When comparing TDE (Trinity) vs Lumina, the Slant community recommends TDE (Trinity) for most people. In the question“What are the best UNIX-like Desktop Environments for everyday users?” TDE (Trinity) is ranked 12th while Lumina is ranked 17th. The most important reason people chose TDE (Trinity) is:
Trinity is every customizable, almost every aspect of the GUI can be changed to look like you want. Need a button in the toolbar? You can add it. You want a specialized toolbar in a certain part of the screen? You can add it. You can configure the GUI in the setup before the first run too.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Highly configurable
Trinity is every customizable, almost every aspect of the GUI can be changed to look like you want. Need a button in the toolbar? You can add it. You want a specialized toolbar in a certain part of the screen? You can add it.
You can configure the GUI in the setup before the first run too.
Pro Low resource usage
Pro Traditional desktop experience
As a fork of KDE 3.5 Trinity is designed for Unix-like operating systems, intended for computer users preferring a traditional desktop model.
Pro Stable system that does not change everything every 6 months just for the sake of it
Pro Works fine on old computers
It is very responsive in 7+ years old computers.
Pro Looks like Windows XP
Pro Many themes by default
including themes that look like Windows 95 and Windows XP
Pro Looks old
Pro For conservative users
Pro Does not depend on toolkits
The desktop works without Systemd, ConsoleKit, PolicyKit or even D-Bus.
Pro OpenSource with no copyrights
The whole desktop is licensed under 3-clause BSD license which gives you complete freedom for any reuse
Pro Lightweight
It's fast and responsive.
Pro No dconf or gconf
All desktop configuration files are simple plain-text files on the back-end.
Pro Filemanager Insight fully supports ZFS
As it was initially developed for BSD-systems its file manager "Insight" supports the advanced ZFS features other Unix file managers misses.
Pro Qt-based
A Qt-based desktop.
Pro Modular
Since there are no toolkits all applications are just GUIs to common *NIX applications.
Pro Easy to configure
Pro Completely customizable
Cons
Con Slow development
Two years from one patch release to another and instead of fixing bugs it adds new ones.
Con Huge and obsolete codebase
Trinity is based in Qt 3, which is unmaintained by upstream. The KDE 3 codebase is also unmaintained. As new technologies like Systemd become a new standard the lack of developers make Trinity more incompatible and error/bug/security risk prone.
Con Ugly UX
Con Missing many modern features
Con Not supported on most Linux distros
Con Settings
Every now and then you might have to reset something. I had this happen a few times with the mouse setting for single click.
Con Looks old
The desktop and everything looks outdated and very similar to Windows 2000.
Con Poor support by distributors
It is unavailable from the most distributions so you have to build it from source.
Con Not really beautiful
Functionality comes first.
Con Unthemeable for usual users
As all Qt desktop environments themeing is hard since you need to know C++. There is a workaround using qss, however, it's not as powerful as GTK/CSS, Enlightenment or Windows theming.