KDE Goes Cross-Platform, Supports Windows and OS X

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."

Just tried it out

[giorgiofr]

About 10 days ago I tested KDE4 on an OpenSUSE system, now I've just tried it on Windows too and I must say I'm astounded - many applications work just fine although they feel a bit sluggish. But the basic system is there and I believe it won't be long until we have a fully functional KDE4 shell as an alternative to Explorer. Or we could just stick to the apps and not use the whole desktop environment - in fact I'd like to use KOffice and a few other apps on my Windows box.
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.

Re:Can it replace Explorer?

[mhall119]

Not having RTFM I'm wondering if it fixes some of the backwards shit in Windows (like the subdirectory separator)

No, it's just a port of the QT and KDE4 libs, and some KDE programs that use those libs, to Windows. While KDE apps will probably be able to use the correct / when specifying a path, don't expect this to fix any native Windows apps.

Re:So will this ...

[Kjella]

Not any time soon. The desktop shell got so many ties to X11 and would need so many ties to Windows. What this is mostly for is KDE applications that have little or no dependencies on any non-qt (well, non-kde) libraries. That should actually be quite many, but only what you'd consider "normal" applications.

Re:I want to like this

[geek]

Well I tested KDE4 on my Ubuntu machine, found it too be very incomplete and buggy. I understand that Qt4 is quite easy to develop with, much like Cocoa is for OSX, so the development time may be shorter than I expect.

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 .0 version which was clearly still alpha software.

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.

Re:For someone who's obviously new here...

[mhall119]

Short answer: No.

Long Answer: No, but I think kwin has (or had) compositing capability, so it could potentially provide Vista-like features on Windows.

Re:Point?

[abigor]

The desktop isn't being ported, just the apps. And they will run natively as Cocoa apps. Well, they already do, but they need a lot of polishing before they are usable.

Re:Good question.

[kcbanner]

There is a good shell replacement that is similar to fluxbox: http://emergedesktop.org/ [emergedesktop.org]. When I have to boot into windows it eases the pain.

Re:Great

[ichthus]

ktorrent too! Nothing less than excellent.

Re:So will this ...

[nuba]

fwiw you can enable x-mouse in tweakui to have focus follow your mouse. I usually use this, but some programs that do not expect it become a little hard to use (certain dropdowns, etc.)

Re:So will this ...

[s.bots]

I've been using Dexpot 1.4 [dexpot.de] for the past few months now and it is very functional in XP. Nice customizable shortcut keys, named desktops, and free for private use; it's the most similar to a linux desktop switcher that I could find.

Re:How long before...

[wall0159]

"How long before we can run a Windows GUI on Linux?"

Why the hell would you want to? As far as I can see, the only advantage that windows has is that it runs software written for windows.

(mostly)

Two interesting perspectives

[MacarooMac]

"KDE developer Aaron Seigo [arstechnica.com] also spoke about KDE's cross-platform ambitions and discussed some of the broader implications. Bringing popular KDE programs to Windows and Mac OS X is somewhat controversial in the open source software community, because doing so is seen by some as a means of eroding incentives for Linux adoption."
"Seigo and many in the KDE community contend that making KDE applications available on other platforms brings more freedom and choice to Windows users and gives them the ability to adopt open standards and establish an easier migration path to Linux."

Is KDE's cross-platform approach going to backfire?

Re:Don't do that.

[Hatta]

Try mplayer and rtorrent.

Autotools,makes even seasoned programmers nauseous

[kop]

Love the way Ars describes Autotools!

Autotools, an intractably arcane and grotesquely anachronistic cesspool of ineffable complexity that makes even seasoned programmers nauseous.

Re:But why

[jank1887]

step one, download the kubuntu iso...

Re:I want to like this

[Anonymous Coward]

except that KDE is LONG past its first .0 release

The laterst version is KDE 4.0, which is almost completely different from previous versions, just as OS X 10.0 was. If you want a well-tested, stable and capable desktop environment and can live without the latest eye candy, you should stick to KDE 3.5.8, which is an altogether amazing environment.

BB4Win baby..

[tarrantm]

Gives you multiple desktops, replaces explorer and is a whole lot lighter, nicer looking and faster than the default pos IE integrated explorer shell. Damn, I've been using BBlean since win2k came out and haven't found a nicer shell for windows since.

Virtual desktops on MS windows that don't suck

[narrowhouse]

http://virtuawin.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net] - obviously it isn't perfect but it is better than MSVDM. The worst incompatibility I have found is that some programs show up on every desktop.

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:Can it replace Explorer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Per http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/KDE_on_Windows/Installation [kde.org]:

"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?

[Tony Hoyle]

Windows has supported '/' as a path separator since about NT 3.1...

The only app that doesn't work with it is cmd.exe, because it uses that as a command line switch.

Re:Vista

[Grundlefleck]

If KDE runs on Windows, why would Windows users want to switch to Linux?

As stated elsewhere, it's not the entire KDE desktop, at the moment it's the apps that run on it.

