KDE Running on Mac OS X

GeoffP writes "AppleTalk Australia is running a story on running KDE on Mac OS X. For those that don't know, KDE is a graphical desktop environment used to access your computer's files. Finally, Mac users have a free (as in speech) approach to their filesystem."

Comments

Good article

[huwr]

A neat article.

However, I can't think really why you'd want to be running KDE on Mac OS X when you already have such a neat (IMHO) interface. I suppose it's good for a laugh, too.

Re:Good article

[DenDave]

Well there are some aspects of KDE which are not possible under OSX without significant tweaks or non-free software. For example, the browser, Konqueror will go everywhere, even below the "unseen line" of OSX and yes, you can tweak finder to go there to but not without non-free software and even then, you'r stuck with finder's interface.

You can have a variety of io-slaves under KDE allowing great integration with a variety of network services, yes we can do alot of that with OSX but again, interface and third party add-ons... (webdav over ssl???)

Furthermore, KDE is a development environment in itself and many developers will be happy to see that they can work two in one!

I am impressed that it works, I have tried many times to get Fink and the gang working with Tiger and I have borked on each and every occasion. So reading the australian exploits with expectation!!

Re:Good article

[Guy Harris]

I haven't bought the replacement iBook (yet?) mainly because now I can't live without KDE's network protocol integration (sftp , webdav, smb, ftp, ... everything is supported!). I can transparently access folders with the (file browser, editor, image viewer, etc. etc. ) in multiple servers, seamlessly. OS/X is seriously lacking in this area.

Yeah, it really sucks that OS X lets you transparently access folders over FTP with ls. It'd be much better if it did it with ioslaves, so only KDE applications could transparently access them.

(Yes, I know that ftpfs is read-only. Implementing it as an NFS server, so that the FTP back-end has no way of knowing when an application is finished writing to the file, makes it difficult to support read/write access. And, yes, I really have accessed an FTP server with ls, egrep, etc., and yes, it was convenient.)

And the same goes for WebDAV and SMB (although WebDAV uses a gateway VFS rather than using NFS, so it does know when a file is closed and can upload its contents if it was written to, and smbfs is implemented as a kernel-level VFS and supports reading and writing). Unfortunately, there's no sftpfs, but, if there were, that'd be a lot more UN*Xy than doing it with an ioslave.

BTW, your Linux box probably has an smbfs, too, so you can access SMB servers from the command line as well as from KDE apps. (Or does KDE do the right thing on systems with smbfs/cifsfs, and just mount the damn server and let the underlying UN*X do the work?) Somebody might have implemented ftpfs, etc. with userfs, so you might have them as well.

Better yet would be OS X itself natively supporting the most widely used network protocols. Tiger was a big dissapointment in this respect...

Which ones are missing? (Other than read/write FTP, and sftp, which are already known to be missing.)

Re:Good article

[Octorian]

One thing I'd like to see is a HOWTO on running X11 as the native GUI system on MacOSX in place of Aqua/WindowServer/etc. Of course one could always run raw Darwin on the machine, getting most of MacOSX device support advantages, but that would be an unreasonable pain for people who want the two environment to co-exist once in a while, and/or not do a complete reinstall.

Re:news ?

[SpectreBinary]

I guess I should write up my tutorial on how to run fluxbox on OS X, and my follow up, setting environment variables to allow Terminal.app to interact with the X server.

Do it. Don't put down documentation on any process that others might not have done - there are many MANY people who might not have the experience to come up with the solution on their own, but who may benefit from it.

The attitude that writing documentation on the simple stuff is pointless is the reason so many man pages, web pages, FAQs and howtos on open source software sucks dog nuts.

Not everyone is geek enough to know how to do some of the cool things - that knowledge comes about for those of us who are geeky enough to enjoy learning the ins and outs of everything for its own sake. Other people, the majority, need to see how something can work when set up well before they'll accept it.

Free (as in speech) doesn't mean better...

[node 3]

Finally, Mac users have a free (as in speech) approach to their filesystem.

1. KDE has been running on OS X for many years now.
2. cp, ls, mv, etc are open source, and have been available on OS X since the beginning.
3. KDE is nice, but I didn't buy a Mac so I could run KDE, I bought it so I could run OS X.

Which isn't to say it's not good to be able to run KDE if you want, just that I've never heard someone lament, "oh, that only there were some form of free (as in speech) approach to the filesystem on my Mac".

Re:Goody?

[KiloByte]

Hey, many many years ago I've ran Quake on ancient IRIX workstations. Oh wait... it was over X with the actual binaries running on a Linux x86 box. Oh, and I'm running KDE on Windows right now (Cygwin X server, of course, on a machine at work)! Hey, come, lookie, KDE for Windows!

How exactly running an X program over X can be considered a port? It just works as it should, but there is nothing special to it.