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KDE 2.2.1, On Win32/Cygwin
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.
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?
Sure you can. Qt/X11 is gpl'd without any other restrictions other than what the GPL has. So you can port it to whatever you want, including distribute binaries of said Qt port.
Afaik, these guys are using Cygwin, which has a X11 server anyways, so not even that applies here.
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.
Look at the project page. I've not seen mention that they have been ported UNIX version of QT to Cygwin but since they require X server it is very likely. So there should be no problem with licensing.
--
Ilya Martynov (http://martynov.org/)
Yes, this is KDE running in a large window on your Windows desktop, not KDE applications running in their own separate windows. It uses the Cygwin port of XFree86, which doesn't allow applications to run in their own separate windows yet. The GPL'd QT hasn't been ported, it is just running in sort of an emulation window, kind of like Wine in desktop mode. This doesn't use the commercial Windows QT.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
ill be doing something for school like an essay or something(in windows) and what-do-you-know. blue screen...so far linux has only crashed once on me. and it was my fault. sofar linux has been way better for me. when i get in high school and get a laptop ill not even think of installing winblows.. ill go straight for SuSE and star office
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).
creation science book
Konqeuror, while perhaps not the best browser on the planet, DOES give you much better control over cookies than IE. The new IE6 privacy mgr stuff is, imo, just horrendous.
creation science book
is here.
There are a few screenshots of kde 1.2.x there, but very little on the kde 2.X port.
Why is it so hot? Where am I going? What am I doing in this handbasket?
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.
Tell me something about the reason why this should be have done ?
Somebody asked me, why one should port all this software to this X&%$? windows ? Another one told me, that this would be perverse. Why are we doing this real ?
I think, that kde is a great desktop and has the oppertunity to be a big player in gui apps and desktop area. Especially because of the famous qt library, which is designed very platform independed and already ported to many operation systems, porting kde application to other unix based operation systems isn't very much work. The one currently left operation system is windows.
Windows is the standard os in many companies. How could this fact be used to enforce kde propagation ? The answer is simple: Build something that allow kde application running on top on windows. This goal we try to reach with this project.
--
Ilya Martynov (http://martynov.org/)
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!
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
Not KDE, though if you like Afterstep, this is an alternative to the Lose9x shell at least. http://www.litestep.net/
Karma whorin' since 1999
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 and Galeon 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.
In some area's, Konqueror is a better file manager than Windows Explorer. For example, whenever I use explorer, I itch to have the menu that Konqueror pops up when moving around files. It's incredibly useful.
On the other hand, Windows Explorer beats the shit out of all X11 in terms of speed, esp. Nautilus, and Konqueror to less off a degree. And no, I'm not counting ROX because it's not in the same field as Explorer in terms of features.
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!
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
konqueror the best? ha tahts funny
Either you're just really tired because it's late where you are, or you're just stupid. My comment specifically stated that Konqueror was NOT the best browser. Sheesh...
creation science book
pstools
strings
grep
Actually, I prefer it over Konqueror's cookie management (which I also think is very good, don't get me wrong). With IE6, I have separate control over first- and third-party cookies. I can set all cookies to "block" except for harmless and sometimes useful single-session cookies. If I ever want to let one through, I simply click the little icon in the status bar, and it gives me a summary of what it has blocked. BTW, it blocks more than cookies: it's on to some other privacy-invading tricks as well (sometimes it blocks loading of certain apparently invisible .gifs). I can select any one of those blocked items and let it through.
