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KDE GUI

KDE 2.2.1, On Win32/Cygwin 225

Posted by timothy from the windows-with-a-small-w dept.
m_ilya writes: "It looks like KDE 2.2.1 has been ported on Cygwin. More than year ago I was forced to use WinNT at work, and I've been missing the Linux desktop a lot. I hope if I will be ever forced to use Windows again I would be able to have more Unix-friendly desktop :). Here's the announcement. Kudos to all the KDE hackers." Check out the posting on the Dot for some more links.
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KDE 2.2.1, On Win32/Cygwin More

KDE 2.2.1, On Win32/Cygwin

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  • Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fault0 ( 514452 ) on Saturday November 24, 2001 @10:04PM (#2608817) Homepage Journal
    Nice, I'd be great to run a few KDE apps on Windows. However, IMHO, many of the same Windows equivalents would be better to use, as they are native. I'd take IE over Konqueror, for example.

    And what about KDE 2.2.2? Any plans to port that or are they just going to KDE 3?

  • KDE on windows (Score:2, Informative)

    by lavaforge ( 245529 )
    I've used Cygwin to run X windows on MS windows, and it seemed a bit of a kludge. While it was nice to run apps, the integration with the rest of the system was messy at times.

    While I really do have to applaud the Cygwin folks for their work, I wonder if it would not be more effective (or possible?) to port Kde as a litestep style shell replacement.

    • Re:KDE on windows (Score:3, Informative)

      by fault0 ( 514452 )
      > I wonder if it would not be more effective (or possible?) to port Kde as a litestep style shell replacement.

      I think they'd have to port Qt to windows natively. This, fortunatly, wouldn't be hard for an experienced programmer who knows the Windows API AND xlib. Most of the platform specific code of Qt is pretty well split off from the rest of the code. They are in the QXXX_x11.cpp files. There are only about 20 of these files, and KDE doesn't even use/require all of them (like QSound).

      • Re:KDE on windows (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Spy Hunter ( 317220 ) on Saturday November 24, 2001 @10:35PM (#2608894) Journal
        I think they'd have to port Qt to windows natively. This, fortunatly, wouldn't be hard for an experienced programmer who knows the Windows API AND xlib.

        I hope they don't do this. If they do, they will just discourage companies from GPLing their products.

        TrollTech has been very supportive of KDE's development since the beginning, and has bent over backwards to please Free Software advocates by GPLing their main, high-quality product. They took a risk in doing that. So far it has not come back to bite them, but if the GPL'd QT was ported to Windows against their will, it would be very bad for them. They couldn't stop anyone from doing it, but it would be bad. A lot of TrollTech's revenue comes from companies doing in-house windows apps. In-house apps can be GPL'd easily because the source only has to be distributed where the binaries go. If the program never goes outside the company, the source doesn't have to either. If there is a free, GPL'd QT on windows, all those people will stop paying TrollTech and simply use the free version. There is a reason TrollTech hasn't released a GPL'd QT for windows. There is of course a free as in beer version, but it is not GPL. It has a license forbidding commercial use, for this very reason.

        TrollTech has gone very far in its support of free software, but it is still trying to make money. It is trying to be a company that will balance Open Source and profit. Porting a GPL QT to windows would hurt TrollTech, and it would make the GPL look like poison for companies that want to make a profit. It would be more ammunition for Microsoft's "virus" analogy. It is the wrong thing to do.

        On the other hand, making XFree on Cygwin "rootless" would be a much better solution. Then there would be a high-quality, useable, Free X-Server for Windows, which would be great. Then you would have the ability to make KDE a shell replacement or whatever. It might still be less than optimal for TrollTech, but I think most companies would still elect to buy the Windows version of QT. Commercial X servers have had this capability for a while now, and it hasn't been a problem so far (that I know of).

        • Re:KDE on windows (Score:4, Insightful)

          by fault0 ( 514452 ) on Saturday November 24, 2001 @10:49PM (#2608930) Homepage Journal
          I don't think a GPL'd port of Qt for Windows would be necessarily bad to TrollTech. People who used this port of Qt would have produce Free (as in Speech) Software anyways. Since most companies could not accept this anways, they'd buy the commercial license anyways.

