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OS X Businesses Operating Systems GUI KDE Apple

Konqueror Compiled For Mac OS X; KOffice Next 509

Posted by timothy from the polished dept.
scishop writes "Benjamin Reed has just compiled Konqueror for Mac OS X after porting the KUniqueApplication class. A screenshot of the running program can be found here. According to Reed's blog, 'next up is KOffice.'"
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Konqueror Compiled For Mac OS X; KOffice Next More

Konqueror Compiled For Mac OS X; KOffice Next

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  • that this port would have taken longer then, say, the port for my pda (zaurus 5500) or cygwin?

    • Re:seems odd... (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      while I agree that it is odd, there were a good number of other browsers for OSX

      MSIE, Netscape/Mozilla, Safari, Camino, etc.

    • Re:seems odd... (Score:4, Informative)

      by after ( 669640 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @12:40AM (#7833086) Journal
      What a great idea!

      That IS odd that they could not have ported
      that to the Cygwin platform... I mean, X11
      is available and all.

      Wait, but isnt there already a port of KDE [sourceforge.net]
      to Cygwin?

    • Re:seems odd... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Durin_Deathless ( 668544 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @12:42AM (#7833107) Homepage
      This port doesn't use X11 at all. I have been on the maillist, and the stumbling block has been the X11 specific code(and a minor thing in QT-mac, reguarding extensions of shared libs). This is a real achievement, and rangerrick is to be greatly congratulated!
    • You do know that konqueror does run on the Zaurus just fine, right?

  • Don't you mean (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @12:35AM (#7833062)
    Konquerer Kompiled For OS X, KOffice Knext?

  • Now... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @12:36AM (#7833066)
    Can we get a KTHML compatible browser compiled for Windows? Konquerer or Safari, anything... make it easier to test web designs.

    • Re:Now... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by gusnz ( 455113 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @04:29AM (#7833705) Homepage
      As another poster mentioned, the whole KDE environment [sourceforge.net] has been ported to Cygwin. It works, but it's a pain as it has to run inside a whole X session.

      However, I know what you mean... and yes I would love a Windows-native Konqueror port! There's one guy [sourceforge.net] who is (supposedly) starting a port. It looks impressive on the front page, but has been stalled for a year and if you browse through the project forums, the guy admits he isn't really a Windows developer and is still deciding on what compiler to use. So basically, are there any skilled C++ hackers out there who would like to get involved in a KHTML -> Windows port? There's a few good reasons:

      1) Choice of browsers on Windows. Even if you just ported KHTML rather than the full Konqueror, the KHTML engine rocks and could make great inroads against IE (compared to Mozilla/MozFirebird, which doesn't seem as fast as IE to load or as responsive on low-end hardware, even though it's a superior browser/renderer engine).

      2) Porting all of Konq would rock too, as it offers a lot over plain vanilla EXPLORER.EXE.

      3) Development, as the parent pointed out. I'm a XHTML/DHTML/CSS/JavaScript/etc. coder, and would like to certify that my projects work in KHTML. It's damn hard currently. And once Windows developers can get pages working perfectly in KHTML, all Konqueror/Safari users win.

      4) Giving average desktop users more exposure to OSS. I'm looking at chucking Linux on this box again (last I tried was Mandrake 6 or 7) and wouldn't mind familiarising myself with its apps on a day-to-day basis first.

      5) Why not? It's there ;).

      • Re:Now... (Score:3, Informative)

        by rixstep ( 611236 )
        doesn't seem as fast as IE to load or as responsive on low-end hardware

        The 'low-end hardware' bit I can understand, but traditionally, IE has cheated in two respects:

        1. It plays dirty tricks, tries to foul up Netscape/Moz starts, and the Moz code has to go hunting in the Registry for all the booby traps and remove them first.

        2. Windows loads most of the IE engine on startup. MS used to have a 'Preload' key in the Registry which could be turned off. If you turned it off, IE was slow as molasses to start.

  • OS X Maximizes browser choice? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by weston ( 16146 ) <<westonsd> <at> <canncentral.org>> on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @12:38AM (#7833072) Homepage
    I wonder if there's a platform on which you get more browser choice than Mac OS X....

