KDE Running on Mac OS X 393
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."
Good article (Score:5, Insightful)
However, I can't think really why you'd want to be running KDE on Mac OS X when you already have such a neat (IMHO) interface. I suppose it's good for a laugh, too.
KDE != filesystem (Score:1, Insightful)
STUNNED! (Score:2, Insightful)
Is this an all-time low for a slashdot article? I can't imagine how it can be beaten.
Erm... Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:news ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do it. Don't put down documentation on any process that others might not have done - there are many MANY people who might not have the experience to come up with the solution on their own, but who may benefit from it.
The attitude that writing documentation on the simple stuff is pointless is the reason so many man pages, web pages, FAQs and howtos on open source software sucks dog nuts.
Not everyone is geek enough to know how to do some of the cool things - that knowledge comes about for those of us who are geeky enough to enjoy learning the ins and outs of everything for its own sake. Other people, the majority, need to see how something can work when set up well before they'll accept it.
WHY? (Score:3, Insightful)
Free (as in speech) doesn't mean better... (Score:5, Insightful)
1. KDE has been running on OS X for many years now.
2. cp, ls, mv, etc are open source, and have been available on OS X since the beginning.
3. KDE is nice, but I didn't buy a Mac so I could run KDE, I bought it so I could run OS X.
Which isn't to say it's not good to be able to run KDE if you want, just that I've never heard someone lament, "oh, that only there were some form of free (as in speech) approach to the filesystem on my Mac".
Re:Goody? (Score:3, Insightful)
One of the parts omitted from the article was a demonstration by Si, the guy who wrote the article, of a KDE desktop running on one monitor and OS X running on the other - both controlled by the same G4. For him, it works well and documenting how it was done just makes sense. Not everyone has the complete knowledge needed to get this up and running if they DO need it.
It's certainly not going to suit everyone - nor even the majority of people using OSX/KDE, but it's going to make life just a little more comfortable for the few who need to use both regularly.
Re:Goody? (Score:5, Insightful)
How exactly running an X program over X can be considered a port? It just works as it should, but there is nothing special to it.
Re:Good article (Score:5, Insightful)
You can have a variety of io-slaves under KDE allowing great integration with a variety of network services, yes we can do alot of that with OSX but again, interface and third party add-ons... (webdav over ssl???)
Furthermore, KDE is a development environment in itself and many developers will be happy to see that they can work two in one!
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. So reading the australian exploits with expectation!!
laugh all you want (Score:3, Insightful)
The only limitation of this port is that it is based on X11; since Apple refuses to integrate X11 better into the Mac desktop environment, that's not a good solution for regular users. However, since the Qt toolkit underlying KDE has a native Mac version, we can expect a native port of KDE to follow fairly soon.
why would one do this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Then they want me to get rid of Apple X11 in favor of Xfree86. That'll probably have consequences for other X11 applications.
In the end, I can run a sub-optimal GUI environment which doesn't really do anything useful I couldn't do otherwise, whose utilities/applications - in my experience - crash regularly. From a user-perspective: lost of wasted time.
It's not surprising that it runs on OS X -- OS X is Unix.
Re:Why? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Erm... Why? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Hasnt anyone tried out the latest Enlightenment (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:WHY??? (Score:4, Insightful)
And yes, I realize the irony of an Apple interface rant coming from some a-hole who's screen name is "Aqua OS X"
Re:Goody? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:STUNNED! (Score:2, Insightful)
In terms of general asininity I'd say that honor goes to this story [slashdot.org].
Re:Good article (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, it really sucks that OS X lets you transparently access folders over FTP with ls. It'd be much better if it did it with ioslaves, so only KDE applications could transparently access them.
(Yes, I know that ftpfs is read-only. Implementing it as an NFS server, so that the FTP back-end has no way of knowing when an application is finished writing to the file, makes it difficult to support read/write access. And, yes, I really have accessed an FTP server with ls, egrep, etc., and yes, it was convenient.)
