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KDE Goes Cross-Platform, Supports Windows and OS X
Posted by
Zonk
on Wednesday January 23, @03:02PM
from the strange-confluence-of-events dept.
from the strange-confluence-of-events dept.
klblastone writes "The KDE desktop environment is going cross-platform with support for the Windows and Mac OS X operating systems. In addition to porting the core KDE libraries and applications, developers are also porting popular KDE-based software like the Amarok audio player and the KOffice productivity suite. New KDE binaries for Windows were released yesterday and are now available from KDE mirrors through an automated installer program. The Mac OS X port is made available via BitTorrent in universal binary format."
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KDE Running on Mac OS X 393 comments
GeoffP writes "AppleTalk Australia is running a story on running KDE on Mac OS X. For those that don't know, KDE is a graphical desktop environment used to access your computer's files. Finally, Mac users have a free (as in speech) approach to their filesystem."
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Great (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Great (Score:5, Informative)
So will this ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:So will this ... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:So will this ... (Score:5, Insightful)
And while I'm at it, where's my window shading and sloppy focus too?
Virtual desktops on MS windows that don't suck (Score:5, Informative)
I have mentioned this before in posts on slashdot, but I have no relationship with the project.I, like many of us, have to use MS Windows for work, but with virtuawin at least I have ONE annoyance out of the way.
Re:So will this ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So will this ... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:So will this ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So will this ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, it was added in winXP. But it wasn't particularly good, and some of us can't use XP for various reasons.
No, various X windows systems have supported multiple desktops for a lot longer than that. CDE has supported multiple desktops (at least in Solaris) for many years - and done it with the best multi-desktop controls I've seen so far. KDE and GNOME have both done it for quite some time as well. Considering XP came out October 2001, and the powertoys sometime after, I don't think one could reasonably claim that microsoft has had it as long as linux.
If you find it useless, then don't use it. But don't try to tell the rest of us that it isn't useful. Many of us find it to be very beneficial. I suspect it comes down to how one tends to organize things in your own mind.
Can it replace Explorer? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Can it replace Explorer? (Score:4, Informative)
"By design, KDE-windows does not provide the full-blown KDE desktop, thus no KWin composite manager, KDE-specific "start" menus, Plasma desktop, etc."
Just Qt and KDE4 library based applications.
Re:Can it replace Explorer? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Can it replace Explorer? (Score:5, Informative)
The only app that doesn't work with it is cmd.exe, because it uses that as a command line switch.
Re:Good question. (Score:5, Informative)
Supports Windows and OS X (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Supports Windows and OS X (Score:4, Funny)
I want to like this (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I want to like this (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I want to like this (Score:5, Interesting)
I just hope to god this menu isn't final. I installed it to try it out, because it looks *so* pretty, drooled over the desktop for a bit, then clicked the applications menu (or the K menu, or wtf every they call it in KDE land) and was taken aback. "OK, so I click this to get to my programs, I guess... Oh, no new pane, it just used the same one to display the new menu and shoved the other one 'off screen'... huh, this one ALSO doesn't have my programs on it. Click again on that category, it looks like the one I want. Now on the program. Oh, shit, wrong menu, how do I go back?"
It's like navigating the menus on my fucking cell phone. Those menus are clunky because they have to be, since screen real estate is at a premium. I can forgive that. A desktop OS' menu should never be like that. It's actually WORSE than the Vista start menu, which is saying something.
Re:I want to like this (Score:5, Informative)
It's not that I want the newest up to date stuff. Amarok is hardly new, it's the underlying Qt4 that's the culprit IMO. Getting Amarok on OSX would be very nice as I could replace iTunes and switch my library over to Ogg, something I've really been wanting to do. The Ogg plugin for iTunes is a little lacking and iTunes has just gotten too "in your face" with it's store for my tastes. KDE4 has a lot of promise, I admit that and applaud them on their work. I just feel they broke a trust with the user base by releasing a
I really don't know when KDE4 will be "ready". I suspect when i can run it without trouble on my Linux laptop then it'll be very soon after that the OSX port would be stable enough.
Don't do that. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Don't do that. (Score:4, Informative)
Just tried it out (Score:5, Informative)
Considering it's such an early release, I'd say KDE4 on Windows is functional beyond any expectations, and in a couple of months I hope to be using it for real and not as a toy. Kudos to the KDE team, brilliant as usual.