    'course, the number of Mac/OS X only browsers sortof makes it cheating...

    • Re:OS X Maximizes browser choice? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by OmniVector ( 569062 ) <se e m y h o mepage> on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @01:00AM (#7833212) Homepage
      lets see.
      you get:
      • gecko
        • mozilla
        • firebird
        • camino
      • khtml
        • konqueror
        • omniweb
        • safari
      • mac ie
      • opera
      • icab


      that's getting to be quite an impressive list. 4/9 of those are mac only. i doubt you can consider mac ie a separate browser from windows ie, even though they are two totally different rendering engines.

      icab is crap, and no one uses it anymore. mac ie still gets used quite a bit soley because it's the default browser shipped with 10.0, 10.1, and 10.2. it's also included in 10.3, and i know some people who are too stubborn to give safari a try. i still consider it crap however. omniweb is safari in drag. and konqueror, although nice it is finally ported, is more or less for proof of concept. opera for mac isn't even up to 7.0 yet if i remember right, with opera being all pissed at apple releasing safari. so that really leaves you with safari, and the mozilla browsers. the only 2 that are mac only in that lot are camino and safari.

      i'm dying for a browser as powerful and simple as safari to hit linux. epiphany's not quite there.

      • Re:OS X Maximizes browser choice? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Graff ( 532189 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @01:12AM (#7833273)
        omniweb is safari in drag. and konqueror, although nice it is finally ported, is more or less for proof of concept. opera for mac isn't even up to 7.0 yet if i remember right, with opera being all pissed at apple releasing safari. so that really leaves you with safari, and the mozilla browsers.

        OmniWeb may use the same underlying rendering and scripting engine that Safari uses but it is actually quite different than Safari. They are both great products but OmniWeb by far provides you with more functionality

        About the only thing that Safari has over OmniWeb is tabbed browsing. OmniWeb has many more options than Safari such as regex filtering of content from sites, the ability to easily masquerade as any type of browser running on any type of operating system, autofilling of forms, tons of display options, the ability to set up shortcuts for the url input line ("google something" starts a Google search for something, "dict something" looks up something in dictionary.com, etc), and much more.

        I'm not knocking Safari, it's a really nice, lean browser but its feature set is almost too lean. OmniWeb is kind of like a full-featured version of Safari.

  • The question is.. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by subk ( 551165 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @12:38AM (#7833073)
    Someone please answer this -- this is not flamebait.

    Why bother? I seriously doubt anyone would go full-tilt KDE on an OS X box. Mozilla or Firebird are great browser choices.. Why bother to port Konqueror?

    • I guess the best answer is: Because it's there.

      But Konqueror is a good browser and the KDE folks put a lot of work into it. Options are good, and this is just another option.

    • Re:The question is.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @12:45AM (#7833128)

      Why bother? I seriously doubt anyone would go full-tilt KDE on an OS X box. Mozilla or Firebird are great browser choices.. Why bother to port Konqueror?

      Konqueror is more than just a web browser. I would install it on Mac OS X to get all the wonderful KIO slaves that come with it like tar and sftp.

    • Inertia. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by abulafia ( 7826 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @12:48AM (#7833140)
      I am not a KDE or an OSX developer. (Well, I do some OSX administration, and port our apps to the platform. But that isn't the same thing.)

      I'd say that covering platforms is important, because when someone says, but do you suppot Blah, you can answer that yes, indeed, you do.

      Keep in mind that short term tactics are great, but strategy is what frequently offers tactical brilliance a place to shine. If KDE is everywhere, people will start to use it. That's useful. for KDE. See? Think companies, down the road.

      -j, who really can't stand such heavyweight stuff.

    • Re:The question is.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gregfortune ( 313889 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @12:49AM (#7833148)
      At it's core, this is simply a UI choice. Do you like how Safari renders, but don't like the interface? Now you've got another choice. Not too thrilled with Mozilla? Again, another choice.

      This also signals the beginning of an infusion of KDE apps into Mac OS X. Basically, this proves it can be done and more are likely to follow.

