First KDE 4 App ('Kind of') Running

An anonymous reader writes "It looks like the first KDE 4 application is running. Click the link for screenshots." In short, "Kate now kind of works."

Comments

KDE4?

[Cthefuture]

Is there a list of what is planned for KDE 4? Like what will be new and updated, new functionality, etc. ?

Trolltech just pisses me off so much. I mean Qt is OK but damn if the price doesn't keep going up, and up, and up... It's already insanely expensive and it just keeps going higher. Who the hell are they trying to target with that thing anyway?! If they sold it for $1000 I can guarantee they would sell 3 or 4 times the number of licenses. They would lose nothing moneywise but gain massive market dominance (snowball effect). Then regular folk like myself could purchase and use Qt to do great things because it really is the best cross-platform toolkit out there (free or not).

Re:KDE4?

[twener]

Some stuff is listed in the Wiki: http://wiki.kde.org/KDE+4+Goals

Re:KDE4?

[Cthefuture]

I am a small business owner. The price for 50 developers is a quarter million dollars.

Look at it this way, the cross-platform market is small. There just isn't much money to be made there so the cross-platform toolkits should be cheap. Most of the time I would like to support other platforms but the cost can't be justified due to Qt's huge price and the relatively small cross-platform market. The only people it hurts are the users.

If it weren't for the one or two cash-cows Trolltech has they would already be out of business. They're like a government contractor sucking the teet of wasteful spending (I wonder if one of their cash cows is some government).

The reason I want Qt to be cheap is specifically so it does become massively widespread. This will make platform dependance a thing of the past. This helps us all.

Re:KDE4?

[Brandybuck]

First of all, 50 software developers kicks you out of the realm of "small business owner". But regardless whether you are small or medium, the price of Qt is per developer. So treat it as a per developer cost. This isn't a monthly, or even yearly cost, it's a one time cost.

If you think $2500 is too expensive for tools of the trade, then talk to an automechanic, or someone in the building trades. I knew a tile setter who had his van stolen, and it cost him a heck of a lot more than $2500 to replace his tools of the trade. And that's not counting the van!

Re:KDE4?

[Cthefuture]

It's not chump change. If you think it is then you'll never be a successful business owner.

That money would pay for MSDN subscriptions for those same developers for 5 years.

Re:KDE4?

[bluGill]

No, but my mechanic friends do have several thousand in snap-on brand tools. Someone who wants to be a mechanic come to work the first day and has the snap-on man bring several thousand worth of tools the first day. (Snap-on gives easy credit to new mechanics, and they have the about the best tools, though you pay twice as much for them)

QT is a tool kit, not one tool. Buy the QT toolkit and you get hundreds of widgets, strings, and other tools. All well written (many people like them better than the C++ STL), debugged (as much as anything is debugged), and supported (Unlike this support knows something, unlike most of the others you named).

Re:KDE4?

[bluGill]

Sure it is. IF it saves just one week worth of work it is well worth it. Where I work we have our own custom tool kit, that contains much less than QT. Way back when (early 90's - before STL did things better, but in a different way) we paid someone to spend months making the tool kit. Just this year I personally spent several weeks tracking down bugs in it (And I know of some I was unable to fix). I also have to re-do things that QT includes already.

A successful business owner needs to consider the cost of not buying QT, not just the cost of buying QT. It is likely that those who don't buy QT will spend several weeks doing things that QT makes easy. No matter what toolkit you choose there with be something that is harder than it should be. QT isn't perfect for everyone, and there are good reasons to choose something else. However choosing based only on cost is one of the things engineers hate about management.

Re:KDE4?

[natmsincome.com]

Ask and you shall receive.

wxWidgets has binding for numerous languages and is under a license like the LGPL (see the home page). Anyway if you want to support multiple platforms try it out. There lots of applications use it already.

It doesn't quite have the scope of QT which from my understanding includes ALOT of extra functionality that isn't just GUI based.

Your logic doesn't make sense though. If the market is small they the product should/will be expensive (cost to develop ~ $1000 with 5 customers you'd need to charge $2200 to make a 10% ROI with 500 customers you can charge $22 and still make the same ROI - excluding support).

That was the DOS/Shrinkwrap revolution. Other companies at the time tried to sell the OS for $10,000 + because that's how long it took them to make it.

Even if wxWidgets didn't exists there would still be Java, TCL, Motiff etc. The fact is QT is very nice and worth the cost if your in that area.

Re:KDE4?

[Gregg Alan]

The reason I want Qt to be cheap is specifically so it does become massively widespread. This will make platform dependance a thing of the past. This helps us all.

No, you want QT to be cheap so you can make more profit through Trolltech making less profit. If, as another poster has mentioned below, it's so easy to offer a cross platform toolkit on par with QT at such a great price and still remain a viable company, why don't you do it? Why doesn't someone else do it? (Remember, Microsoft is not cross platform).

Do you really believe that Microsoft wouldn't charge more for a cross platform toolkit? Honestly?

Trolltech has already helped us all. KDE uses QT for free and has produced an excellent environment. Developers that have a grasp on their cash flow buy commercial QT licenses and make money selling their programs. Then there are people like you that can bitch about having to pay Trolltech money by trolling on Slashdot. See? Everybody wins!

Re:KDE4?

[be-fan]

Qt passes the "free" test because it's GPL. It's as free as the Linux kernel, or GCC or Emacs.

Re:KDE4?

[Brandybuck]

With Qt, I don't even NEED a MSDN subscription! Nyah! Besides, the price of Qt is a one-time payment, so it lasts me five years anyway.

More Screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

more screenshots of kcontrol and kate running on kde 4.

Optimizations

[molnarcs]

One interesting comparison is memory usage of new kate compared to present one. KDE developers do an amazing job when it comes to code optimizations - and it seems they will do it again for KDE 4.

I began using Linux with RH 7.3 & KDE 3.0 on an old 700Mhz Duron with 256Mb SDRAM. I kept running linux - and later FreeBSD - and KDE on this machine for two years, and every major KDE release seemed like a minor hardware upgrade. That is one of the reasons I kept that old machine for that long - and longer, previously it had win98se installed. First, I thought I will either replace it completely or buy more RAM, better CPU in half a year. Then as I went through each KDE realese - and probably better C++ support in gcc also helped - I felt less and less the need to upgrade the hw. I wonder how long they can keep up producing more efficient code that runs better and better on old hardware. Currently KDE 3.4 has only one 'serious' requirement: memory. If you have 256+, itt will run nicely on a 300Mhz celeron, but of course, you'll have to turn off some eyecandies to reach an agreeable performance.

Keep up the good work guys and gals!

Re:Optimizations

[Anonymous Coward]

One interesting comparison is memory usage of new kate compared to present one. KDE developers do an amazing job when it comes to code optimizations - and it seems they will do it again for KDE 4.

This may just be down to the new GCC and Qt. KDE developers do do an amazing job, with KDE getting quicker every release since 3.1 for me, but in this case, they are sitting on top of some pretty major optimisations themselves.

Re:Plastic

[Brandybuck]

KDE has several widget styles, so nothing it tying you down to Plastik. Try Phase, for example (I wrote it). Or Highcolor or Light Style. Or heck, use the Windows theme if that's what you truly prefer.