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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.
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?" `":" #");}
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?
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
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.
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 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
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...
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Yeah, they did. The free copy was technically only an evaluation copy for a long time. However, they had to make it totally free in order to compete with IE. There were lots of other channels which Netscape tried to use to make money, including partnerships with solution providers like Sun (Java in the browser - ugh), content providers (remember Netcaster? that thing was fucked up), licensees of the client software etc. They were fucked in almost every area by Microsoft, either because IE was free or because MS used its market power to stop people from entering any business relationship with Netscape. Netscape was also partially at fault because some things they did were really stupid.
If we assume that IE had not existed (Microsoft realizing in 2001 that the Internet may be relevant, or something), Netscape would certainly be a highly profitable company by now, and a very decent web-browser.
Note he was talking about IE, which has a distinct lack of any MDI mode. But on the subject, I like being able to middle click and have a document load in a background tab. I can't display two pages at the same time in MDI, have to do SDI then, but that is a much rarer case. If Opera can do pop-under MDI, and have a "maximize by default" so it resembles a tab interface, I'd be much more interested. Having the option of windowed MDI is nice, but the tab paradigm has advantages..
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Netscape was very much at fault for its failure in the browser market and in general. They thought they'd take over the world, developed and bought a a million different applications to do so -- and every single Netscape application I ever saw sucked. The browser and the company deserved to die. If Microsoft had never produced a browser and Netscape somehow held on to its dominant market share (I don't think it would have, someone else would've come along), we'd all really hate Netscape and its crappy products now. Not that any of this excuses Microsoft in any way, shape, or form ... but I don't care about excusing any proprietary software company any moreso than any other. The important thing is that we now have at least two viable free software engines (Gecko and khtml) and several browsers and platforms supported amongst them. That's real choice. Netscape vs. Microsoft wasn't ever real choice, even if they had evenly split the market 50/50.
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
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!
I beleive both are possible in Opera.
Just maximize any sub window, and when you open up a new window, it will "maximize by default" you basically have tabs.
Also, button3, or shift button-1 opens up a new sub window.
Note that this is in windows Opera. I can't imagine it'd be too different in Linux.
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))"
I took an online course that "required" Netscape to run. The sad thing? IE 5.5 rendered the pages more correct than Netscape itself did!
IE renders what the code tells it to, whether it is W3C correct, or if it's not. Netscape assumes everyone writes perfect code to begin with, so a lot of pages won't display properly with it.
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 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
It's kind of nifty indeed, but it's really quite goofy in comparison to the bash version, in that it often chooses where it should hold off (ambiguity). It also suffers from not being select out of the PWD.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Does this company have a policy against using anything other than windows?
At my former job (a bank), company policy was indeed that windows was mandatory. So those jobs do exists. Funny that anybody would doubt this, I always lived under the impression that most jobs required windows, and that places where you are allowed to run Linux on the desktop (such as my current job) were still the exception.
If they do, I doubt that the poster will be permitted to run KDE even if it is win32.
Good point. Indeed, during the first couple of month, while working on a java project, it was impossible to get permission to install Cygwin. However, after that I got involved in a project with Tcl, and as there is (fortunately) no Visual Tcl, I got permission to install Cygwin, Emacs, the works. Certainly, being good friends with the guy in charge of security helped too, but this experience shows that places which mandate Windows, while still allowing Cygwin do indeed exist.
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.
Nope. In general such policies exist to make IT support more productive. If they only have to know one operating system, it's easyer for them. Although this may seem backwards (IT are there to support the users, not the other way round), this is unfortunately what happens in many places.
Say no to software patents.
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....
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.
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 $1200 "take it or leave it" ultimatum.
PS - Who ever moderated this guy as "Flamebait"... you need to read the moderation guidelines. He wasn't flaming as far as I can tell... just disagreeing. Oh, wait.. there's no way to send notice to these moderators...
windoze didn't have virtual desktops
>>>>>>>>>>
So, according to your logic, an OS doesn't have something unless its built into the OS? And you're the same people who complain that MS is a monopoly for integrating everything? You do realize that the whole range of OSS programs are one big "third party" system, don't you?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
However, after that I got involved in a project with Tcl, and as there is (fortunately) no Visual Tcl, ...
Well, Visual Tcl does exist, check here. However, it is an open source project, not another M$ Visual Studio addin.
The panel can be set to always be on top of other windows. So what's the problem again?
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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