To most users, KDE 3 is obsolete, replaced two years ago by the KDE 4 series. Yet, many continue to lament the loss of KDE 3, and greeted enthusiastically the news earlier this year that a project called Trinity KDE had started in order "to keep the KDE 3.5 computing style alive, as well as polish off any rough edges that were present as of KDE 3.5.10."

Recently, I talked via email with Timothy Pearson about the project, its motivations, purposes, and plans.

A long time developer with Kubuntu, Ubuntu's KDE variant, Pearson describes himself as "an electrical engineer specializing in embedded systems and RF [Radio Frequency] by day, and an open source programmer by night."

Pearson first discovered free and open source software in 2001 as an alternative to Windows, but at first used it only for servers, judging the desktop as not ready for general use. Later, though, he discovered Kubuntu and KDE 3.5, "and was blown away by the powerful but user friendly interface, as well as the fast Debian packaging system. Shortly thereafter I replaced all my Red hat and Windows XP installations with Kubuntu, never looking back."

With such an attitude, Pearson was blindsided by the release of KDE 4.0 in January 2008.

"KDE 4 kind of snuck up on me," he writes. "I had assumed that the new software coming from KDE was going to be along the same lines as KDE 3.5. I tried using KDE 4 for a few days and just could not stand the interface; my productivity plummeted and I seriously considered going back to Windows...

Read the rest of this KDE3/Trinity story at Datamation.com