KDE Ported to Mac OS X

benh57 writes "KDE has finally been ported to Mac OS X, by the Fink team. Source packages and pre-built binaries are now available. Read the announcement and instructions for installing. Woohoo!"

Comments

Fun--Not Practical, but Fun!

[Spencerian]

I've really enjoyed how the Linux/UNIX community has poured their time into making things work in Mac OS X. While OS X users have a really good interface already (and aren't likely to switch for good), adding KDE makes working around in X (as in XFree86, that is) that much easier. Further, it adds an additional arsenal of desktop tools that an OS user can take advantage of in the occasional event that an OS X native app doesn't do what you would expect.

I'll wait for KDE/OSX to get rid of a couple of more bugs, and then I'll try my XDarwin out on the fruit-juicy goodness of KDE.

Hopefully, this'll get the GNOME guys a little jealous and they'll wrap up their port.

Re:nice, but ...

[Ranger Rick]

The nice thing about rootless X is, you can run those spiffy KDE apps without tarnishing the rest of your Aqua desktop... =)

You don't *have* to run the whole KDE desktop to use this stuff, you can just use the apps you're interested in.

Re:nice, but ...

[nathanh]

But, Aqua is a really nice window manager already. I use OS X and Aqua at home, and Linux/KDE at work, and IMHO Aqua is by far superior to KDE.

KDE is more than just a window manager. This port simply means that Mac OS X users could run Konqueror or Konsole on their Aqua desktop. It doesn't mean Aqua has to be turned off or that you have to use the KDE window manager.

PS: Mac OS X is damn sexy. It's UNIX... but it's Macintosh... but it's UNIX!

How to work efficiently with MacOS X?

[rbrito]

I have some moderation points that I was going to dedicate to this discussion, but I think that it would be better if I posted instead of moderated.

Let me ask this honestly: how can someone work in an organized fashion with the MacOS X style of managing windows?

I am an experienced Unix system administrator, but a complete newbie with Macs (in fact, I just bought my first macintosh 4 months ago, an iBook 600MHz, combo, 12") and feel completely lost trying to work with MacOS X.

I don't care for eyecandy and animated icons as much as I care for a functional environment, but the fact managing windows with MacOS X is much messier than with standard Unix window managers, where you can separate your desktops for different tasks. In my case, I usually have my first virtual desktop for an xterm and e-mail, my second for browsing the web and my third and fourth for other tasks various tasks.

On the other hand, when I am typing some important text in LaTeX, I usually reserve the first desktop for some command line hacking (say, with perl), the second virtual desktop for Emacs and the third for seeing the output of my text with xdvi (I usually use Windowmaker as my window manager, both under Solaris and under Linux).

I feel that this separation of tasks keeps me organized and makes me quite productive since I can quickly move between different aspects of my work, but how can I keep everything organized with MacOS X with just one desktop and with applications with more than one window (say, Appleworks)?

I also appreciate that I can do all that under Windowmaker with intelligently set key-bindings and having to use the mouse quite few.

So, this is an honest question: how are you guys productive with MacOS X? Is there any way to keep various applications organized?

I already tried Space for MacOS X and, honestly, its capabilities are nowhere near, say, windowmaker in terms of functionality.

So, when people say that MacOS X's user interface is so good, I can only think that they work in a different fashion than I do or that they are exploring features that I don't know about.

Also, today I tried installing Fink and was amazed at first, but after only two or three hours of using it, the fact that XDarwin is much slower than XFree86 under Linux (on the same notebook) makes me also suspect that I may not be using the programs correctly. I can't believe how slow it is. I would not even dare to run KDE on MacOS X (the topic of this story).

So, when people say that MacOS X's user interface is so good, I can only think that they work in a different fashion than I do or that they are exploring features that I don't know about.

Any comments are desperately appreciated.

Re:How to work efficiently with MacOS X?

[Corvus9]

I am an experienced Unix system administrator, but ... feel completely lost trying to work with MacOS X.

This doesn't surprise me. I have been supporting Mac users in education for a few years now, and can tell you that not only are most existing Mac users not experienced Unix system administrators, but that they would feel completely lost trying to work with most *nix desktop managers.

I care for a functional environment ... where you can separate your desktops for different tasks. In my case, I usually have my first virtual desktop for an xterm and e-mail, my second for browsing the web and my third and fourth for other tasks various tasks.