          I don't see many Free Software developers rushing out to buy commercial Qt licenses so they can produce Free Software for Windows. So, basically, TrollTech would not be harmed financially, and would probably gain more users (which could mean more Commercial licenses, if some of the Free Software developers wished to make non-Free Software).

          • Re:KDE on windows (Score:3, Interesting)

            by Spy Hunter ( 317220 )
            The point is that companies developing in-house software don't care about the GPL one bit. They could care less whether they have to give the source to their own employees. There's nothing in the GPL that says you have to make the source available to everyone who asks. You only have to make the source available to people who have the program. In-house programs never are distributed outside the company so the source isn't distributed outside either. Why do you think TrollTech has not yet released QT/Windows as GPL if they are not worried?
            • I don't think TrollTech is worried about that happening. I has been said elsewhere by TrollTech that they did not release Qt/X11 under the GPL for a long time because they were worried that someone else would take over Qt's development by outpacing them (although I can't remember where, I think this was said in the interview with TT's president).

              All in all, I think that it would have disadvantages and advantages, however, in this case, I think that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages for TrollTech financially. It'd increase the popularity of Qt a lot.

              If TrollTech really didn't want this to happen, they wouldn't have released Qt under the GPL anyways. It'd be completely legal for anyone to do this, if he/she wanted to.
            • The point is that companies developing in-house software don't care about the GPL one bit. They could care less whether they have to give the source to their own employees.

              Giving the source to their employees is not the problem here, giving the code to their employees under the terms of the GPL (which permits licensees to redistribute code) is.

          • I don't think a GPL'd port of Qt for Windows would be... bad to TrollTech. People who used this port of Qt would have produce Free Software anyways. Since most companies could not accept this anways, they'd buy the commercial license anyways.

            I don't see many Free Software developers rushing out to buy commercial Qt licenses so they can produce Free Software for Windows. So, basically, TrollTech would not be harmed financially, and would probably gain more users (which could mean more Commercial licenses, if some of the Free Software developers wished to make non-Free Software).

            Amen!

            I'd have to hope Troll Tech is confident enough to GPL the native Windows version.

            Troll Tech keeps relaxing their licensing according to the successes of GTK and GNOME. Fine, competition is great. I have no doubt the Qt license will change AGAIN in the future...

            However the current COST of a Qt license is hurting Linux. By that I mean, they are hurting the small software developer. Troll Tech should have pity on low volume commercial software companies -- including shareware (what I call "mom and pop dot com") -- because the current licensing is way too expensive for the small guy. We want to encourage innovative, small developers... not just cheer and jeer for Oracle, and the latest game port. Qt licensing is like a head tax.. fair for some, but too steep for many.

            I'll give you a great example of Qt-like licensing:
            I lived in the state of New Hampshire. There in the land of "small government" the distribution of alcohol is a state-run monopoly. In order to have your alcoholic beverage "approved" to go on the wholesalers list, you pay a set tax regardless of the quantities sold. So, whatever Budweiser pays is also paid by Nutfield brewing company, or any outside brewer who wants access to the NH market.

            The result is, while the Northeast is a boom region for microbrews, New Hampshire lags the pack with just one midsized microbrew. This is artificial and due to the state tax, because NH consumes more microbrew per capita than anywhere in the northeast. The tax brings in income, but it's miscarried an entire industry.

            Anyone who thinks Linux on the desktop will "get there" without "shareware" is deliding themselves. There are just too many varied interests for the free software teams to fill.

            Now, you and I probabnly don't care about shareware... but these tiny niche apps will keep THOSE people on Windows forever. These apps COULD be ported to Linux if the right toolkit were available.

            Now, GTK gets around this totally by being LGPL. I don't think Troll Tech want to go THERE. So, they should address the vacuum by producing a low-volume commercial license. It will help the platform considerably!

        • Re:KDE on windows (Score:2, Insightful)

          by mlinksva ( 1755 )
          In-house apps can be GPL'd easily because the source only has to be distributed where the binaries go.

