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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.
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).
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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).
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
pstools
strings
grep
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).
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.
Whatever, don't be a mindless sheep.
The guys has his opinion, if it doesn't match yours don't scream foul.