      • Re:The question is.. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by davidstrauss ( 544062 ) <david@UUUdavidst ... inus threevowels> on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @07:19AM (#7834025)
        At it's core, this is simply a UI choice. Do you like how Safari renders, but don't like the interface? Now you've got another choice. Not too thrilled with Mozilla? Again, another choice.

        This is exactly contrary to Apple's UI tradition of doing something one way and doing it right. Apple dislikes the form of choice you offer because it creates inconsistancy in the end user experience.

        • Re:The question is.. (Score:3, Interesting)

          by fault0 ( 514452 )
          Which is why, uh, this is not released by Apple. Notice that there are about six web browsers (i.e, IE replacements, now Safari replacements) on OSX, and ten file managers (i.e, Finder replacements) on OSX.

    • Re:The question is.. (Score:3, Informative)

      by keating_5 ( 656347 )
      Konqueror is more than a web-browser. Its other major use is as a file manager, among other things.

    • Re:The question is.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Kesha ( 5861 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @01:02AM (#7833227) Homepage
      Well, the reasons for porting KDE to Mac OS X natively and the reasons why someone would want to use Konqueror on OS X may be different.

      Konqueror is not just a browser. It is also a file manager (kind of like Windows Explorer on SuperMan steroids). It suppors io-slaves, which gives Konqueror network transparency that I do not think is paralleled by any other file browser right now. Also, some people dislike the OS X Finder and would prefer to use Konqueror instead.

      Konqueror is pretty cool - it has all the latest features such as tabbed browsing, but it also allows to split any view into two (and then again) - you can make it look like Norton Commander if you like.

      Konqueror also supports archiving web pages as .war files (I do not know if this is an exclusive Konqueror feature or not, and I don't care - it is extremely useful).

      So, there are many reasons someone would want to use Konqueror, and not just on OS X or Linux.

      The reason to port to OS X could be so that KDE were less dependent on X11 hacks and used Qt API more thoroughly, I don't know. The thing is - the more portable the code is, the fewer bugs there are (unless of course they start #ifdef-ing everywhere, then it just turns into a mess of duplicated non-portable code).

      Paul.

    • Re:The question is.. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )
      You sound like a troll (nobody mentioned anything about a full-tilt KDE port on OS X, fool), but...

      If you noticed, this makes konq native. I don't know if you've ever used konq before yourself, but let me tell you: it's a very good browser.

      I now use it primarily - and occasionally fire up mozilla/galeon/firebird to do various other things. What makes konqueror good?

      - it's fast and stable
      - all the 'modern' features you'd expect in a browser are available (popup blocking, password manager, thorough history

      • From good to troll in 3 bullet points. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Inoshiro ( 71693 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @02:45AM (#7833508) Homepage
        "- it was designed from the ground up and is conceptually sound, unlike mozilla which was a hack job on top of netscape's browser"

        Nope. They dropped the old code and started from scratch a long, looong time ago [com.com].

        "- unlike other browsers (mozilla, IE), it was designed using 'mature' technology (HTML4, CSS, etc.) and does not have nearly as many compatibility woes as IE, nor as many add-on hacks, as the other browsers had, due to changing stnadards over the years (in other words: it's a newer, fresher code base)"

        Nope. Konq doesn't pass basic CSS tests [thock.com] that I have written. Mozilla does.

        "- unlike mozilla/firebird, I can use it for hours/days with many pages open (15+) without the entire affair slowing to a crawl and/or dying"

        Nope in my case. I'm not sure your problem, but I have no problem with my 2-3 windows with about 7-15 tabs each, open for the entirety my computer is on. The average between reboots on my workstation is a month. I'll close Mozilla to update to a more recent nightly, but that's about it. My hardware isn't insane either --- XP 1700+ w/ 768mb RAM.

      • A couple corrections (Score:5, Interesting)

        by gad_zuki! ( 70830 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @02:47AM (#7833513)
        > You sound like a troll (nobody mentioned anything about a full-tilt KDE port on OS X, fool)

        You call him a troll, yet you're name-calling?