          No company that doesn't want its source to get out is going to GPL its internal projects to avoid paying TrollTech. Too big of a risk. All someone has to do is anonymously post the GPL'd source someplace on the net, and the company's valuable, secret, internal (oooh, aaaah) intellectual property and probably lots about their business practices are revealed to anyone interested with no recourse.

          Long term, Troll Tech has to adapt to free software world domination just as much as any other company. If they can't make a good profit on training, consulting, custom development, and other services (see Cygnus), they better learn how.

          • All someone has to do is anonymously post the GPL'd source someplace on the net, and the company's valuable, secret, internal (oooh, aaaah) intellectual property and probably lots about their business practices are revealed to anyone interested with no recourse.

            Right.

            And not using the GPL will prevent some evil employee from posting the source anonymously.

            I don't care how low your UID is; you're still naive.

            • And not using the GPL will prevent some evil employee from posting the source anonymously.

              You miss his point entirely. What it will do is prevent it from being distributed further. It gives them room for damage control. One the offending code is taken down, no-one can legally redistribute or use it. OTOH, if it's GPL code, there's nothing preventing anyone who downloads it from legally distributing it, and competitors from legally using it.

        • I hope they don't do this. If they do, they will just discourage companies from GPLing their products.

          This really misses the point. The fact that the GPL allows this is one of many reasons why it's so attractive. If people don't take advantage of the good things the GPL allows, then there's no point using the GPL in the first place.

          Case in point here: Qt is also available under the QPL, which basically requires you to open your source code. If that was all people wanted to do, then they wouldn't have pushed for a GPL version of same code. The fact that Troll Tech dual licenses is proof that they recognise all the potential that a GPL-licensed Qt has for their business, and yet they did it anyway.

          The whole point is, if you use the GPLed Qt, then you are obliged to GPL your code. Troll Tech obviously does not think their business customers will be prepared to do this. They certainly thought about it long enough - there was a huge delay between the (in my opinion misguided) outcry over the QPL and the dual-licensing of Qt.
          • The whole point is, if you use the GPLed Qt, then you are obliged to GPL your code. Troll Tech obviously does not think their business customers will be prepared to do this.

            Then why haven't they released a GPL QT for Windows? If this was really the case, they would have no fears about GPLing QT for all their platforms. But still only the Linux version is open source. In-house software is the key.

        • who cares? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by mj6798 ( 514047 )
          TrollTech has been very supportive of KDE's development since the beginning, and has bent over backwards to please Free Software advocates by GPLing their main, high-quality product.

          TrollTech didn't do this out of charity, they did it to popularize a toolkit that otherwise wouldn't have had a chance in the market: at the time Qt came out, there were already several established commercial toolkits out there, with better tool support and much better documentation. The only gimmick Qt had was the QPL, and the adoption by KDE the popularized it.

          I hope they don't do this. If they do, they will just discourage companies from GPLing their products.

          The GPL is a two-way street. TrollTech has profited handsomely from the adoption of Qt by the open source community. If they didn't like the deal, they didn't have to take it--they were under no obligation to put Qt under the GPL. I hope any other company will take notice and think carefully about putting software under the GPL.

      • Ummmm, qt has already been ported to windows natively... Actually, it's neve rbeen a port, since it was designed to run on both.

      • I think they'd have to port Qt to windows natively.

        But Qt already has a Windows port, and it has been there since the beginning of time. Perhaps it would be easier just to consult a licensed Qt user to build binaries rather than port the library? I hold a Qt/Windows license, and I wouldn't mind building a native Konqueror or something, as long as it isn't too much work.