Konqueror doesn't really have anything comparable. The closest you can get is to make it ask you about cookies whenever you visit a new site. That generates lots of questions, which is annoying. You can set it to block always, but when you want to let a cookie through then, you have to go deep into the preferences, which is annoying. Especially because the preferences dialog takes forever to load and forever to go away afterwards. The cookie deleter dialog is nice, but I don't really find myself using it much. I'd like more convenient control over what gets in there in the first place.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
Drag with the right mouse button. I'd guess Microsoft is worried about usability so much they didn't think about real users. It's non-obvious what to do when you want to copy a program instead of "link" it. You have to use the right-mouse button to drag instead of the regular left button. I guess they thought a little pop-up was too confusing for people so they didn't make it the default. Right-mouse button dragging is all I ever use, that way I always get the result I want instead of the result Windows wants.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
Fair enough - tired is fine. :)
Yeah, aesthetically, it's coming along nicely, and as I mentioned before, cookie control is better than many other browsers. If they could do the tabbed browsing like in moz.9.6, and a few other things, it may become my default platform. As more of my work is done via just web browsers, I'm flirting more and more with using Linux/KDE as my primary environment, instead of secondary to W2k. I *really* don't want to get into the whole XP thing in the Windows world. By the time I need to upgrade again, fingers crossed, Linux/KDE will be a rock-solid alternative (close, but no cigar yet).
creation science book
While its true that QT library can't be compiled,
there are some ways to get around that. And while I like the way the Windows shell works, occasionally I find advantage in using other visual shells. I'd use KDE.
HOWEVER, the big problems lie in the conversion.
I love cygwin and use it as my main POSIX environment. I use it much more than Linux, and have added most of the best tools to my version of it.
Icewm and twm have already been ported, and despite the simplicity of the two, both have problems in Windows, making a lot of other programs less workable (this is especially true of Icewm). In addition, configuration is based upon a series of workarounds, and is thoroughly unlike the elegant method used within Linux.
KDE already somewhat slow, buggy, and complex in Linux - while Icewm and TWM are quite simple. There's no way KDE will even be usable considering its complexity. The ability to change the configuration will make it far too difficult to change, and it would be too slow to run on all but the fastest machines since cygwin versions of apps are all slower than their linux counterparts.
In addition, having the Window manager is one thing, but having apps for it is something else entirely. That's what it'd really be good for. I'd love to use kdevelop under cygwin, but its not going to be joining Windows with KDE.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
I recently read in the WSJ about the alliance 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. I tried to post it as a story, but it got rejected. Sorry about the offtopic message here.
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
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.
Didja actually try it? It's perfectly stable. This capability has been in Windows for years, though not exposed through UI. It's a shame that some folks are unable to take off their anti-ms blinders & evaluate technology objectively.
It'd called branding. It signifies that a particular program was written by a certain group, in case, the KDE developers.
Microsoft does it too.
Whats the html browser in Microsoft Windows called?
MicrosoftMicrosoft's word processing application?
Microsoft Word
What is the name of Microsoft's C++ IDE?
Microsoft Visual C++
Bah, messed up that last post.
It'd called branding. It signifies that a particular program was written by a certain group, in case, the KDE developers.
Microsoft does it too.
Whats the html browser in Microsoft Windows called?
Microsoft Internet Explorer
What's the name of Microsoft's word processing application?
Microsoft Word
What is the name of Microsoft's C++ IDE?
Microsoft Visual C++
If you want a stable, secure, and lightweight OS use Blackbox or XFce on top of OpenBSD. For all of KDE's huge footprint, tons of code, it doesn't even come close to the ease of use of XFce. Now why Linux companies don't introduct first time Linux users to XFce is beyond me. It would certainly change the reputation of Unix being dicciult to use...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Yeah, I know it's a troll, but look at me, silly me, responding anyway.
Doesn't this port go against the ethics and goal of the project? Isn't it porting software to a less stable operating system? Contributing to a monopoly?
*sigh* Maybe, but quite frankly, sometimes I long for my KDE 2.x desktop.
Now, I'm not saying that KDE couldn't use some improvements (like, for instance, if they were to copy pre-OSX Finder a little more closely
Back to my original point: I personally don't see a problem with this, mainly because it's a.) a neat little toy and b.) "proof" that apps written on POSIX systems are portable, unlike the stuff we get from Redmond.
