When comparing TDE (Trinity) vs UKUI, 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 UKUI is ranked 14th. 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 Simplified MATE
Pro Nice feel
It's more like Windows 8 but besides that, it looks great.
Pro Stylish
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The desktop and everything looks outdated and very similar to Windows 2000.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 Not fully translated
Con UI isn't optimized for lower end pc/laptops
Super slow UI that could take 3-6 seconds to popup. Gnome was slow but UKUI was very sluggish in comparison.
Con Looks like Windows 8
It just looks like Windows 8.