  • Probably still has a ways to go... (Score:4, Funny)

    by mgkimsal2 ( 200677 ) on Saturday November 24, 2001 @10:23PM (#2608866) Homepage
    Their own project site says it's 'alpha'-level software. One of the guys in the office had played with Cygwin and Xfree86 running some stuff - nice idea, but seemed a bit kludgy at the time. Still, I suppose it can only get better. :)

    To those who ask "why bother?", at this time you might be right. However, as KDE matures, it'd be nice to know you could write apps that would run on many more boxes than just native Linux boxes. (Haven't seen KDE run on anything but Linux - I assume it might run on Solaris? *BSD?) Yeah, it's an early hack right now - if it matures to become a good alternative, it certainly can't be a bad thing in any sense of the word (unless you were to argue that that time could have been better spent developing some other apps).
    • KDE runs on most *BSD variants, except Darwin.
    • One of the guys in the office had played with Cygwin and Xfree86 running some stuff - nice idea, but seemed a bit kludgy at the time.

      For all the flaws in the implementation, it does a great job at turning a Windows machine into a moderately usable X-term without paying for a commercial windows X server.

    • I haven't even been able to get the simple X-Windows test application to run for more than a few minutes on my Win95b box.

      Perhaps it runs on Win98, but most of the success stories I've heard of are Win-NT. Haven't heard much one way or tother about Win 2000 or Win-ME (which is supposedly a modified Win-95! with a replaced DOS layer [replaced by what I don't know]).

      OTOH, I must admit that back when I purchased CygWin they said up front that it was for Win-NT and Win-98. That Win95 would usually work for awhile, but that garbage collection problems would cause it to crash after a half-hour or so. The recent versions are a lot more stable than that, but I doubt that they've been putting much work into it. So perhaps X works with all of the more recent versions.

  • The kde-on-cygwin homepage... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bflong ( 107195 ) on Saturday November 24, 2001 @10:26PM (#2608870)
    is here [sourceforge.net].

    There are a few screenshots of kde 1.2.x there, but very little on the kde 2.X port.
  • I really do not see the point. It will not be like running *nix, what ever that means, and there will be few if any features that Windows already has. It is bad enough that everyone is focused on out windowing Windows, but no we have to try and do it on a M$ OS. I hope they had fun doing it because that is the only reason to even try, for the fun of it. It is bad enough that so many of the distros are trying so hard to be like Windows, and it is succeeding. Look at all the new bug that are coming out because of the push to add more feature and get them out quickly. One has got to ask themselves how different is this than M$. If I want to have pretty pictures and one hand computing the boot up Windows, but if I want to think, burn and type Slackware. Well at least there are still fixes going on for 2.2, M$ just stops fixing older OS's until they drop them all together i.e. Win95 or just don't offer you the features i.e. no ASP.NET for IIS 4 and NT 4.
    • I think the purpose is to see if you can do it. It's like running Emulators on top of Emulators, it really has no point, but just to see if you could do it (like running Virtual PC in Mac OS, running Windows with Basilisk running Mac OS, then running SoftWindows 68K with Windows 3.1, and so on...).

      Yet, IMHO, it is neat to see KDE running in Windows. Even though that can be done by running it off another computer and using a X server on a Windows box, this way allows you to access the files on your local drive. I personally like to see the same thing pulled off with Gnome. Heck, GIMP runs in Windows and it installs the GTK+ libraries, so I guess it isn't too hard to get Gnome working.

  • Commit to CVS? (Score:2, Redundant)

    by Mr. Sketch ( 111112 )
    Will these ports of KDE make it into CVS so that windows will be just another build target for KDE? That would be really nice, however I heard that QT wasn't releasing a free version of 3.0 for windows which would prevent KDE 3.0 running under windows. Or maybe trolltech just wasn't releasing the source for QT 3.0 for windows.

    Anyways, great jobs guys!
    • Will these ports of KDE make it into CVS so that windows will be just another build target for KDE?

      As I understand KDE itself is not a problem since it almost do not require patching. It is already very portable. What needs patches is Cygwin.

      That would be really nice, however I heard that QT wasn't releasing a free version of 3.0 for windows which would prevent KDE 3.0 running under windows.

      They have ported Unix version of QT which is avialable as GPL.