Maybe due to all the recent flaws in the kernel
There's more than just Windows and Linux out there, bucko. You're talking about Linux, right? Well...at least the Linux crowd doesn't attempt to hide or stifle major bugs in their OS.
and the mass migration from Unix to Windows 2000/XP
Huh?
the developers are realizing that windows is a better operating system.
A-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
I'm not a Windows developer, but I know quite a few both In Real Life and online, and I've got to say that the phrase "happy Windows programmer" is an oxymoron.
More like, pointy-haired management types want something they can see in a box, and MS hucksters came along putting the hard-sell on their latest snake-oil release. And the developers were left with the task of developing on the turkey.
Have a nice night, troll. It's been fun.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Finally we can have the stability of Windows combined with the world class user interface of Linux.
May God have mercy on our souls.
An AC Said:
Point taken, but there's also been major problems found in recent versions of the kernel that are supposedly stable. If you're running Windows 95 or 98, the BSOD is a way of life. But newer versions, especially Windows 2000, are much stable than their predecessors.
So it seems your whole arguement against Linux is a couple "oopsies" in realeases of the Kernel. Of of x number of hundreds of releses, that's a damn good ratio, if you ask me.
Don't get me wrong, w2k IS a good OS. It really is. And yes, '9x is crap, it really is (although I still run 98_se on one of my boxes here at home...).
But, I could mention SP4... er well, that one didn't happen (sarcasm). 4a! Right! That's the ONLY one. SP6? Nope, never existed (sarcasm). SP6a. Nimda holes, Code Red holes, etc...
And a couple bad Kernel revs is your only arguement. Fine. Don't use that Kernel. It's REALLY that simple. It's called CHOICE. I CHOOSE to run 2.4.14 because I found it the best for my box (2.4.9 was the one previous that I used).
I hate to come off as a M$ basher, but:
Does M$ give you that kind of choice? Nope...
P.S.
The 2.4.x Kernels are NOT considered "stable", they just are (considerably) more advanced than 2.2.x (which are the ones that are considered the stable kernel...).
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
Well, it's kinda branding, but the message it's sending isn't necessarily that "these developers wrote this program". "K" thrown in front of something seems to signify that it's written to work with KDE, not that any 'official' KDE developers worked on it. It's late, but "KBear" comes to mind as something which isn't 'officially' from the KDE team, but simply means that it's geared to work with KDE. Unfortunately, 'K' is too easy to tack on - I think the 'branding' message will be diluted, if it's not already to some degree.
creation science book
Does this company have a policy against using anything other than windows? If they do, I doubt that the poster will be permitted to run KDE even if it is win32.
The fact of the matter is that this guy uses windows at work to be productive as his line of work is in win32 applications no doubt.
Please don't kid yourself otherwise.
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?
You're right though, choice is good, more browsers are good, standards compliance is good.
Bleh!
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...
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
"Draging" most windows executables is a bad idea, the registry doesn't self-update and any "shortcuts" to it are lost, they must be redited with correct paths, except a windows dialog isn't as fast as 'ln name target'
Read my plan to save the Bengals
so you like it then? hehe. personally, if anything, i'd run blackbox or twm under cygwin.
----
All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Command Processor/CompletionChar
To a REG_DWORD value of 0x9. This works on WinNT 4; other versions may vary.
> Now why Linux companies don't introduct first time Linux users to XFce is beyond me
probably because it sucks ? I've used it and it's as clunky as CDE and missing the configurability of fvwm2 or pwm
I'd choose the more complete kde over xfce anytime, thank you
Now I can enjoy KDE's performance hits on top of Windows' performance hits. :)
Can I use WINE to emulate win32 in Linux and run KDE with it?
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.
I think you have missed what he was trying to say.
I think he was generally speaking about KDE and it's associated applications being less stable and slower than their Windows equivalents. And to be honest, they are [at the moment].
We call all talk about how "stable" the Linux kernel is [ignore recent events], but as long as a lot of programs that run on top of it frequently crash it's not that much use - it just means you have to restart the app, instead of the PC. You still in many cases have lost your work.