Also, though you didn't say it, other have talked as though individual apps are being ported, but I don't think that's the case. What they're doing is to create layers between apps and the underlying OS. So that a developer wanting to create an app with part video in it, they can include it in a few lines of code, because the actual handling of display and audio is done in an intermediate layer. They've wrote these layers for other OS's, including Windows, so they take their existing KDE apps, with their newly written layers for Windows, and they work pretty much as before.

That was a pretty poor description, but I can't remember the actual terms or names for these, but if you want to find out more, check out the KDE 4.0 Release Event Keynote speech by Aaron Siego: http://dot.kde.org/1200812119/ [kde.org]

... though it is over an hour long.

history was: Re:So will this ...

[damn_registrars]

At this time 20 years ago we finally got OS/2 1.0. No GUI at all in that version.

Actually, you'll find that X windows [wikipedia.org] started in 1984. The protocol was established at least circa 1987. And X windows is the base that KDE sits on top of for window management. So even if OS/2 didn't have a GUI in 1988, there were GUI's available.

Or drag and drop correctly.

[SanityInAnarchy]

Hold shift+drag to move, ctrl+drag to copy.

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.

[Somegeek]

Before you drop the files (or whatever) that you're draging in Windows, look at the icon.
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.

Re:Or drag and drop correctly.

[growse]

On windows, I enjoy the bliss of right-click drag-drop. :-)

Re:Dial-up, no CD recorder, or winhardware

[xtracto]

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.

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:Don't do that.

[Goweropolis]

MPD and rtorrent? Not an exact answer but "equivalency" is not an exact concept, is it?

Re:But why

[Captain DaFt]

Puppy Linux http://www.puppylinux.com/ [puppylinux.com] is designed to run on older hardware.
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:Or drag and drop correctly.

[ArAgost]

on OS X it's always move if source and destination are on the same volume, copy if source and destination are on different volumes. You can tell it by taking a look at the cursor, anyway. And you can force copy by pressing option, force move by pressing command or create a link by pressing option+alt

Re:So will this ...

[oatworm]

In 1988? Nah... you barely had Multifinder [wikipedia.org] and its cooperative multitasking goodness by then, no native 32-bit memory support, spotty color support, no aliases (what the rest of the world call "shortcuts")... yeah, pass. Amiga's OS was probably a little closer to Windows with preemptive multitasking and full color support, but it still didn't have any sort of memory protection. It did have the whole "multiple screens" thing, though, which is something Windows still doesn't have.

this article is misleading...

[mozkill]

By design, KDE-windows does not provide the full-blown KDE desktop, thus no KWin composite manager, KDE-specific "start" menus, Plasma desktop, etc.

Re:Now Windows and Mac users can enjoy...

[larpon]

Sounds like you don't pay attention to what the menu has to offer you instead? yeah! modifier keys!
Though I don't know what version you've tried or have now, KDE3.5 (presumably the whole 3.x series)
offer you this: (keys are shown in the menu as well)

Left Click, hold Shift , drag your icon, release mouse button - will result in a file move.
Left Click, hold Ctrl , drag your icon, release mouse button - will result in a file copy.
Left Click, hold Ctrl+Shift, drag your icon, release mouse button - will result in a file softlink.

No menus shown.
There we go.. No need to wait for KDE4

Re:Now Windows and Mac users can enjoy...

[just_another_sean]

Right click, drag, drop.

That gets you context menus in windoze.

KDE 4 Presentation

[whatevah]

An interesting presentation in all platforms is here [google.com]

Re:Dial-up, no CD recorder, or winhardware

[Anonymous Coward]

A 1GHz PIII with 256+ MB RAM costs at most 25 eur here.

I have a minimal KDE 3.5 desktop on my laptop - needs 46 MB (including the kernel) of memory right after startup. Unless you have tens of tabs open in konqueror, 128 MB of memory should be enough. Choosing kubuntu was your first mistake - there are alternatives.

Re:Or drag and drop correctly.

[SanityInAnarchy]

Yes -- that is pretty much what I said. By "try it", I do mean actually start that drag'n'drop process.

But honestly, that's an extra step to look at what it's about to do. It's a mental "are you sure" process. This is why I use shift+delete, and shift/control+drag.

Re:I want to like this

[cbart387]

Copied verbatim from KDE's manifesto [kde.org] (emphasis mine)

Portability KDE and its libraries are intended to be portable to all Unix-like platforms. KDE seeks to avoid ties with any platform specific interfaces where possible, and when not possible to provide code for all platforms. In fact KDE is available for GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, Sun-Solaris, and many other platforms.

It takes a lot of effort to make sure code is portable across different environments. Each time you tweak it for one environment you have to make sure that it didn't break for things that worked previous. Since Apple doesn't try to make their GUI portable for most Unix-like environments they can focus their efforts on other things.

And it is much better for the users who don't have to worry about finding drivers (much) and getting random hardware to work. I'm not really sure how you can twist the fact that owning a PC is quite often a pain in the ass into something that is "impressive."

People have installed Linux distros with KDE on the Mac hardware without any problem because of that fact. On the other hand Leopard can't be installed on 'random hardware'. _That_ is what I find impressive. You're going to have poor driver support, proprietary drivers that can't be used in that situation etc. I never 'twisted those facts' so I'm not sure what you're driving at there. If your point is that you don't agree with my conclusion that's fine. We're allowed to have different opinions.