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New Qt Based Desktop Environment
aglider writes "Phoronix has an interesting piece of news about a new emerging desktop environment. And it's Qt based! From the project home page: 'Razor-Qt is an advanced, easy-to-use, and fast desktop environment based on Qt technologies. It has been tailored for users who value simplicity, speed, and an intuitive interface. Unlike most desktop environments, Razor-Qt also works fine with weak machines.' Someone has already tagged Razor-Qt as 'a KDE ripoff.' What we have so far is version 0.4, ... and ... a number of easy ways to install and test it on a few main Linux distributions.
Maybe time has come for something really new in the desktop environment arena almost completely occupied by GNOME and KDE."
The project site has a few screenshots, and the source is available under a mixture of the GPL and LGPL. It looks pretty pedestrian in its current form, but then XFCE wasn't much to look at in its early stages either.
I for one welcome new razor-qt overlords.
Seriously though, completion is the best, and its really time to teach Gnome folks the lesson.
My complaint about that is that...
A project focuses on making a new desktop environment based on a GUI toolkit used by one of the major desktop environments, but with the aim to be lightweight...
And they are calling it a KDE ripoff? Shouldn't it be an XFCE ripoff?
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Lets hope this is the start of a whole new set of Desktop Environments, and I don't mean the bloated, needlessly flashy, touchscreen optimised, BS that looks like children's toys.(Yes KDE, Unity, Gnome I'm looking at you.)
It is the bloat that turns lean window managers into actual desktop environment. Take LXDE, it is basically openbox with a few panels. By the time you add a printing subsystem, notification subsystem, and all the other things that truly make up a desktop environment, then it is no longer so lightweight. It is not the eye-candy that makes KDE and Gnome so heavy, it is all the other services provided in the background.
As opposed to just being different for the sake of being different?
Does it really matter what order minimise/maximise/close is? I mean, can you actually give a good logical reason why the order or placement should be anywhere else? If not, then why not just keep it the way everyone else does it?
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
Yes, it is. It's also what most people are used to, which is important for gaining a large userbase.
Nothing lasts forever but the certainty of change.
Because every possible alternative is worse.
This. IMO there is nothing wrong with the placement of close/minimize/maximize in Windows. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Besides, transition from Windows or other DE's with the same placement is easier that way. That goes for keyboard shortcuts too.
This is a consequence, which cannot easily be avoided. The only thing I'd wish for is a better modularization. The current desktop environments are close to all or nothing. You can drop the one or other service, but the minimal set is still huge and in my view very intrusive.
I mean, can you actually give a good logical reason why the order or placement should be anywhere else?
Because destructive operations (like close) should be kept separated from non-destructive ones (like maximise/minimise). NeXT (and by inheritance WindowMaker) get this right. Fortunately most window managers also make it easy enough to change, which I usually do.
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