDE4.4, Konqueror is starting to get back some of its former awesomeness, and beyond. With plugins, Konqueror can now do bulk renaming and even (dramatic pause) basic text editing. But it's still not as agile as Konqueror 3.5. If you want to use it as a file manager, you have to get it into file manager mode. I'll do this by opening Konqueror with a file path, ususally just " / " It's just a little hiccup, hardly worth mentioning, but I do enjoy the seemless feel of getting back to the classic Konqueror. Nevertheless, I'm a KDE4 user now, but I'm sensitive to the fact that, even after all this time.
AT last, I have learned to love KDE4, but that's after two years of frustration and angry forum posts. KDE4 is amazing, really amazing, and it's getting quite stable, but it comes with such a wilderness of possible configurations that you can really spend a couple of years trying to figure out how to use it, like I did.
For those who know what I'm talking about, I think KDE does everyone a disservice by using "Desktop" as the default activity instead of the more familiar "Folder View" activity. That would give users a more recognizable desktop to start with, and a chance to discover the amazing and truly wonderful possibilities over time. Certain LIVE distros, e.g. Sidux, Mepis, and PC Linux OS, have taken it upon themseles to release KDE4 with Folder view as the default for the live CD user, and it really does make things easier.
My point is that I have come to regard KDE4 as well worth the effort in my case, but it was a LOT of effort, and for some people the whole idea of gui is that it's not supposed to have a leraning curve. After all this time, KDE3 still has its followers. All these people want is what they already have. That's not a lot to ask.
