KDE Goes Cross-Platform, Supports Windows and OS X 513
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."
So will this ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Can it replace Explorer? (Score:5, Interesting)
For someone who's obviously new here... (Score:3, Interesting)
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: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: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:Now Windows and Mac users can enjoy... (Score:2, Interesting)
From a concistency point of view, you would find that no other menus have a "Cancel" button so why do this menu need it.
The reason is of course that the simple action of moving something have become too complicated.
Second, on my hard dreve, and most other hardrives of people running Linux or some othe kind of unixlike system, the number of links are only around 0.01% of all files on the hard drive, and most of these files are created by some kind of script. So the chance that this menu item should be used is very small.
Third, at least in all konquerer there was no other way to make a link, in the unusual event that you actually would want one. This means that a blind person having menus read to him as he navigates the menus of konquerer with a screen reader probably never will find it, as he most likely will use cut and paste to move or copy files.
Fourth, it doesn't fit in the desktop methaphore. There is no such thing as copying things or making links on your real physical desktop.
Fifth, Mac, Gnome, Windows and CDE users seam to be able to live without it. This means that more than 90% of all new KDE users wil havet to relearn when they switch to KDE. There is nothing wrong in having this menu as an option, but this fact alone is enought to not make it the default behavior.
So, why have a menu where 50% of the items ("link here" and "cancel") are almost never used. Just try to sort a few hundred images from your digital camera with this popping up all the time. It's really annoying, and given that almost everything else is configurable in KDE this should be too, or they could do it the windows way, where you have the best of both worlds, a menu if you do right button drag, and no menu if you do left button drag. For poeple that only have one mouse button modifier keys could be used to bring up the menu when needed.
This is really a usability problem, as it breaks the users flow of operation.
Re:Uh huh. (Score:3, Interesting)
And honestly, for most of the work I do, I'd rather use the SPARCstation.
Re:I want to like this (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's your KDE 4.1 schedule here... [wordpress.com]
Re:Dial-up, no CD recorder, or winhardware (Score:2, Interesting)
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?
Does it run on ReactOS XP clone? (Score:2, Interesting)
hmm. Next week I have some time. I will have to down load it and try it on the KVM-QEMU virtual image of ReactOS.
Withholding tax (Score:2, Interesting)