        > it has more/better features than mozilla (fish://, file://, ftp:// smtp://, etc. etc.)

        Hold on, many people here habitually abuse MS for making the "browser the OS" and certainly can spot feature-creep a mile away, but when it comes to KDE's browser its suddenly okay? I like having a whole seperate browser for web and use Nautilus for file browsing. Keeping WAN and Local/LAN seperate is a big plus in mine, and many other's books.

        >unlike other browsers (mozilla, IE), it was designed using 'mature' technology

        How isn't Moz 'mature?'

        >unlike mozilla which was a hack job on top of netscape's browser

        This is just untrue. The Moz team gutten NS to the point where they were writing just about everything from scratch.

        >unlike mozilla/firebird, I can use it for hours/days with many pages open (15+)

        I can do this easily with Moz/Firebird on both Win and Linux. I average 20 tabs and half of them are auto-refreshing every few minutes and this is far from a top of the line machine.
    • Maybe as an early step to porting KOffice or some of the other more useful KDE applications. They're just starting off with the (relatively) easier ones.

      Or maybe they're just working out some of the bugs in using Qt/Mac as a demonstration to show how to port other Qt based apps to OS X?

      To be honest, I really dunno the answer, but given that the OpenOffice port to native Aqua doesn't seem to be moving along that quickly, it'll be nice to have some free non-X11 office apps available.

      Now if only they could
    • i recently bought a 17" g4 powerbook (lappie) after having run a more-or-less full-time linux desktop for work and home for 5 years. OSX is nice enough (but not *that* much nicer than full KDE IMHO), but the finder (file browser) application is just terrible IMO. konqueror walks all over it for the purposes of file management, not to mention being able to browse ssh logins/port forwards (eg: sftp://matt@localhost:60022/home/matt), ftp sites, you name it, chances are konqueror can browse it, and all without
    • "...Why bother? I seriously doubt anyone would go full-tilt KDE on an OS X box..."

      Well, development of the underlying engine, KHTML, on OS X seems like a good thing to me, especially since Safari is based on it. I don't know if porting Konquerer to OS X helps Safaris' development at all, but I don't see how it can hurt it.

      Besides, since when have OSS code writers needed a reason?

      (tig)
    • ...to see if you can.

      Sure, nobody's going to use Konqueror on X. Never mind Mozilla, the default OS X browser is based on Konqueror code! And I don't think KOffice will ever catch on, even among most KDE users.

      It's just an interesting hack. That's what hackers do. A few months ago we had a story on a guy who built a CPU out of discrete components. Why bother, when you can buy a CPU that's 100 times as powerful for a few bucks? Because it's interesting, and challenging, and you learn stuff. The fact that

  • But has anybody managed to get Linux running on it?

    *ducks*

  • F'n Rocks (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Funksaw ( 636954 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @12:39AM (#7833076)
    Konquerer is my browser of choice on Linux, and it's cool that we've got another choice for browser. Yeah, I use Safari, but as this is one step to porting most of the KDE stuff, I can't help but wonder if this is a big step towards the holy grail of Linux-to-MacOSX conversions, OpenOffice.

    -- Funksaw
    • Isn't OO based on GTK and not Qt? If so, I would guess it really wouldn't help that much.
      • OpenOffice uses its own application toolkit, if I'm not mistaken. Its new platform-specific renderer uses GTK+-alike widgets on Unix OSes, and native Win32 controls on Windows.

        Also, KDE != Qt. Qt has existed on Mac for years anyway.

  • Sometimes I wonder.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by keplon ( 690637 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @12:40AM (#7833081)
    ..Is using the letter "K" in every program made for the KDE Environment overKill?

  • Really?? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @12:40AM (#7833087)
    iKant believe it!

  • Woot! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LittleLebowskiUrbanA ( 619114 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @12:44AM (#7833119) Homepage Journal
    Finall, a capable browser for Samba networks for Macs! Finder crashes and just plain doesn't work for me browsing Windows networks from my Powerbook running Panther. Whereas typing smb:/// in Konqueror just works like Apple claims Finder does.

  • A bit offtopic, but I need to vent (Score:5, Informative)

    by Starship Trooper ( 523907 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @12:46AM (#7833131) Homepage Journal
    Perhaps someone on the Qt/Mac or equivalent GTK project could answer this for me. Why is it that when these toolkits get ported to another other platform, be it Windows, MacOS, BeOS or what have you, they insist on looking and acting as GTK or Qt applications rather than native apps? A Qt/Windows or GTK/Windows app would be much more useful and usable to me if it used native Windows widgets and thus fit in with every other program I use.

    As an example, I use gaim on FreeBSD because its tabbed interface is simply the best I've come across. I would love to use it instead of Trillian when I'm forced into using Windows. But the Windows port of gaim, which uses GTK+/Windows, works horribly. The GTK theme doesn't match my XP settings, widgets draw slowly and work clumsily (tooltips in particular seem to spontaneously appear and refuse to go away, even when the program is minimized!), and all in all it feels like a cheap Wal-Mart knockoff.

    GTK+ widgets offer no benefits over standard Windows controls -- they draw slower, they don't match the environment, and Windows is just as themable as GTK is. Going back on-topic, this Qt/Mac port of Konqueror likewise eschews native widgets for the entirely out-of-place Qt look. All I can ask is Why? Wouldn't it be far easier for Qt/ and GTK/Windows or /Mac to simply wrap native widgets, rather than poorly ape them?

    • You might want to check out WxWindows [wxwindows.org] for a toolkit that does exactly what you propose, and does it quite well. It uses Gtk widgets on X, and native Win32 widgets in Windows (and I assume Carbon or something similar on OS X and MacOS 9).

      The API isn't quite as nice, clean consistent and well-documented as Qt, but it's definitely not bad, and I've written some fairly complex GUIs with it before. They look and feel truly native, though it may take some minor tweaking to get everything perfect on all the pl

    • A lot of window toolkit designers apparently think they can do a better job--of course they are wrong and it ends up slow and bloated. I believe wxWindows [sourceforge.net] actually does the intelligent thing and uses native widgets.

      Now of course we are both going to get modded offtopic into oblivion because we're not singing the praises of Konqueror for Mac OS X. So, uhh, praise be to Konqueror for Mac OS X?

    • Re:A bit offtopic, but I need to vent (Score:5, Informative)

      by jdub! ( 24149 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @01:02AM (#7833223) Homepage
      Check out GTK-Wimp: http://gtk-wimp.sourceforge.net/ Very tasty, if you run GTK+ applications under Windows (particularly XP). It's even mentioned on the Gaim website. :-)
    • "Why is it that when these toolkits get ported to another other platform, be it Windows, MacOS, BeOS or what have you, they insist on looking and acting as GTK or Qt applications rather than native apps?"

      Every seen Adobe Photoshop Album? That was done with QT and "looks and acts" like a native app as far as I'm concerned.

      Considering how few QT and GTK apps there available for Windows I just don't even see what's to get worked up about.

    • The Qt/Mac port looks almost identical to Aqua, except for when Apple changes major things (like the tabs in 10.3) and TrollTech needs to catch up. The Qt/Windows port look native as well.
  • I'm sorry if I'm misinformed, but doesn't Safari use an edited version of the KHTML engine?

    And since I'm pretty sure that's right, what is the point of this? I've used Konqueror before, and it's not a very good browser in any respect. It feels like some terrible OEM product.

    This is not flamebait, what is the point?

    • Re:Redundancy (Score:5, Informative)

      by clarkcox3 ( 194009 ) <slashdot@clarkcox.com> on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @12:58AM (#7833202) Homepage
      You're not misinformed, Safari does indeed use the KHTML engine. But the point of this appears to be to show the world that KDE apps can be ported to OSX in a manner that they won't require X11 (which a lot of the less-expert users shy away from). This means that these applications can be "first class" Mac applications.

      I.e. someday soon, we may see grandmas everywhere running KOffice instead of shelling out hundreds for MS Office.