And the same goes for WebDAV and SMB (although WebDAV uses a gateway VFS rather than using NFS, so it does know when a file is closed and can upload its contents if it was written to, and smbfs is implemented as a kernel-level VFS and supports reading and writing). Unfortunately, there's no sftpfs, but, if there were, that'd be a lot more UN*Xy than doing it with an ioslave.
BTW, your Linux box probably has an smbfs, too, so you can access SMB servers from the command line as well as from KDE apps. (Or does KDE do the right thing on systems with smbfs/cifsfs, and just mount the damn server and let the underlying UN*X do the work?) Somebody might have implemented ftpfs, etc. with userfs, so you might have them as well.
Which ones are missing? (Other than read/write FTP, and sftp, which are already known to be missing.)
Re:Introducing our new format... (Score:4, Insightful)
Ever think there are different levels of geekdom? I'm a music geek first and foremost, and a computer geek second. I didn't know what Fink was, yet I've been a Linux user and casual Sourceforge browser for nearly 3 years and an OS X user for almost a year. I found this article useful even if you didnt, just for novelty value rather than anything else.
Just because you already knew how to do something, doesn't mean everybody does. If this was a PC World 'How to Switch on your Computer' article, you might have a case, but this is a site for all geeks, not just computer geeks; all reasonably smart people - people likely to enjoy this site - should know how to turn their computer on, but not all of them are going to know about something like this, which they might find useful for any number of reasons.
Rant over. I just don't like people who assume just because something is of no interest to them, or simple to them, that it's boring or obvious to everyone else.
I liked this article, it's something I might try out when I've got a few hours to spare. You can read something else if you want.
Thank you, slashdot, for enlightening me as to this smart bit of kit. Keep it up.
Re:Good article (Score:4, Insightful)
ftpfs also groks an extremely limited dialect of ftp, it gets easily confused by various ftp server software that kioslave (or mozilla, camino, etc.) doesn't have any problems with.
no, kioslave really is the best way to do it.
Re:Exactly what was missing (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Exactly what was missing (Score:3, Insightful)
File Menu - Get Info
or
Cmd-I
This would not be a bad thing if you were given at least some information in at least one of the view modes about the files you are looking at (size etc) but no information is provided.
Go into the detail view, and you get "Date Modified" and "Size" fields. IIRC, you can also change this and pick which fields you'd like and in what order.
The rest are just folders created by certain apps which for whatever reason related to their function, think that you will be placing at least some music in those folders.
I totally understand your frustration here, but Apple can't be held accountable for folders created by applications that you install; furthermore, this is indicative of a shortcoming in those applications rather than a shortcoming in Finder. (I do agree that Spotlight should try to make some kind of distinction between them, though - perhaps displaying full path name relative to user dir if you hover over them.)
Re:Good article (Score:5, Insightful)
See, you were joking... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, that's just a personal thing. Yes, most users are the opposite. Still
Re:Good article (Score:1, Insightful)
Qt is available for OSX, and it
Its very, very sad that there have been no updates for over a year for the native KDE on OSX http://kde.opendarwin.org/ [opendarwin.org]. Thats what the users want, NOT
Re:Good article (Score:3, Insightful)
assuming cups is running on your comp:
http://localhost:631/ [localhost]
Re:Good article (Score:3, Insightful)
Mod parent up, not in a dumb way. Seriously. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:WHY??? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hasnt anyone tried out the latest Enlightenment (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Good article (Score:3, Insightful)
There are those who consider that a problem. As per the posting to which you're replying, I obviously consider that a feature.
If a remote server hang can hang up your entire system, that's a problem with the system (or with some component of the system; if you can still do things in a Terminal window, the problem is probably at a layer above Darwin), not with the notion of an ftpfs, as there are other remote file systems in OS X - and in Linux, and various BSDs, and various other UN*Xes.
Sounds like too little threading - again, a problem with OS X's implementation of the idea, not with the idea itself.
Again, an implementation problem, not a problem with the idea. What are some examples of FTP server software that ftpfs's client can't handle?
That assertion is not supported by anything you've said above, because that stuff just complains about a particular implementation of the notion of an FTP file system.
Re:Totally off-topic (Score:2, Insightful)