Linux wins the desktop! (Score:5, Funny)
For someone who's obviously new here... (Score:3, Interesting)
This is good... (Score:5, Insightful)
Over time, people will see that they can run the same thing on a VASTLY less expensive computer. Get people comfortable with how it functions, show them how cheap it is by comparison, increase marketshare.
I guess I probably should have added inserted a step three in there before the increase maketshare as ??? to follow
Jews? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Jews? (Score:5, Funny)
Autotools,makes even seasoned programmers nauseous (Score:5, Informative)
Autotools, an intractably arcane and grotesquely anachronistic cesspool of ineffable complexity that makes even seasoned programmers nauseous.
Re:Vista (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Point? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Point? Diversity. (Score:4, Insightful)
Mac developers can design shinier interfaces than anyone else, but too often they gloss over core functionality and/or remain closed-source. It's valuable to have apps designed from the opposite perspective available as well.
Re:Point? Diversity. (Score:4, Interesting)
Only if you consider a QT app to be native, which I don't. QT is an abstraction of the Carbon API. And KDE is further abstraction of QT. I doubt that any KDE app would ever integrate well enough with the rest of my OS X desktop to make me want to use it. And if the K app was really that awesome, I'd always secretly be hoping for someone to port/rewrite/reimplement it directly to Cocoa.
Anyway, the app I mentioned was GTK. Though I should mention that I haven't read newsgroups in a while and haven't bothered reinstall PAN since I upgraded to Leopard. I guess my point is that for most common functionality, I find that native Cocoa apps are not only better individually than Linux counterparts, but also integrate better with each other. Like Java (Swing/SWT) apps, K apps would have an automatic handicap running on OS X in my opinion.
-matthew
Re:Point? Diversity. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:But why (Score:4, Informative)
Dial-up, no CD recorder, or winhardware (Score:5, Insightful)
Step two: have your dial-up ISP hang up on you before the download completes, or not have any way to boot the ISO to install it. High-speed Internet access (and Ethernet cards to enable it) and CD recorders were not universal on machines sold in the Windows 98 era. Workaround: Buy a copy of Kubuntu on CD.
Step three: You downloaded or bought the wrong CD. Many PCs from the Windows 98 era had 128 MB of RAM, but the Kubuntu live CD needs about twice that. Instead, you will need the alternate installer CD. But by this time, you might as well use Xubuntu instead.
Step four: Have the CD fail to recognize at least one of sound, networking, and printing. Many older video cards have decent Free 2D drivers in X.Org, but winmodems and winprinters were unfortunately common in that era.
Re:Dial-up, no CD recorder, or winhardware (Score:5, Interesting)
Step two: have your dial-up ISP hang up on you before the download completes, or not have any way to boot the ISO to install it. High-speed Internet access (and Ethernet cards to enable it) and CD recorders were not universal on machines sold in the Windows 98 era. Workaround: Buy a copy of Kubuntu on CD.
Step three: You downloaded or bought the wrong CD. Many PCs from the Windows 98 era had 128 MB of RAM, but the Kubuntu live CD needs about twice that. Instead, you will need the alternate installer CD. But by this time, you might as well use Xubuntu instead.
Step four: Have the CD fail to recognize at least one of sound, networking, and printing. Many older video cards have decent Free 2D drivers in X.Org, but winmodems and winprinters were unfortunately common in that era. "
Step Five: Get a real job, or loosen up the old purse strings and pony up a couple of dollars to buy a NEW computer? C'mon, minimal systems that will blow away the hardware you must have can be had for the $200 range...heck, I hear some of them at Wallyworld Mart come WITH linux pre-installed. For a few more dollars, I saw one at Dell for $349.
Re:Dial-up, no CD recorder, or winhardware (Score:5, Informative)
You fail miserably. There are places outside your world where people get $349 *a month* for a living. And they must maintain a complete family (in fact, the average income of people in Mexico is about 515 and $2000 [sustainer.org] a year.
There are lots of these people who can not buy a new computer, and are still happily using their 486 or even 386 with windows 95 and 98. And some of them using dial up internet connections!
Re:Dial-up, no CD recorder, or winhardware (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, from the poster's comments.....I gathered he was probably in the US. You're generally not going to be in the US posting on /. on less than $349/mo.
