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.

Comments

It looks awesome.

[spaceplanesfan]

I for one welcome new razor-qt overlords.
Seriously though, completion is the best, and its really time to teach Gnome folks the lesson.

Featuritis will make it grow, soon

[G3ckoG33k]

"It looks pretty pedestrian in its current form, but then XFCE wasn't much to look at in its early stages either."

Wait. Featuritis will make it grow, soon... ;)

Video

[ens0niq]

Razor-qt desktop environment on Ubuntu 11.10:

http://youtu.be/n6Ro1Qc4UaE

Article (hungarian):

http://hup.hu/cikkek/20111219/razor-qt_qt-alapu_gyors_desktop_kornyezet_telepitese_ubuntu_11.10-re

Rip-off?

[Ardeaem]

Someone has already tagged Razor-Qt as 'a KDE ripoff.'

Oh no, someone call the police! Someone is ripping off an idea from an open source project! We must stop this "open" madness!

Re:Rip-off?

[Lemming Mark]

Indeed - it looks like it's reusing a load of artwork from KDE *which is good*. With open source there's no reason not to slot in existing professional artwork straight away in a new project. They're even planning to make it easy to contribute their patches to common code back to KDE, so they're even being actively co-operative, which is always nice to see.

If they come up with something that looks nice and is lighter-weight than KDE then I might want to install it on my ancient netbook or in virtual machines. KDE is still my preference on my desktop.

Qt is a nice toolkit and it's good to see more development based on it. There's also the Trinity Desktop Environment, for folks who want a KDE-like lightweight desktop - it actually *is* KDE 3, further developed. It looks like (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Trinity#Trinity_Build_Dependency_PKGBUILDs) that's based on Qt 3, whereas Razor-Qt can presumably use newer Qt versions from the start. Variety is nice, it's all cool.

Re:Rip-off?

[ByOhTek]

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?

Re:Good or Bad thing?

[RedK]

I think his point was how QT is much more than just a UI library. It has support for primitive types, it has a socket API, it has low level operating system abstraction. It's basically a portable framework for making rich applications with the least possible amount of platform dependant code. Quite off topic.

Re:Good or Bad thing?

[Kjella]

Well first of all this isn't Qt, it's a system built using Qt like KDE. Secondly, I don't know when Qt was ever just a GUI toolkit. It's trying to be a full on standard library - not like stdlib, but like Java, C# etc. covering GUI, file systems, networking, databases, multimedia, threads, collection classes and so on - basically you're supposed to be able to write fully functional applications without ever using anything but Qt classes.

Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[psergiu]

Why the heck all the Linux Window managers are copying Windows 95-XP with the placement of the window close/minimize/maximize buttons ?

Also - why are all the GUI shortcuts With Ctrl and not Alt or Meta ?

Is Windows THAT GOOD so the purpose of all those GUIs are to become a perfect copy of it ?

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[Tanuki64]

Why using windows at all? All computers do this. Maybe get rid of monitors after all... Content is made available by a combination of morse code and whistles.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[neokushan]

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?

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[calibre-not-output]

Yes, it is. It's also what most people are used to, which is important for gaining a large userbase.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[xSander]

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.

Re:Window close/minimize/maximize buttons

[Coryoth]

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.

Re:Hoping for a new generation of Desktop Envirome

[Dcnjoe60]

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.

Re:KDE ripoff?

[mickwd]

"If you can't make a point without insulting something then your point isn't that good to begin with."

"At the very least learn about whatever you are insulting so you don't look stupid and we could take you seriously."

Interesting two sentences to write next to each other.

KDE is.

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE is ported to Windows. Check http://windows.kde.org/ for the installer. It works sort of like synaptic, where you pick the applications you want and it deals with dependencies for you.

Some things in it work better than others, and you'll have to download a lot of Qt and KDE dependencies at first. The applications generally work pretty well but aren't all feature-complete compared to their *nix counterparts (but Kate and IOslaves work! aweosme.)

I'm not sure about the state of Plasma itself (the desktop, widgets, etc.) but it's been available for a while. I don't think Kwin is available, so it will still use the normal Windows window management (ick)

Re:Hoping for a new generation of Desktop Envirome

[Tanuki64]

It is not the eye-candy that makes KDE and Gnome so heavy, it is all the other services provided in the background.

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.

Re:KDE ripoff?

[somersault]

Look to [bunch of old OSes] - get something new already

Ummmmmm. Okay. If you're that desperate for something new, how about coming up with something new?

There's also something to be said for not fixing what ain't broken. New for the sake of new is why we end up with so many bugs, and pieces of awful, incomplete, crappy window managers like Unity and Gnome Shell being used in stable release versions of popular Linux distros when they are nowhere near ready for prime time.

Re:Good or Bad thing?

[msobkow]

Qt is a full application portability toolkit, not just a collection of widgets. It's Neuron Data's Open Interface concept reworked as open source and delivered on steroids. Not a new concept, but a very powerful one, and not to be confused with a basic widget library like Motif of GTK+ that only deal with widgets and have no concern for portability at their heart.

A completely different animal, despite it's lineage.

As to people claiming this new GUI is a KDE rip-off: KDE is a collection of applications and a desktop/window manager based on Qt. KDE is not the underlying Qt technology on which it's built, but an application of that technology.

Qt predates KDE by many years, and was originally delivered by Trolltech as a hybrid GPL/commercially licensed product before eventually being bought out by Nokia and released as fully LGPL open source when they opted to abandon the tiny revenue stream of Qt/Windows users who were paying for licenses in favour of wider adoption of the toolkit.

Re:Good or Bad thing?

[H0p313ss]

Qt predates KDE...

Does Qt have any relation to Quartz? Its the Q... and the t... makes me think maybe there was a story to be told there.

Does Google not exist on your planet?

Re:Good or Bad thing?

[catmistake]

Qt predates KDE...

Does Qt have any relation to Quartz? Its the Q... and the t... makes me think maybe there was a story to be told there.

Does Google not exist on your planet?

I am not inclined to entertain your ontological interrogative.