This notion is completely foreign to most Mac users, who think of a "task" as something they, not the computer, does. A task would be editing a movie, sending a friend some music, or writing a message. They might use 3 or 4 different sets of overlapping applications to do each of these tasks, but to them, using iMovie to import some video, PEAK to add audio, and QuickTime Pro to encode it is one "task", regardless of the fact the menu bar changes 3 times while they do it.

The notion of having a separate "desktop" for each stage of a single task would be as absurd to them as someone telling you to use different window managers depending on whether you want to type vowels, consonants, or digits on the keyboard.

I usually reserve the first desktop for some command line hacking ..., the second virtual desktop for Emacs and the third for ...

I can tell you from long, painful experience, this will never work for most Mac users. For them, if they can't see it on the screen it doesn't exist. I've had to explain (over and over ...) to users that windows behind other windows aren't really gone, the data is still there, it's just hidden by a more frontmost window. Understanding the dock is a conceptual leap, trying to explain the concept of multiple desktops is practically impossible; to most Mac users the desktop is the one fundamental bedrock of their computer.

IMHO, even if you did explain it, most Mac users wouldn't like it. I'm sending my son this web page; here's the web page window and here's the email window. They're both sitting right there on the screen, why on Earth would you want to go through all that rigamarole to hide the windows you're working on? Or to hide the entire *desktop*, yet? Why try to hide what you're working on? That makes no sense.

I feel that this separation of tasks keeps me organized ... since I can quickly move between different aspects of my work, but how can I keep everything organized with MacOS X with just one desktop and with applications with more than one window (say, Appleworks)?

Mac users would ask the same thing about *nix window managers. Since each document is a task, how can you keep it organized when it keeps opening in different windows that look completely different, or even in a different "desktop" where you can't even see it, for God's sake.

Users don't think applications have more than one window; my printout, my email, my expense form, and my customer list are all applications, right? And they're each one window. Oh sure, the menu bar reads "AppleWorks" when I'm working on my expense form and customer list, and "Entourage" when I'm working on my email, but that's one of those weird computer eccentricities. You're saying I can only look at my expense form and customer list together at one time? That as soon as I open one the other also opens automatically? That makes no sense, they have nothing to do with each other. What if I wanted to email my expense form. I have to use two different windows? Two different *desktops*, where I can't even see what I'm working on? You're nuts!

So, this is an honest question: how are you guys productive with MacOS X? Is there any way to keep various applications organized?

They are organized. Forget about "applications", think about the job you're trying to do. If you're a manufacturer do you have a special workshop just for scewdrivers, another one for chisels, and third for drills, and so on, so every time you build something you have to carry all your work from one workshop to another? On the Mac, you have a document for each thing you're working on, and you open it with whatever tool you want. All the tools and all the documents are right there on the screen, it doesn't hide anything on you. If it did, Mac users would go nuts; there are a lot of long-time Mac users who hate OS X because of this.

So, when people say that MacOS X's user interface is so good, I can only think that they work in a different fashion than I do or that they are exploring features that I don't know about.

From the very first Mac from 1984, the OS has tried to be document-centric. The original PICT document format could be opened in graphics, database, and word-processing applications. Apple spent enormous effort to create a document-only API called OpenDoc a while ago. Now I admit they don't always succeed, and OpenDoc was a failure, but this has been the guiding principle behind the Mac from day 1.

Think visual documents; anything you can see is a document you can work on. If you can't see it on the screen it doesn't exist, or at least you don't have to worry about it. Forget about "files" and "programs" and you'll get into the mindset of Mac users.

Missing the point

[ZigMonty]

KDE has been ported to *Darwin*. The fact that that means it can also run on Mac OS X is less important. Darwin, the bare Unix part, now has a decent window manager/desktop environment. Now (or soon anyway) people could use Darwin as an alternative to Linux. It may not be everyone's cup of tea but we now have a free Unix for the Mac that is binary compatible with Mac OS X. This will make it a lot easier for the community to work on Darwin as its own OS, with obvious benefits to Mac OS X.

Go Krusader!

[cornice]

Yea! I can finally run a file manager on a Mac that is easy to use and not just easy to understand. 2 panes make it easy to copy and move files with a couple clicks or keystrokes. I hate the search, click, copy, search, click, paste method of file management. cp with command completion is faster than that.

Check out:

http://krusader.sourceforge.net/