That being said....I do myself like to recycle older hardware, but, you gotta go for what will work on them. You don't use a brand new version of ubuntu or RH or whatever on old hardware....you have to install basic linux...roll your kernel to min of what you need....and go for lower end window manager, etc if you want gui.
I mean....win 95 wasn't exactly the resource hog that modern versions of MS windows are.
One big problem is his using dial up.....but, it can be done. My first linux install was on an old box in about 1994 or so....I did slackware...downloaded for weeks to get all the parts on floppy....and I installed it. It can be done....
Re:Dial-up, no CD recorder, or winhardware (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Dial-up, no CD recorder, or winhardware (Score:4, Insightful)
A 440BX board or better, a PII or III, as much memory as ya can fit, a Soundblaster card, a 3Com or Intel NIC, a US Robotics external modem if you are on dialup, and an HP LaserJet for basic printing.
Well-supported, good hardware that's available in thrift stores, dumpsters, etc. Remember that you can build machines out of junk, and there is plenty of good junk.
Sure, plenty of us have money for better, but many of us don't and they needn't suffer much for it.
Re:But why (Score:4, Informative)
Plus it's very user friendly and extremely easy to modify.
http://puppylinux.com/pfs/index.html [puppylinux.com] and http://puppylinux.com/puppy-unleashed.htm [puppylinux.com]
It'll even run on a PII system with 128meg of ram and a CD drive, WITHOUT a hard drive!
Re:Two interesting perspectives (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Two interesting perspectives (Score:4, Interesting)
I doubt it. First, the core QT developers are probably always going to be Linux people. Maybe that will change and the KDE people can start to worry, but I don't see it happening. The way things are now, these are apps that are Linux native, and will now mostly work on other OS's (but never perfectly or with all the benefits of native apps). Rather, the main advantage here is that there may be support from Windows and OS X developers who will contribute to KDE based projects when they don't have a good and fully native OSS project. It also can serve to give users of other OS's a preview of what they can expect if they switch to Linux and give large organizations using or considering a missed environment an easier way to keep or make Linux an option.
Imagine you run a government agency and you occasionally consider Linux as a way to cut costs. You're currently using Windows, but you figure you could switch 80% of your systems without any real problems. Unfortunately, you have another project coming up where you're developing a custom application internally and you don't have the budget to build native versions for Windows and Linux. If you're in that place, this is an answer (as is Java). Move internal projects to KDE and target Windows and Linux and you can also use it for those graphics people on Macs who currently have two computers. The real question is, will this be a better cross-platform solution than Java is?
Re:For Redundant, See Redundant (Score:5, Insightful)
The "K Desktop Environment" abbreivated "KDE" is the full name of the project. Its not a project called "K". And KDE is a desktop environment, so the KDE desktop environment while somewhat 'redundant' if you expand the acronym, is perfectly acceptable: "The 'K Desktop Environment' desktop environment has been ported to..."
The same sort of thing applies to, say, DOS, OS/2, or BeOS. Where it is perfectly acceptable to say "The DOS operating system...", "The OS/2 operating system...", "The BeOS operating system...".
Do you ask if someone's PC has an AGP port? I've never ever heard anyone say, "Do you have an AGP?" Or maybe you say "AGP slot" which is still redudnant: As in "Do you have an accelerated graphics port slot"?
Do you take offense if someone refers to the the perl language? The POP, PPP, TCP/IP, or PPTP protocols? And I can only imagine how you must burn right up when told to enter your SIN number.
Re:For Redundant, See Redundant (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Now Windows and Mac users can enjoy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Or drag and drop correctly. (Score:4, Informative)
On Windows, I enjoy the bliss of not knowing until I try it whether a particular drag-n-drop is going to result in moving the file, copying the file, creating a shortcut, or just make something up. Same with OS X, and with every other system that tries to helpfully guess for me.
On KDE, if I forget to hold down shift (move) or ctrl (copy), I get a context menu, instead of some completely unpredictable behavior. It mentions the keyboard shortcuts, so that if I'm intelligent, that menu will never bother me again, and I'll know exactly what I'm doing.
Re:Or drag and drop correctly. (Score:5, Informative)
If it's just the expected icon, it's going to be a move.
If it has a '+' sign appended onto it, it will be a copy.
If has a shortcut arrow on it, it will be a shortcut.