      • They have ported Unix version of QT which is avialable as GPL

        Where? Not from trolltech, at least not that I could find. They have a binary version of QT 2.3 for MSVC, but I couldn't find anything except a 30 day evaluation for QT 3.0.
  • Not KDE, though if you like Afterstep, this is an alternative to the Lose9x shell at least. http://www.litestep.net/
  • After Netscape's failure to come up with immediate usable follow-up releases to Netscape 4.7, the future on the Windows browser market looked bleak: Microsoft had managed, by throwing enough smart people at the problem and leveraging its monopoly position to distribute the result, to entirely dominate the browser platform. In the US, IE is around 90% (strangely, Netscape 4.x still hovers at around 20% in Germany).

    But Mozilla is now very fast and stable on Windows, and it is clear that the 1.0 release will be one of the best browsers available (memory usage will likely remain unsatisfying, but memory prices these days are negligible) -- and available on all relevant platforms. Then you have spin-offs like K-Meleon [sf.net] and Galeon [sf.net] which use the Mozilla Gecko engine with smaller general overhead and some new features.

    Development of Moz & Co. will not stop with the 1.0 release -- they will continue to improve proportionally to the number of people that use and hack them. The same is true for KDE's Konqueror, which is an excellent, fast browser that just keeps getting better, and has some very nice features, especially on the GUI side. I'm not keeping up with IE, but some of the Mozilla/Konqueror features seem to be unmatched by IE: tabbed browsing (Moz), background loading, very flexible window layout, perfect search engine integration etc. etc. None of them are bundled with any specific vendor-services (except for Netscape's "What's Related" in Mozilla). Wonderful cookie management. No smart tags either.

    From what I have heard, IE 6.0 only had marginal improvements, reminiscent of a single milestone in Mozilla. This would not surprise me, given the fact that Microsoft no longer needs to invest in the browser market since they already dominate it pretty safely (or so they think). This is completely different to oss, which keeps getting better until its developers are satisfied.

    The KDE port to Windows may eventually give Windows users another mature choice for browsing, besides Opera, Mozilla and K-Meleon, Konqueror. The Qt libraries are cross-platform (though there may be licensing issues), so hopefully eventually we'll see a simple to install binary port of Konqueror.

    There's lots to say about why choice in the browser market matters, but I'll save that for another rant. Trust Microsoft: They knew why they had to concentrate all of their resources on killing Netscape 5 years ago. Part of their strategy was OEM licensing, telling PC manufacturers not to include Netscape besides IE, or suffer the consequence of prohibitive Windows prices. From what I have gathered, many of these practices are now forbidden, so OEMs should now be legally able to install another browser besides IE. And the choices for them to do so are growing. This gives PC manufacturers potential revenue streams since they can "customize" these browsers in unprecedented ways.

    So this should be a wake-up call to OEMs to install browsers besides IE. The time is now, and liberating the browser is the first step to breaking the MS OS monopoly.

    • Although Opera [opera.com] totally uninterests me, I think that you can't discount it. Opera is a slick browser alternative to IE, and I know an awful lot of people who prefer it. Personally, I think IE is the only thing currently worthwhile about Windows, and I agree, it still doesn't hold a candle to galeon [sourceforge.net], recently discussed here [slashdot.org] .
    • I recently read in the WSJ about the alliance [sony.co.jp] Sony and AOL have recently forged. One of things they are going to be collaborating on is:

      The joint development of an Internet browser designed for optimal performance, a consistent experience, and greater convenience on networked consumer electronic devices. Both companies envision not only employing the browser in future Sony products but also making it available to other consumer electronics manufacturers

      Are they talking about Mozilla? If not what does this mean for Mozilla? Remember that AOL owns Netscape, who are the biggest contributors to Mozilla. There's also an article about the alliance here [zdnet.co.uk]. I tried to post it as a story, but it got rejected. Sorry about the offtopic message here.
      • They are probably talking about some derivative -- AOL recently announced that they are testing Mozilla's Gecko engine in a special CompuServe web-browser (CompuServe is 0wned by AOL), and provided the test is a success, may eventually use it in AOL as well. (AOL had a deal from 1996-2000 with MS to use IE as its browser in return for desktop space. Don't know if it has been extended.) AOL's bastardized version of Mozilla under the Netscape brand is so messed up that only using Gecko seems like a good idea (and a must for a platform with little resources).

