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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.
It's a great way to work OSS apps/environments into the users familiar zone. The more comfortable they get the less likely they are to notice when the underlying windows part is gone altogether. If you can run everything on a linux box you can on a windows box without the ms tax, why wouldn't you (other than users being unfamiliar with it)?
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.
I'm guessing a native port of KDE was impossible because Qt for Windows is not released under the GPL. Now, however, Trolltech will be releasing it under the GPL. Does this mean all the work of porting it was needless? Furthermore, does this mean we'll see an influx of Qt apps being ported to Windows now that they're free to use Qt on that platform?
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.
Yeah cause so many KDE users are saying if only my windows box ran KDE I would drop this crappy Linux Kernel
just because your a schizophrenic doesn't mean people arn't really out to get you
oh great.
/. a few days ago. Apple's already proven it to be successful/easy to the point that most developers choose to rewrite their frontends using cocoa instead of using a ported windowing toolkit.
another library to suck up more RAM/CPU cycles on my windows box.
Lets see what I've got running
Standard win32 controls / libraries
GTK+ controls for GAIM/GIMP
Whatever the heck iTunes uses
Java windowing stuff...
Firefox's XUL and XPCOM.....
and now QT -- all to provide the exact same functions.
nice! Has it ever occured to anybody here that this is a little excessive? Personally, I'd lean twoard an OpenSTEP like implementation as shown in the demo posted to
I don't want an inconsistent user experience. I want my dialogs / menus / print box / file manager to be the EXACT SAME IN EVERY APPLICATION I RUN. I don't care if Linux or MacOS look a bit different than windows. All I care is that Windows looks like Windows, Linux looks the same all around, and Mac Looks like Mac. It's really not a hard concept.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
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.
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.
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All true. Trolltech are using the GPL for exactly what it is ment to be used for: to encourage the development of Free Software. They are making it economically better to release your code under the GPL, and God bless em for it. BTW - you do have the choice to use another cross platform toolkit, so don't go bitching that you have to pay for Qt if you want to write proprietary software. At least they offer to sell you a proprietary license, if you want to incorporate GNU readline into your proprietary application you won't have the same kind of luck.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Have we forgotten what the LAST component was that made open source Unix (GNU/Linux) possible?
It was the KERNEL!
Getting people to run GNU apps on "real" Unix came first. Perhaps we can get people to run good apps and a good desktop on Windoze, then bring them over to Linux.
And even if we don't we open up a whole new area for the superior, Open Source apps!
HexaByte - he's a square and a half!
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.
When Qt originally was QPL'ed and people were complaining, Troll Tech did nothing. Then, a bunch of people got together and started the Harmony project, an truly open source clone of Qt. After that was underway and looked like it was going to become a serious project, Troll Tech gave in and changed their license (and their relationship with the Harmony developers was apparently less than amicable).
Now, people undertake the effort to port Qt to Windows under the GPL, and after they have invested a lot of effort, Troll Tech gives in and changes their license. Apparently, if one wants Troll Tech to do anything, one has to exert this kind of pressure.
While I really don't care about Qt on the desktop (the problem is taking care of itself), something will have to be done about their embedded toolkit, which is currently holding Linux PDAs hostage.
Let's say you sit a Windows user down in front of a nice KDE desktop and ask them to try to chat with their friend on Yahoo Messenger or burn a CD or crop a digital photo. They would know how to use the "Start menu", so that's familiar, but then they are faced with 50 or so applications in there that they don't recognize the names of and don't know what any of them do. Their familiar programs like Y!Messenger, Nero, and Photoshop aren't there, and they don't know what these things like XMMS, Xine, Gaim, K3B, Konqueror, Gimp, etc. do. They just haven't heard of any of these things, so it is difficult to get going.
Just to get a feel for where I am coming from, I still have Windows at home because my wife uses it. We do know how to keep it relatively safe with Zone Alarm and Firefox, so it runs well and is not a problem. I have a secondary computer that I am using to familiarize myself with Linux so that I can move to that at some point, but my main problem is time. I only have 1 or 2 nights a week at home to do anything at the computer, so that is going to be a long learning curve to find out how to do the stuff I want with this new set of apps. Sure, browsing and email is easy, but I do more complicated stuff than that, so it's a little more challenging. I would appreciate this QT setup so that I could learn one new app at a time, while being able to get stuff done. When I have transitioned to using most or all of the new apps, and am not using stuff that needs to be on Windows, I won't have a problem switching to Linux.
We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds