KDE Running on Mac OS X

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."

Goody?

[SultanCemil]

Honestly, this is just a silly post.

Does the poster even realize this is simply the X server with KDE running as a client app? its not like they've replaced the nice, flashy GUI with KDE. They've just compiled and run it! Look, I can run Ethereal on OS X. Look, I can run *name unix app* on OS X. Good grief.

huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

they just run kde under x11. big deal.

This is not news

[spiralscratch]

This has been possible for a while now. It's quite easy to set up if you use Fink. You can even set it to use apple's own built-in X11 instead of installing XFree86.

http://fink.sourceforge.net/news/kde.php [sourceforge.net]

Talk about old news...

[God of Lemmings]

A native KDE port for OS X has existed since the end of 2003.... http://dot.kde.org/1073009304/ [kde.org]

Totally off-topic

[Biotech9]

But when you take a screenshot in OS X you don't have to select and drag a box around the window you want as this author has done.

Press Apple-Shift-4, which changes your cursor to a cross-hairs, this lets you drag a box on any part of the screen and the contents are dumped to the desktop as a screenshot.

But! then press spacebar and the cursor changes to an icon of a camera, now click on the window you want to take a screenshot of, and the screenshot will be of that window only, pixel-perfect to the border.

So it looks like this [pax-europa.com] and results in this. [pax-europa.com]

Re:This is not news

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not about running KDE on OS X via X11. This is about running KDE natively on OS X. It is a freaking big deal.

http://kde.opendarwin.org/ [opendarwin.org]

Re:Lower Low Coming Soon...

[Anonymous Coward]

This article itself IS a dupe. A previous article on the subject is here:

KDE Ported to Mac OS X [slashdot.org]

(and there are probably several others...)

You're going to have to lower the bar lower than that if you really want to hit a new low. :)

Re:This is not news

[Knome_fan]

Read again, they used X11.
So this really isn't news and this really isn't newsworthy.

Re:Erm... Why?

[guildsolutions]

I have had nothing but pure success with my powerbook. I have had no mechanical failures or warranty issues. My powerbook 17" is much, much more reliable than my last 2 Dell PC based notebooks. Far more stlyish and far better in the overall design department. With my Dell notebooks I have had two LCD's go bad, 2 hard drives, 1 video card, 1 built in firewire port, 1 built in ethernet port. With the powerbook, nothing.. everything is perfect. PC notebooks are infact cheaper. Marginally faster, but never more reliable. I would trust my powerbook to be working, exactly as is in 4-5 years. I would never begin to want to even trust a PC notebook to work after the warranty expires.

Mod parent down

[dulff]

What was the point in changing the original text? Idiot.

Re:Good article

[Anonymous Coward]

I switched "temporarily" from OS X to Linux/KDE after a water spill fried my iBook. This was about 8 months ago. I haven't bought the replacement iBook (yet?) mainly because now I can't live without KDE's network protocol integration (sftp , webdav, smb, ftp, ... everything is supported!). I can transparently access folders with the (file browser, editor, image viewer, etc. etc. ) in multiple servers, seamlessly. OS/X is seriously lacking in this area. A native KDE port would be a useful addition. Better yet would be OS X itself natively supporting the most widely used network protocols. Tiger was a big dissapointment in this respect...

Re:STUNNED!

[qubex]

It was Wolfgang Pauli: "This isn't right, this isn't even wrong."

Reference: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/w/wolfga ng_pauli.html [brainyquote.com]

Re:Good article

[jaavaaguru]

Agreed, Apple's X servers for Panther and Tiger work fine with KDE, and I get to use nice applications like Konqueror (because Finder doesn't do sftp:// [ftp] and Kate alongside my Mac apps. I'd suggest people stick with Apple's X server.

It's a good article, but it could be summarised in three lines:
1) Install Apple's X server from your OS X CD
2) Install fink from fink.sourceforge.net
3) type "sudo fink install kdebase3"

Re:Good article

[FidelCatsro]

Menu bar , GO ,Go to Folder , then type in the folder you want EG: /etc , /bin ETC. .

Simple as that for accessing low level folders

Re:Good article

[mikrorechner]

(webdav over ssl???)

I haven't tried it myself, but according to this [apple.com], WebDAV over https is supported in Tiger.

Re:Good article

[FidelCatsro]

Oh I should also add to that You can also create sym-links from the terminal so you can access the folders .
for those who don't know how to do that :
in the terminal go to the folder you want to create the sym-link and type

ln -s /etc

for example

Or simply from any directory

ln -s /etc /*path*/

Complete Mirror with Images

[Anonymous Coward]

http://mirrordot.org/stories/b7f526e888df446769526 ac59fee59fb/index.html [mirrordot.org]

Signs for windows?

[m50d]

Qt/Mac was made available under the GPL fairly recently, so this is an encouraging sign for the porting of KDE to windows (though that has to wait for the porting of KDE to Qt4). I also presume that they've managed to remove the dependencies on X, which should not only speed up windows ports but also makes it more feasible to run KDE apps on Qt/Embedded. Anyone with a Zaurus like to comment?

Reasons for using KDE/Gnome on OS X w/Finder

[csirac]

I'm running a mish-mash of Gnome components ranging from 2.6 - 2.12 with fink.

Darwinports also has a gnome and KDE distribution for X11 on Mac OS X.

The Gnome stuff has been a bit crazy recently, what with the menu files changing file formats and everything.

Why do I run Gnome? Simple: consistent keyboard shortcuts. On my iBook, I have too many different inconsistent ways to get home, end, pg up and pg dn - some use Fn+arrow, others use the command (apple) key. In Apple's terminal app, it's all backwards - you have to press shift+apple+arrow to get home/end, but for pg up/dn you just use apple+arrow, whereas on Linux/Solaris you use shift+pg up (which would be shift+Fn+pg up on this iBook). WTF?

Don't even get me started on the Finder's utterly, utterly useless "alt-tab" - what a pointless piece of crap. You simply _CANNOT_ switch windows with it, only applications! Great, you can switch focus to the most recently used window in one app or the most recently used window in another, but there is NO FUCKING WAY you can change amongst those app's windows without using the mouse and going to the "window" menu or using "expose" (all involve several distracted seconds on that bastard touch-pad mouse thing).

More frustratingly, apple+arrow in Apple's terminal switches between terminal windows - which is great - but I am either expecting this behaviour to get me home/end (like using apple+pg up/pg dn does), or trying to use apple + left/right arrows to switch windows in some other application that does not mimic this behaviour!

NeoOffice/J uses Fn+arrow for home/end, but Mozilla etc. use apple+arrow. Then apple's terminal uses shift+apple+arrow...

I still don't even know how to skip over words in a line of text (in Linux/windows it's ctrl+arrow, but this does nothing in most mac apps).

Sigh... I never thought I'd see the day... resorting to a gnome desktop instead of Finder. Finder has some great aspects to it; its network shares are reliable and good, and after I've installed the virtual desktops 3rd party app I feel mostly at home ... except for the bloody retarded keyboard shortcuts and lack of a usable alt-tab.

It's a bloody nightmare for keyboard users. Please stop trying to make me use the touchpad... argh

Re:Good article

[Onan]

Or there's the beautiful "open" command: open /etc/

("open" does whatever doubleclicking on its argument[s] would do. eg, if it's an application it launches it, if it's a document it launches the owning application and opens it, if it's a directory it opens it in a Finder window. It's one of the great examples of gui/cli synthesis that osx does uniquely well. Much like pbcopy/pbpaste: cli interfaces to the clipboard, something I wanted in linux for years.)

Re:Reasons for using KDE/Gnome on OS X w/Finder

[elfasi]

Actually with Finder and the 'alt-tab' issue, this too drove me mad, until a kind soul told me about the Apple+` shortcut, that's the Apple key and the grave accent key (just below the ESC key on my PC keyboard and on the bottom left of my Mac keyboard). This switches between multiple windows of a single application and saved me much gnashing of teeth.

Re:Good article

[Onan]

... and yes, you can tweak finder to go there to but not without non-free software...

Hm. I'm missing the non-free software involved in typing "defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE".

I am impressed that it works, I have tried many times to get Fink and the gang working with Tiger and I have borked on each and every occasion.

Really? I guess I don't know who all the gang are, but I've been using Fink and Tiger together since the day Tiger was released, without even actually needing to upgrade it.

Re:Reasons for using KDE/Gnome on OS X w/Finder

[BurntNickel]

Don't even get me started on the Finder's utterly, utterly useless "alt-tab" - what a pointless piece of crap. You simply _CANNOT_ switch windows with it, only applications! Great, you can switch focus to the most recently used window in one app or the most recently used window in another, but there is NO FUCKING WAY you can change amongst those app's windows without using the mouse and going to the "window" menu or using "expose" (all involve several distracted seconds on that bastard touch-pad mouse thing)./P>

You do know about "alt-esc" to change windows within the same application?

Parent is a troll, mod down!

[One Childish N00b]

We are now going to configure your eyeball to withstand Taco's gaping anus. Pin your eyelids back, Clockwork Orange style, and squeeze the eyeball into his rectum. Careful not to lose it in there! Fink to use the unstable application builds, now these wont crash all the time or anything like that it means that we will have access to newer versions of the software we will be using , specifically KDE 3.4

And others. Parent is a troll.

Re:I haven't either, what's it like?

[TheRaven64]

Qt apps make the cardinal UI mistake of looking like OS X apps, but not behaving like them. As a trivial example, the key combinations for skipping forward or backward a line or a word are different in Qt apps to every single other app on the system. This is insanely irritating, since it's the kind of thing you don't even do consciously. An X11 version, at least, will look different and so give a visual clue that it is going to behave differently.

The best cross-platform software to run on OS X is the stuff written for GNUstep. GNUstep uses a very similar set of UI guidelines to OS X, and it implements the same OpenStep specification as Cocoa, so (once you have re-drawn the GORM files in IB) it is a quick re-compile and you get the benefit of all of the native widgets being used as they were designed to be used.