And by the way, please stop suggesting that KDE is exclusive to Linux, because it isn't. I run it under FreeBSD, as I'm sure many others do. I must admit, [2.2.1] is much more stable, and it's increasingly getting better.
Best wishes to the KDE developers, they've done a great job.
I think a better anology would be Windows. I can't think of any non-MS windows programs that begin with Microsoft or MS. But Win is quite common: Winamp, WinZip etc.
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!
Maybe due to all the recent flaws in the kernel ...
...
... and the mass migration from Unix to Windows 2000/XP ...
... the developers are realizing that windows is a better operating system.
... errrmmm ... UNIX!
Okay, I'll grant you there was a problem with 2.4.11 and a NASTY bug in 2.4.15, but at least Linus publicizes its bugs and gets a fix out as quickly as possible, as opposed to your favorite monopoly OS company which is trying its best to hide them
Say WHAT? I don't know the source of your information, but I've got news for you. The only mass migration to Win2K I've seen is from Win9x/Me/NT. As for XP, I don't know of a single case of anyone voluntarily switching to it.
Maybe this is the reason why all the computer science courses at the university I work at are taught under
utter rubbish
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
could you provide a link to the XFCE site? for some reason google failed to turn anything up....
bah. ignore that shit. I guess checking xfce.org would have been an idea... ;)
but google is on crack too..
However the current COST of a Qt license is hurting Linux. By that I mean, they are hurting the small software developer
Blah Blah Blah. We've heard this one before. I'f you're going to be producing commercial software for windows with Qt you have to pay, what, about $1200 to Trolltech? It's at least a long-term license too.
Tell me something, if you plan on making less than that amount of money on your product, perhaps you should consider GPLing it anyways...?
i took a dump 3 minutes ago....thank you :)
Clunky is a very broad term, so I can't exactly address it.
As far as being totally configurable, it's much more configurable than KDE, and is much easier to configure as well.
To set a file-type association all you need to to is right-click a file, select 'register', then type in the command to use to open the file. That's a hell of a lot easier than KDE or GNOME. Not to mention that it works perfectly every time, very unlike GNOME or KDE.
More than that, everything is just that easy to configure... You right-click any panel icons to change the icon, application, or title associated with it.
I don't know what problem with XFce is, but it is a great interface all around.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Whatever, don't be a mindless sheep.
The guys has his opinion, if it doesn't match yours don't scream foul.
Can I use WINE to emulate win32 in Linux and run KDE with it?
Well actually....
I would if there was a native GPL'd QT on windows, now I use wxwindows instead and the Trolls just miss out on developer base.
People should not try to stifle major bugs in their OS. Enter Alan Cox. He recently refused to divulge the details of an important security hole in the linux kernel.
No he didn't. He made a (possibly misguided) attempt to hilight the dangers of the DMCA by not showing certain kernel changelog information *within* the United States. The information is available outside of the U.S.
Has anyone actually tried this and seen how good it is? From my past experience, tools ported on cygwin haven't been very stable, so I'm interested. As for the market for this, I've been trying to approximate multiple desktops on Windows for quite a while (using programs like Cooldesk). If KDE on Windows is stable, I'll switch to it just for this feature.
An example of this dilution is K-Meleon, which despite the K-prefix isn't KDE.
4NT is a (large) superset of cmd.exe functionality, which has been around since before NT (it was 4DOS back then, which still exists for Win9x). While it's not related to nor based on any Unix shell, and it is a commercial closed-source shareware product, it is extremely flexible and very powerful. I've been using it for about 11 years myself.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
That is the reason why Microsoft is so successful, they are not just greedy they are greedy and smart enough to realize that a large install base is the key to expanding.
Really. So the JPager applet I ran for several years was just a figment of my imagination?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
How about qwwm (or something like that?), icewm(with it's winish startbar), and even gnome. all can be fairly argued to be winish.
:)
kde is more os2-ish than win-ish, although win9x had lots of os2-ishness.
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
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
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.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
[my quote] -- However the current COST of a Qt license is hurting Linux. By that I mean, they are hurting the small software developer.