        I don't think AOL will cancel Moz development anytime soon, unless they are conspiring with Microsoft (in which case they'd be better off sabotaging Moz through their developers). But if it happens, the only net effect will be a slowdown in development. Even many former paid hackers will likely continue working on Moz in their spare time.

    • The KDE port to Windows may eventually give Windows users another mature choice for browsing, besides Opera, Mozilla and K-Meleon, Konqueror.

      Not really. The problem is that it's a port to cygwin, not windows. IOW, it's running through some sort of emulation layer that is darn slow, IME.

      The Qt libraries are cross-platform (though there may be licensing issues), so hopefully eventually we'll see a simple to install binary port of Konqueror.

      Running it with the native Windows Qt port is an interesting idea. Not sure how well it would work, but it would potentially speed things up a lot.

    • Improvement in IE6 (Score:3, Insightful)

      by crisco ( 4669 )
      It has a W3C standards compatibility rendering mode, triggered by the proper DOCTYPE declaration. More info here [gutfeldt.ch] and MS own pages [microsoft.com] on it (described as 'CSS Enhancements' by MS). From my perspective that is significant, though too long in coming.


      You're right though, choice is good, more browsers are good, standards compliance is good.

  • because of this, from the cygwin site:
    What Is Cygwin?
    Cygwin is a UNIX environment for Windows.

    And while reading the description I kept thinking of that line:
    "... it is like humping your sister, sure it feels good when you start, but you both know it is wrong.

    KDE on windows...hurmph...like putting a tiara on a moose...uhhh...bad analogy. And get that thing away from my head!

  • Other resources (Score:4, Informative)

    by Col. Panic ( 90528 ) on Saturday November 24, 2001 @10:39PM (#2608908) Homepage Journal
    I also am forced to use NT at work, but it is much easier with a few tools. Here are a few other ports:

    pstools [sysinternals.com]

    strings [sysinternals.com]

    grep [interlog.com]

    • Cygwin provides all these (I think, not sure about pstools) and lots lots more besides:


      andrew@INEGO% ls -l /usr/bin|wc -l

      572


      Anyway, Gnome (and even Nautilus, IIRC) already run on Cygwin. As it goes I've been lost in the Cygworld myself for the last six hours, grepping and a shell-scripting, sed'ing and ^Ring, man pages to the left, info to the right... it absolutely rules, it's made Microsoft bearable for me. Tons of other runs under it too, I've got Apache and Perl going (from the standard src distributions) - problems with mod_perl though, which is a shame. XFree86 isn;t really practical on this P2-233 but the commandline is all I ever needed and more. Even netcat and mutt run... if only I had working mailserver..

    • Shameless plug I know - but GNUSoftware.com [gnusoftware.com] has a directory of tons of GNU stuff ported to Windows.

      Check it out sometime, and add pointers to software that isn't listed .. please!

  • I played around with the 1.2 port and it was darned slow. Looking at the sourceforge update it seems that performance problems still plague the 2.2.x port.

    Still, it's pretty darned cool to be able to run KDE in a window in NT/2000/XP. I look forward to the day when there is an entire cygwin distro. Won't have to dual boot or buy VMWare to try out linux apps.

    -josh
    • The problem is cygwin. Cygwin is very slow for some things (probably what has to go through the emulated API).
      • The problem is that a lot of the POSIX-style system calls don't map well to the Win32 system layer. One main example is fork():

        In Unix, it's fork and be done with it. The code's built in. Under Cygwin, fork() is emulated like in the first versions of Unix, involing some wierd scheme of memory address copying and process signaling, since Win32 has no need in itself for a function like fork.

        There was another in the similar line, I forget what exactly, but the cygwin FAQ or thereabouts said that those two system calls are what causes such a massive performance hit in emulation.

        Anything that has to do real-time conversions for an app is going to be slower than the native environment, even on a fast computer.

