KDE 3.x Installation On Solaris Discussed

Jim Hall writes " A recent Sun-hosted article looks at installing and running KDE 3.x on Solaris Operating System (Solaris OS) -based workstations. Author Corey Liu tries to shy away from the debate over GNOME vs. KDE, and focuses on how KDE is installed on Sun workstations and the Solaris OS. Both GNOME and KDE are available at freeware Web sites for users of the Solaris OS. While Sun recently began to favor GNOME as the default desktop environment on the Solaris OS, some people still enjoy using KDE."

Comments

GNOME2 sucks ass

[Anonymous Coward]

GNOME2 sucks ass. KDE2/3 is so much better.

Re:Tries to shy away from the debate

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it's pretty easy to bash since Qt (the graphics library KDE depends on) is not free in the true open source definition of the word. They pretend it is, but it's not. If you want to use it for commercial apps you must pay a huge fee. Gnome on the other hand is 100% open source software and is therefore superior in every way.

Re:Tries to shy away from the debate

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnome is in C.

KDE is in C++.

KDE gets my vote for superiority, after all, all I write is free software, free in the true open source definition of the word.

"Recently began to favour GNOME"...

[Anonymous Coward]

NEW! Revised and updated!

$Revision: 1.33 $ $Date: 2003/12/28 23:45:12 $

The State Of KDE

We have seen a lot of important news regarding the KDE project over recent weeks, so it is worth pausing to consider the ramifications.

Let us start with the recent acquisition of SUSE by Novell. SUSE was the biggest Linux distributor (though still dwarfed by Red Hat) to use KDE as its default desktop. SUSE has, for many years, neglected to package the GNOME desktop properly or even do basic Q&A... much to the delight of KDE fanatics. Now, however, Novell has purchased the SUSE Linux distribution and Ximian, a company best known for the producing the most polished and professional desktop available for Linux (GNOME-based). The obvious conclusion to be drawn from these actions is that KDE is about to lose its main commercial support.

Let us take a look at some of the reasons why this is so:

• GNOME has always been the commercial desktop of choice. It has long been focussed on getting the basics right and building from there... as opposed to the KDE Project, which is entirely aimed at pleasing the slashdot peanut gallery with pointless eye-candy. KDE features are thrown into the mix with little or no regard for usability, or even good taste. The end result is disasterous, as can be seen by anyone unforunate enough to be forced into using it.
• KDE is extremely expensive to develop for, unless you intend to produce GPL software. TrollTech, the owners of KDE and Qt, license the X11 version of their Qt toolkit under the GPL. This forces anyone wanting to develop applications built on top of Qt and KDE to be either (L)GPL licensed, or pay for a TrollTech Qt commercial license; costing $3000* for every developer working on the application (per annum.) -- 10 developers: $30,000, and that is just to license the toolkit. No extra development tools and such... just the right to use it. You may find this difficult to believe, but developing for KDE is more expensive than developing for Microsoft Windows!
  
  * The $3000 figure is just for Linux. If you want to develop for the Mac, Linux and Windows the amount reaches a staggering $6000 per developer.
• TrollTech is also vulnerable to takeover by companies hostile to Free software and good corporate lawyers who can blow holes in the laughable FreeQt agreements.
• Qt's/KDE lack of accessiblity. Accessiblity is vital feature for a modern desktop. A desktop cannot be sold to the U.S. government unless it supports the features necessary for disabled users to make full use of it. The lack of said feature effectively cuts it off from the biggest software purchaser of all. GNOME has spent the last 18 months and more doing the ground-work and developing/polishing the accessiblity of the GNOME desktop (thanks to the fine work of Sun engineers). KDE has spent the time making *fake* translucent menus to help make impressive screenshots. Over the next few months you can expect increasing numbers of near-orgasmic announcements of weak accessiblity support from the KDE project, as the full extent of their folly and just how far they are behind GNOME finally becomes obvious to them. The end result will be, as with all KDE features, half-assed and broken -- designed only to function as a marketing feature tick-box filler. Note: The KDE project has begun announcing FULL accessiblity support thanks to using GNOME/GTK code, however (and as usual) the KDE developers are being disingenuous. Accessiblity is more than just toolkit support, it requires work to ensure that all aspects of the desktop are accessible, including auditing applications and (especially) custom widgets, themes and fundementally changing the thought processes of developers. THIS IS THE TIME CONSUMING PART... merely copying GNOME code into KDE/Qt and then posting stories to the morons at slashdot announcing full support is not enough. As predicted, KDE is preannouncing half-finished accessiblity features in a desperate effort to keep up wit

Re:KDE on Solaris 9 x86

[Anonymous Coward]

I see that even on Solaris the KDE fuckwits still cannot get their dependencies correct. Apparently installing KDE requires that you install gdb, too. While I agree that this may be a good idea if you're going to run the dungheap of "applications" that comprises the average KDE installation, I'd hardly consider a debugger a critical dependency for a desktop enviroment.

Re:Mirror

[musikit]

ok.

1. i never said they were having issues. i said if they did have issues then they are retards.

2. i agree sun's main stream webserver should never crash to the power of /.

3. yes i am a sun basher. why? because after i found linux i quickly made the realization that i could do everything solaris can do cheaper. ohh lets not forget that i was a sun beta tester for a prior company and got to see the shit they put out. ohh and lets not forget that their tech support guys don't want to talk to you. i'm sure i'll think of other reasons why i hate sun but i digress

I'm not a kde lover but..

[edufortes]

People: BTW I'm not a KDE lover, but, if the people that use this Solaris, need to use KDE, they are not trained to use this kind of machine. And, if they need some window manager, will use something like FluxBox / BlackBox, or another that doesn't use icons an a Win9x like 'K' Menu

Dual License.. not GPL

[nurb432]

Need to check your facts, last time I looked QT was not GPL you cant do anything you want..

You can develop free software based on it with out buying a license.

You cant extend it, nor can you write commercial software with out licenses...

This might have changed since then of course..