  • OT, but what about Evolution? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Phishcast ( 673016 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @12:48AM (#7833143)

    Konqueror, okay. But we've got alternatives to that all over the place. The Linux app I really want to see on Mac OS X is Ximian Evolution. I've used Apple's alternative, but I really like the way Evolution ties into Exchange, and soon to be Novell Groupwise.

    Is porting Gnome apps that much more difficult? Programming-challenged poster here...

    • Evolution runs fine under Apple's X11, though a native port would be nice... it's a fine IMAP client in its own right, regardless of the Exchange features.

      The big problem is getting those Exchange features - those are only available via the Exchange Connector for Evolution, which is a commercial product and is not available for OSX using X11. If there was a native port of Evolution then we'd still need a supported version of Connector, and would still have to pay for it.
  • I mean, I guess this is cool, and it's not my time being spent on this, but I really don't see the point. I've used Konqueror and I honestly think that while it's not bad, it pales in comparison to Mozilla, Netscape and Opera (plus Safari on OSX). Same with KOffice, it's alright, but Open Office is far more full-featured (and MSOffice if you like that type of thing...). I'm not a huge fan of KDE in general, but there are still plenty of good things about it. However, Konqueror and Koffice are, in my opinion

  • A native KHTML browser for OS X? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Steve Jobbs ( 736450 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @12:49AM (#7833149)
    The porting of Konqueror to OS X is great news for Mac users, as they now have access to the fast, standards compliant KHTML rendering engine. Many users and developers prefer KHTML to the Internet Explorer or Gecko engines. I was wondering though...does anyone know of a KHTML browser which is completely OS X native? I mean, with a brushed metal skin and full integration into Aqua? It could maybe have other stuff too, like Google search field built-in or something. That would be cool! Anyway, in the meantime I'll just have to continue with Konqueror on OS X.

  • Ouch (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Squozen ( 301710 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @12:58AM (#7833203) Homepage
    Damn, that's some nasty kerning on that screenshot. Safari doesn't have that problem, I wonder why Konqueror does if it's using the same rendering engine?

  • To Answer all the "Why Bother?" Posts... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by manly_15 ( 447559 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @01:02AM (#7833226)
    I've made the transition from Mandrake on a Desktop to OSX on a Powerbook. Surprisingly, KDE has some apps that are very good and designed well enough to compliment an OSX environment.

    Example 1: KMail! If you haven't ever tried this email client, try it NOW. It has some of the most killer email filtering speed I have ever seen in an email application. It nicely integrates with GnuPG. It has good keyboard shortcuts. It's set up not to download images from emails. It stores emails with maildir by default. It's pretty. Did I mention that it's fast? Up until 10.3's much improved mail.app, I would have killed to have KMail running naitively on OS X.

    Ex 2: KOffice. I've never used it, but it's absolutely essential that OS X has a free naitive-running office package. Unless the OO.org aqua port gets back up, this package will likely be KOffice.

    Ex 3: Konqueror is a very good file manager. While the OS X file manager is very good, there are a couple of areas that it misses. For example, I can use konqueror to select all items matching the file pattern '*foo*.bar'. In OS X, I have to drop to a terminal, and loose the trash can functionality, or switch views and sort by type, which takes longer. As another poster said, SMB apparently works better in konqueror than Finder (thanks, I'll have to try that!). If konqueror can run, then so can any other KDE app, especially when you consider that Konqueror is the most (featureful | bloated) app in KDE.

    So that's why people bother. Props to them!
    • Ex 2: KOffice. I've never used it, but it's absolutely essential that OS X has a free naitive-running office package. Unless the OO.org aqua port gets back up, this package will likely be KOffice.

      One of the best thing about KOffice is that it isn't a straight M$-Office clone - KOffice does things a bit differently. One of the chief advantages of OS X is that it isn't a clone of M$-Windoze (where Windoze may be considered a poor attempt at cloning Mac OS).

    • It has some of the most killer email filtering speed I have ever seen in an email application.