  • Linux Desktop (Score:2, Insightful)

    by meekjt ( 94667 )
    I always find Timothy's posts a little odd... Why does he call KDE a "Linux desktop" when it runs on many versions of UNIX? And, how is KDE "Unix-friendly" when it is very much a clone of MS Windows?

    • Re:Linux Desktop (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Nailer ( 69468 )
      KDE is a clone of MS Windows? How? Because it uses a list box widget to display a list of applications? Sorry to burst your bubble, the Start menu came from OS/2, not that it's especially unique or anything.

      KDE is findamentally different from Windows in a variety of ways - style guidelines word strongly against MDI apps, which are the standard for most Windows apps despite being confusing to end users. KDE is more focused around using multiple desktops than Windows is, Windows still encourages users to log on as someone else if they'd like to run a program as another user (runas is flaky) rather than KDE's kdesu approach.

      Windows looks like my AtariST. MacOS looks like Next, and older MacOS looks like Xerox porototype work.

      Everyone's stealing ideas from everyone else - XPs task grouping came about after GNOME had this feature for years. KDE grabs concepts from MacOS and OS/2 too, as does Windows.
      • KDE is findamentally different from Windows in a variety of ways - style guidelines word strongly against MDI apps, which are the standard for most Windows apps despite being confusing to end users

        You just make this stuff up, don't you? In fact, the only major MDI app MS still puts out is Access. In fact, MS's own style guidelines discourage MDI. I guess the truth is inconvenient when it's Microsoft in the crosshairs.
        • You just make this stuff up, don't you? In fact, the only major MDI app MS still puts out is Access.

          I know they've changed Office with 2000 (hence the use of most windows apps), and IE has been SDI for a long time, but I wasn't aware they changed their guidelines.

          In fact, MS's own style guidelines discourage MDI.

          Fair enough, I stand corrected.

          I guess the truth is inconvenient when it's Microsoft in the crosshairs.

          I guess politeness is inconvenient when someone makes a mistake. Fair enough then, piss off you weak pathetic annoying fuckwit. : )
          • For what it's worth, I apologize for the tone. I hadn't really looked at who I was responding to. I actually respect a lot of your views, and I apologize for tarring you with the majority of the slashdoterati (which your own sig isn't kind to), at which that nasty comment was aimed.

            Guess I need to remember that when I correct a misconception for the 233437324134th time, it's not the same person each time... Sorry, and peace.
  • Trolltech's whole angle has been to make money on the windows ports of their Qt library, and now these guys go and port the free *nix version to windows. Luckily, it doesn't look like a "real" port; you still have to jump through cygwin and other bull shit hoops, but I'd bet the Trolltech guys are starting to worry now...
    • Trolltech's whole angle has been to make money on the windows ports of their Qt library,

      TrollTech's angle has been to make money from commercial developers on any platform. I suspect that TrollTech actually gets more revenue from UNIX, but they have to answer that.

      TrollTech's angle has also been to popularize an otherwise commercially irrelevant toolkit by getting lots of students open source developers to spend time learning it, evangelizing for it at their employers, and contribute suggestions for improvements.

  • hmm... (Score:3, Funny)

    by xmodfoo ( 538844 ) on Sunday November 25, 2001 @01:30AM (#2609267) Homepage
    Can I use WINE to emulate win32 in Linux and run KDE with it?

  • i have a question (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Pr0xY ( 526811 )
    i haven't really delved into the KDE sources quite so much yet...but is there any real X dependant code in there? I mean it is based on QT which is multi-platform, so as long as they use QT for everything then it should as simple as a recompile to use it in windows, you could probably even use it to replace explorer.exe. The only thing i can think of off hand that might be a prob is the different directory structure, but that should be a big deal
  • I've always thought the best way to destroy the windows monopoly was a more subtle approach. The current approach is to build a system to capture market share from windows. But a better approach (which is supported by Cygwin and KDE), is to slowly replace windows components, eventually down to the core, so that there is no longer such a thing as "Windows" or "Linux", but instead a set of interchangable parts to build your system. I don't know the technical details of doing this at the kernel level, but I bet with enough effort the windows kernel could be replaced with a free version.

    LS

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