Blah Blah Blah. We've heard this one before. I'f you're going to be producing commercial software for windows with Qt you have to pay, what, about $1200 to Trolltech?
[your quote] Nice to trivialize the expense of $1200... are you still employed by a dot-com? My point still went over your head (or you stepped deftly aside...).
The point isn't the the cost of the license, per se... it could be a $600 license and there would still be a problem.
What is my point then? There are two:
That's right, the Windows license for Qt actually hurts Linux desktop development. These developers will *continue* to target Windows, because there's no user base in Linux who will pay for software.
This is a chicken-and-egg problem. People don't use Windows because it's Microsoft... many use it because it is a program loader for their apps.
Tell me something, if you plan on making less than that amount of money on your product, perhaps you should consider GPLing it anyways...?
Irrelivent. No one can predict the future. If a well-meaning shareware developer were to consider a port to Windows, guess how quickly that idea will be sacked when the guy's wife realizes it's "$1200" to write Qt software that runs on Linux.
Oh WAIT... it's $1200 to write Qt software on Windows. Hey, forget about cross-platform... just write the freakin software in Visual Basic. Most people will "leave it" when given a $1200 "take it or leave it" ultimatum.
PS - Who ever moderated this guy as "Flamebait"... you need to read the moderation guidelines. He wasn't flaming as far as I can tell... just disagreeing. Oh, wait.. there's no way to send notice to these moderators...
windoze didn't have virtual desktops
>>>>>>>>>>
So, according to your logic, an OS doesn't have something unless its built into the OS? And you're the same people who complain that MS is a monopoly for integrating everything? You do realize that the whole range of OSS programs are one big "third party" system, don't you?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
The panel can be set to always be on top of other windows. So what's the problem again?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Well, you click the Setup button, then under the Pallette tab (you know, the first one to show up) just click the load button to browse to the theme you wanted... It's right there in front of you... I don't see how anyone can miss that.
You can click on the desktop or on the bar of any window and choose 'switch-to'.
What's more, XFce does the exact same thing KDE does, the difference being that it takes 10x more applications in KDE to do the same things.
The thing that bothers me the most about your complaints is that people might actually believe you. It takes less than five minutes to read through the entire XFce manual, which tells you EVERYTHING you could want to know. The manual isn't hard to find either... You just click on the big blue 'i' on the panel.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I searched on Google for XFCE and found nothing but relevant links, and that's after looking through the first 10 pages of hits. The first ~5 links take you to XFCE.org which is the home page, the rest take you to distro pakages of XFce, interviews with the main developer, and reviews.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
You hit the nail on the head with this one. What is a license? It is not ownership. It is merely a contract granting usage of a particular copyrighted work(the program) to a person.
[IANAL](first year law student)
When a company uses a GPL'd program, they do not actually distribute the program internally. The usage of the program by the companies employees does not constitute the distribution of the program. The employee has no rights not explicitly granted by the company. Even if employees of the company develop the program, the company itself is still the copyright holder. An employee's distribution of a GPL'd company-owned program would constitute theft from the company.
This, of course only applies to company employees. If, perhaps the program was leant to someone not a part of the company, this would constitute 'Distribution'. A person outside of the company would be a seperate legal entity.
[/IANAL]
Of course, with all things, this is nothing more than my own personal interpretation of copyright law. If any real lawyers would tell me how far off I am, that'd be fantastic!
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
the microsoft in front of things is to tell you who published it.
now i'm off to play sierra.monolith.win.aliensversuspredator 2.0
update comments set karma=-1, reason='offtopic' where sid=26315
What are you so up tight about. First of all, it's a good chance that this guy is being sarcastic. Secondly there is nothing in his post that could be considered "Scream[ing] foul." He simply states that he would prefer certain windows apps over KDE apps even though he would prefer the KDE desktop.
How on earth you go moded to a 4, Insightful is beyond me. It just shows how much Linux bigotry goes on in Slashdot.
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Does anyone remember