      KMail is nice, and I used it for a while when I was trying out various GUI apps. It has some problems, though:

      • No IMAP filtering. Really. You can't define filters that move mail between IMAP folders, at least as of the 3.2 beta CVS version I installed a few weeks ago. I use Cyrus IMAP on my home server and do all of my filtering with Sieve on the server, so I don't mind (and don't want) any client filtering there, but I could certainly use it at work.
      • No way to hide folders without unread messages. I have about 60 IMAP folders under my inbox (yes, I really am on that many mailing lists, even if I don't always read them). I can subscribe or unsubscribe an individual folder, but that's the only way to control the size of the tree I have to browse when checking my mail.
      • No way to hide read messages. Hey, you can't make this stuff up! I'm a packrat and have about 8,000 emails in my inbox, which is not a problem for Gnus, Thunderbird, or Evolution - they cheerfully keep the old stuff out of my sight.
      • I'm hooked on Thunderbird's "Junk" button. Not many clients have this, so I don't hold its absence against KMail, but I'd sure like to have it.

      Oh well. Thunderbird doesn't have built-in support for mailing lists, and Evolution doesn't seem to grok the concept of per-folder settings (I do personal and business email on the same server, and want a different default GPG key and .signature depending on which folder I'm currently inside). For all the growth in GUI mail apps for Linux, I have yet to find one that holds a candle to Gnus, so I'm sticking with Emacs for the foreseeable future. That doesn't mean that I won't take a few test drives from time to time, though.

  • Check this screengrab [pulp-online.com] of Konq running on OS X out.

    I also figured out how to get my favotite Linux game, Enemy Territory, to run on the Mac despite the fact that a Mac version does not exist, screengrabs here [pulp-online.com] and here [pulp-online.com].

    Of course this was cheating since it was over X11. Konq runs acceptably, but got 1-2 fps on ET.

  • Biting the fodder with KOffice (Score:5, Interesting)

    by theolein ( 316044 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @01:25AM (#7833310) Journal
    I see all the "Why bother" posts and have seen only one short paragraph with the obvious answer: KOffice.

    The majority of OSX users may not need Konqueror, even though it seems to support many features only available on OSX through payable alternatives (GUI SSH and SFTP support with RBrowser for example), but it is a first step to getting KOffice ported natively to the Mac which could finally help OSX users drop MS software in a large number of cases.

    KOffice is not where OpenOffice is but a native Mac port could spur development so that it becomes a first rate alternative to MS' Office X suite, and given that there is no guarantee that MS will ever make a Mac version compatible with it's new so called security features, this is an excellent idea.

  • What KIOSlaves work? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by GweeDo ( 127172 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @01:30AM (#7833331) Homepage
    Konq isn't a web browser, or a file manager...it just happens to have KIOslaves that do these things (like KHTML for web browsing). There are other kio slaves I personally use in KDE 3.2 like smb:// fish:// audiocd:// and a few more...how many of them work? They are what makes konq powerful and useful and desired.

  • Project page here: (Score:4, Interesting)

    by IceFox ( 18179 ) on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @08:32AM (#7834308) Homepage
    For those that would like to help out there is a project page (wiki) here: KDE On Darwin [metapkg.org]

    -Benjamin Meyer

  • KOffice would be great! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by abischof ( 255 ) * <alex@NoSpAm.spamcop.net> on Tuesday December 30, 2003 @02:28PM (#7837711) Homepage

    Though I'm pleased with the Konqueror port (for the geek value, if nothing else), I'm particularly excited about the intentions to port KOffice as well. I have a 15" PowerBook and I was dismayed to discover that there just isn't much in the way of free office suites for OS X :-/.

    Sure, there's OpenOffice.org for OS X [openoffice.org], but it feels more like a halway-port since it requires X11 and it's stuck with Unix widgets. Really, I like OpenOffice.org as much as the next guy -- I run it exclusively on my Windows box -- but it just feels halfway-finished on the Mac (and a native OS X port is only coming in 2006 [theregister.co.uk] or so).

    So, after setting aside OpenOffice.org, I looked to other options.. and it appears that MS Office is just about the only other choice. And that's about $200 [pricegrabber.com] (and, no, I'm not going to cheat and buy the academic or government editions). So, a native port of KOffice to OS X would be a real breakthrough.

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