Re:Good article

[neillewis]

I have run kde under X11 in the past to use the fish:// support in konqueror. To my mind this is preferable to any sort of ftp, with a key pair set up it's easy, and if you use ssh anyway, has no other setup requirements or firewall issues.

Re:Reasons for using KDE/Gnome on OS X w/Finder

[treerex]

Don't even get me started on the Finder's utterly, utterly useless "alt-tab" - what a pointless piece of crap. You simply _CANNOT_ switch windows with it, only applications!

Others have pointed out Cmd-` to cycle windows within an application. There is also a third-party utility called Witch [petermaurer.de] that allows you to switch to any window in any open application. It's what Cmd-Tab wants to be. Strongly recommended.

Re:Good article

[Sentry21]

Well there are some aspects of KDE which are not possible under OSX without significant tweaks or non-free software. For example, the browser, Konqueror will go everywhere, even below the "unseen line" of OSX and yes, you can tweak finder to go there to but not without non-free software and even then, you'r stuck with finder's interface.

I'm going to go ahead and assume here that you're referring to things like dotfiles, /bin, /usr, and so on? Is there non-free software that does this 'tweaking' for you? Because it's actually pretty easy.

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool true

Then just restart Finder and off you go.

killall Finder

Do people really charge for this? Or do you mean non-free as in you can't get the source for 'defaults' (I think you can)?

Re:Good article

[swillden]

Which ones are missing? (Other than read/write FTP, and sftp, which are already known to be missing.)

The biggest one is the kioslave accessible as "fish://" which uses ssh and standard UNIX utilities (ls, rm, cp, etc) on the remote system to implement remote file access. Very secure, very convenient, very slick. Less important ones include imap, pop3 and mbox. Believe it or not, it's very handy to be able to browse a random mailbox without having to configure it in an e-mail client. Others I've used from time to time include finger, ldap, and nntp, not to mention all of the non-remote kioslaves like camera, fonts, gzip, bzip, man and all of the non-file kioslaves like vnc, rdp, mailto, news, print, applications, etc.

Of course, Mac OS X has ways of accomplishing all of the same tasks, but having gotten used to being able to get an any of this functionality so quickly and easily in KDE, I find OS X a little cumbersome to use.

-- End of on-topic post. Beginning of off-topic post. --

However, my *biggest* beef with OS X (this is an unrelated plea for help from anyone who knows) is that I cannot find a way to set up remote "raw" printers on OS X. I have a Linux print server, and I want CUPS on OS X to simply deliver Postscript to the CUPS server on Linux and let the Linux box render and print it. I can use the CUPS web admin interface on the Mac and set up the raw printer queues, and I can print test pages to them, but no OS X apps will print to them. I just get a generic error message (which I'd post but I don't remember it and I'm 2000 miles from the Mac at the moment). I found that I can sort of "trick" it, by using the Mac printer configuration interface to change the printers from raw to "Generic Postscript Printer" and then printing a document. What comes out of the printer is the raw Postscript, so this isn't useful, but then if I use the CUPS web interface and change the printer type back to raw, it will work properly! For a while. Then OS X seems to discover that I've tricked it and starts giving me error messages again.

Actually... it just occurred to me that I should try lying to OS X and telling it that those print queues are actually Postscript printers. Apple Laserwriters or something like that. Hmm.

BTW, the motivation for letting the Linux box do the rendering is twofold. First, the Mac drivers for one of the printers (HP Photosmart 7260) do not support printing to a remote printer. Not only that, but I think the drivers on Linux produce better-quality photos than the HP drivers for Mac, so it's actually better to get the Linux box to print stuff than to attach the Photosmart directly to the Mac. That one really surprised me. Second, the Linux box is much faster and I get the printouts faster when I can get the Postscript to printer-native-language translation done there.

Re:news ?

[foniksonik]

If anyone wants to find out more tips on how to do things on OS X, go here:

"http://www.macosxhints.com/

Probably the most comprehensive and up to date list of tips/tricks/hints available and with an active community that discusses each and can help you find out why a particular hint, etc. isn't working perfectly on your machine.

Re:Reasons for using KDE/Gnome on OS X w/Finder

[hackstraw]

but there is NO FUCKING WAY you can change amongst those app's windows without using the mouse and going to the "window" menu or using "expose"

Try fucking using the Apple+` (backtick, right above the tab key) for switching between windows in an application. I believe there is a similar thing in windows as well, maybe Alt+`.

A requirement for my OS is that I have to be able to do most anything from the keyboard or the mouse, OS X fits that bill the best of any OS I've ever used.

Re:Good article

[goMac2500]

Log in as >console (either by enabling type in user to log in or by going to the login within and hitting the left arrow, then option enter (I think)). Log into an account when it prompts you. Type startx.

Advanced printer prefs in OS X

[Magura]

However, my *biggest* beef with OS X (this is an unrelated plea for help from anyone who knows) is that I cannot find a way to set up remote "raw" printers on OS X

Have you found the "Advanced" option when adding a new printer?

In System Prefs -> Print & Fax, add a new printer (the '+' button), and then the trick is option-click on "More Printers..." and then the top dropdown list in the dialog will have an "Advanced" option. Hitting that will let you choose things like talking to remote LPR queues and more.