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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."
why? if sun can't handle their own servers getting /.ed then i think they need to retool their product toward the people they are trying to sell toward.
Why Debate? Do we really want KDE or GNOME turn into the Next MS Desktop equiv?... Choice is a Good thing! I would love to see a third or fourth in the mix as well... Each Targeting a Specific target group of users so we have a Choice... One a the Evils (Sability and Security Aside) of the MS desktop is the elimination of Choice..
Who needs WiFi when we can have Packet Over Sheep! http://datacomm.org/PoS-InternetDraft.txt
I'm still waiting for MS to come out with their own window manager followed by some Office stuff. You want to run Office for Linux? Gotta have MS Window Manger for Linux, only $249!!!
Qt is published under the GPL license. I'd call that pretty much free - even more free than LGPL which is a "Less" GPL license.
For companies (no matter if they are small or big) paying $1500 as a per seat developer license is very cheap if you take into account that you get a toolkit which is
- much more modern than gtk,
- much better supported,
- much better documented,
- and which allows for much faster development (due to the usage of C++, RAD tools like Qt Designer, etc.).
That's why these costs usually amortize within less than a month.
Guess why so many companies (Adobe, Daimler, Daimler Chrysler, Disney, HP, IBM, Motorola, Toshiba, Samsung, Sony, e.g.) favour Qt for software development.
The license for QT is only free if you make free stuff.
>>>>>>>>>>
The Qt license is the GPL, which is "truly free." The GPL has restrictions, but they are to preserve freedom. I live in the United States, in a free society. Yet, I am restricted from stealing from my neighbor. Am I less free or more free than in a society that allows me to steal?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
The simple, flame-war-free answer is that Sun could not bear the support burden of a C++ GUI toolkit and desktop system for a platform that had two major C++ compilers (Sun's and gcc). Now that the C++ ABI is more entrenched that might not be as much of an issue, but at the time it was a key factor.
Personally, I would have gone with Gnome for other reasons. The architecture is much more open in a component sense (e.g. smaller, replacable parts). Sun has also shown that human factors were huge concern to them, and KDE suffered from having been ahead of Gnome. Sun literally got to write the book on human factors for Gnome, and that ended a LOT of debate before it got started.
I like the way Gnome has shaped up. It started with a lot of catch-up to do with respect to KDE, which was already functional when Gnome was first started. But over the years I have seen that gap narrow tremendously, and I like the Gnome code a great deal more.
Still, both are worthy of praise and use... may we have two of the three best desktops in the world for a good long time to come!
It's really a shame that Sun took so long to join the party. They do this stuff better than IBM does. For all the success they've achieved, IBM's integration of various open source tools on AIX is... well... as ugly as the rest of AIX. Sun got it right and very few people seem to know about it. When you install the Software Companion CD in its entirety, a Solaris 8 or 9 box looks and quacks like a familiar Linux machine. The whole GNU toolchain is there, GNOME and KDE are both loaded, and everything acts just the way you expect it to.
IBM could learn a few things here.
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as of solaris 9 8/03, gnome is installed by default.