Slashdot Mirror
QT/Win 3.3.3 To 'Reach Production State Soon'
sebFlyte writes "The KDE Cygwin team are reportedly closing in on a native port for QT to allow said graphical framework to run over Windows. This has upset a few people, who think that porting open source apps to Windows is strengthening MS's near monopoly and damaging Linux." (Of course, KDE also runs on OSes besides Linux.)
As for QT running in Windows, I think this would be great. I'd love to use Amarok and k3b when I'm in Windows.
Surely they mean a native port of KDE to Qt/Win32. Qt already runs on Windows, Mac and Linux, that's the point of it.
How we know is more important than what we know.
It would be great to have another solid windows manager on windows. but one problem I had when I ran blckbox on windows, is that i couldn't be sure that a defect in one of my applications was because of my bad coding or because blackbox was running where a windows application would expect explorer. Unfortunately alot of us have to use windows at work, because many people aren't savvy enough to support their own desktop.... and i suspect the same is true in other companies with linux or mac boxes.... But I believe that having good strong alternatives to microsoft applications does take away from their monopoly... imagine if you were using KDE, openoffice, firefox, abiword, gimp, gnumeric all on a windows box? there isn't much windows left. And that takes away from their monopoly and it makes migration to Linux/BSD/Darwin very easy.
i tend to think this is a *GOOD* thing for linux.
having an open-source QT and KDE on Windows encourages QT's use, making it easier by far to port these applications across multiple platforms. likewise with TK and GTK+ and xWidgets. since these toolkits work on linux, having a Windows port and encouraging their use ultimately brings more applications to linux by expanding portability.
this is why i like the Cygwin project: it brings a full POSIX layer to Windows that makes it easier to port applications back and forth. another benefit is that a Cygwin application with a working linux port gives end users one more avenue to make transitioning to another platform easier.
the ultimate benefit won't be immediate by any means, but portability sure brings it close....
grey wolf
LET FORTRAN DIE!
The article says that they are getting ready to release an updated version of Qt for Windows for GPLed software to use. So far this is much like article posted a few days ago.
But the article here talks about this being important so that people can run KDE (the desktop environment) on Windows without having to rurn Cygwin. Now while I understand not wanting to use Cygwin (it works, but it feels like a hack because in a way it is). That said, here is my main question:
Why would you want to run KDE on Windows. I understand the "because you can" theory (which is cool), but does anyone actually want to do this full time? Why? Why not run Linux or BSD? I understand wanting to be able to run GPLed software that uses QT (JuK as one example, or other such software, maybe even Konq), but why KDE?
Can someone explain?
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
By saying, "Personally, I'd lean toward...", you've demonstrated exactly why there are so many implementations of the same concept.
It's OK! I'm a limo driver!
This has upset a few people, who think that porting open source apps to Windows is strengthening MS's near monopoly and damaging Linux.
There are two sides to this argument and if you state them both, I think it's very clear which one is stronger. They are:
Now, what are the odds that any one unfamiliar app, or even a large set of unfamiliar apps are going to be so good that they'll convince people to undergo a wrenching transition in which they have to learn an entirely new environment and application set? I won't say it's impossible, and I will say that a number of my relatives have lusted over KimDaBa when I showed it to them, but I have a hard time imagining anyone but a geek who is interested in learning new computer systems for the sheer joy of doing it will be willing to put themselves through a complete change of their daily computing environment. Hell, I'm a geek and I dual-booted for a long time, and still use some Windows apps under Wine and VMWare.
On the other hand, it's a fact that to most computer users the operating system is beyond irrelevant -- it's invisible. "What operating system are you using?". "Umm, I think it's Internet Outlook XP". What matters is the applications. And most users are willing to look at something new, from time to time, if it's not too difficult, and if it doesn't prevent them from falling back on what they know when they need to get some work done.
I think it's extremely clear that if your goal is to break the Microsoft monopoly, the first thing you have to do is provide, bit by bit, a comfortable set of cross-platform tools that run well on Windows. Even now many who might like to migrate away from Windows can't do it because they're locked in by Office, Outlook/Exchange, and IE. Let them slowly migrate to open source replacements and then one day they will suddenly realize that everything they do on Windows can be done the same way on Linux, or a Mac, or whatever, and then Windows will suddenly find itself having to compete on its own merits, not on the strength of its application set.
Trying to "lock" people into Linux by providing an application set that only runs on that platform is trying to beat Microsoft at their own game. Open source lives by different rules, and if it's to be successful it has to play by those rules, not co-opt Microsoft's.
I, for one, welcome the porting frenzy to come, and look forward to introducing my Windows-using friends to some of the great open source apps I love.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I think one of the things people are forgetting is what using a Unix was like 20 years ago. There weren't free compilers, free linkers, free editors, free application suites, free windowing systems.... Free software took over Unixes by replacing the components of the operating system piece by piece by piece. So that by the mid-late 90's a Solaris user was running
.NET or..., games for Windows only, .... they are much more like the Unix users of the mid 80's than those of the mid 90's.
/.
-- Free software for most apps they cared about
-- Free software to extend their OS enough to make it functional
-- Solaris apps where they weren't getting any additional value
-- at most 1 or 2 commercial applications for Solaris from vendors that had no particular loyalty to Sun and weren't at all unwilling to bring out Linux versions
This was why these users were even able to consider a transition to Linux. They could replace their current systems, with additional value (or at much reduced cost). Virtually everything they used was free.
Similarly on AIX and IRIX the fact that there weren't that many OS specific features that were vital was the reason that IBM and SGI jumped on the LInux bandwagon to offset OS costs while still making hardware sales. If AIX or SGI were still way ahead of Linux by the late 90's they never would have done it.
On the Windows platform we haven't come close to this. Windows users use: a Microsoft shell (explorer), a Microsoft office suite, other productivity apps written for Windows only, corporate in house software written in VB or
Apache/Firefox over IIS/Explorer is one of our first major victories in replacing part of the Windows lock-in. KDE offers a wealth of applications which might be able to attack Microsoft/Windows specific apps in hundreds of places at once that will probably result in dozens of victories.
We don't need a killer app yet. What we need is to make the transition even thinkable. People on
1) Don't tend to be experts in specific productivity apps
2) Don't have a great deal of investment in application specific data
Average users however do fulfill these two criteria. Lets win the app war, the middle ware war, the OS extensions war and then worry about the kernel.
Which "standard" Win32 controls would you be talking about?
The ones build into user32.dll? Those don't even include a listview.
The ones in CTL3DV2.DLL?
The ones in MFC?
The custom stuff that Microsoft comes up with for each new version of Office?
The Windows.Forms stuff that most .NET applications use?
The notion that there's a "standard Win32 set of controls" is a myth.