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LXDE Previews Port From Gtk+ 2 to Qt
An anonymous reader writes "As the PCMan at the LXDE blog lets us know, the work on a port of LXDE to the Qt platform is showing promise. As the developers stand to face the deprecation of Gtk+ 2, migrating away from the popular toolkit will soon be necessary. The developers note that migration to Qt 'will cause mild elevation of memory usage compared to the old Gtk+ 2 version,' but clarify that a similar increase in resource usage is expected of a migration to Gtk+ 3. Yet, the port to Qt is ongoing, and clearly taking shape, as the screenshot shows. An official release might be a while, though. As an update to the post notes, the plan is to use the recently released Qt 5.1 in the future, which we might not see in distros for some time."
They are also cooperating with the Razor Qt desktop. From the weblog post: "...We subscribed razor-qt google groups and discussed about possible cooperation earlier. Currently, the ported LXDE components are designed with Razor-Qt in mind. For example, PCManFM-Qt and LxImage-Qt will reads razor-qt config file when running in razor-qt session. We’ll try to keep the interchangeability between the two DEs. Further integration is also possible. Actually, I personally am running a mixed desktop with LXDE-Qt + Razor-Qt components on my laptop. Components from the both DE blends well."
I, for one, welcome our new Qt overlords.
I already have QT and such installed on my LXDE machine due to a couple of KDE apps I fell in love with. They work fine under Openbox/LXDE, so shouldn't be much of a problem to convert over to the new QT based DE.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Serious question, I'm assuming that there was a specific reason for going with QT and not GTK3; anyone know why?
....Is a world class browser that uses QT. Firefox and Chrome both stick out like sore thumbs with some QT themes (like Oxygen-transparent).
If I'm forced to have gtk+ on my system, might as well make use of it.
Why do the tool bar icons have to be huge and child-like?
...or maybe to QXDE or QtXDE, to avoid the change of weight that "MXDE" would suggest.
I'd like to see all Linux projects standardize on Qt as a their Gui toolkit. I understand why everyone has their own but the war is won and Qt won it.
War..Won!? All I see is healthy competition, and personally I run a whole host of Applications that I don't care what toolkit they are in. Having a look around there are some absolutely stellar QT applications http://calibre-ebook.com/, k3b http://www.k3b.org/ (although not in development for a while), MP3 Diags http://mp3diags.sourceforge.net/ and of course Clementine http://www.clementine-player.org/about. There are a few programs that can run either that I use Transmission http://www.transmissionbt.com/ and Avidemux http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/ . But the Bottom line is GTK+ seems as popular as ever, and still more popular than Qt.
What is most bizarre is this about this is LXDE is looking great, a Desktop we don't hear about often enough, and is looking like a desktop I would use...half this discussion is about lets be honest a license subtlety I don't care about.
To me, this is a good thing if it joins with and speeds up Razor-QT development. Many times I wished for a lightweight QT-based desktop (but realistically, I'm so content with XFCE+openbox I'll probably never switch)
early gtk+ 2 apps and later ones had the same problem. They deprecated functions and features during the lifetime of gtk+2
While most of them won't affect MOST apps, I ran into a few other the years that it did, and trying to read through the documentation to figure out the alternative way to do it left me tossing the apps aside and finding an easier and more productive way to deal with it.
Honestly the sole reason GTK has lasted as long as it did was it being C only compared to QT's C++, and the lack of an LGPL'd version of QT. Nokia solved the latter and the gnome crew has made the former a hindrance rather than an asset.
Just my 2c as an end-user and some time patcher.
Yay. More projects should port from crappy bastard hack oop GTK to properly object oriented QT. GTK is just pathetic. I always notice when a program uses GTK - dialogs suck, widgets often require two clicks, one to focus, another to ack (what the fuck? this is the 21st century) interface is usually simplistic verging on nonfunctional and defaults are terrible. All things that OOP helps a lot. Especially defaults. Plain old C is the enemy of good defaults. Speaking as a verteran plain old C hack, including all the crappy workarounds GTK does to pretend that compilers didn't advance in the last 20 years.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
From a user standpoint, I have a different question, or a variation of this one. Why would anyone who needs a Qt based environment prefer LXDE, which is just beginning now, over Razor-qt, which has been around a bit and has a considerable headstart? Although I'd welcome these 2 merging, if that's what happens.
LXDE should ship with a desktop compositor. Currently there is horrible tearing going on all around, and of course using the 3D acceleration of GPU would be a nice thing to utilize.
Why not fork GTK+ 2.0 and keep maintaining the fork? ...
That would keep the Lightweight X Desktop Environment being a lightweight desktop environment for X
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
Why fork it? It still exists ;). It will probably be maintained for years, or dormant but still working. I bet there are quite many gtk2 apps. You can still use motif apps nowadays (well, lesstif) like nedit.
If they simply stated than GTK should be considered a gnome component versus gnome independent, that doesn't necessarily bother me as it is a game of semantics. However, the key sentiment that strikes me as counter-productive:
"You can't just write something for 3.0 (be it an application, a shell plugin or a GTK theme) and expect it stay working that way forever. Instead you need to constantly improve on your work."
Which is a huge 'screw you' to backwards compatibility. To say that reworking perfectly working code repeatedly due to platform fickleness is to 'improve on your work' is extraordinarily asinine.
As a developer supporting a platform, I understand the appeal of declaring I have a free hand, but I know that attitude would make my solution impractical to consume. That's the whole point of 'major' releases with naming conventions that allow coexistence with 'older' streams on s system, to assure continued value to those who consumed the library. This is a standard that gnome has already badly broken (see MATE being forced to rename libraries because gnome reused a number of names in an incompatible fashion).
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
n/t
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Why can't Firefox's "Gecko" CSS engine draw menus and buttons?
Is LiQuiD (Lightweight Qt Desktop) taken?
Even more so, this is not a port. It's a new window manger written in a different language using a different guikit.
What a terrible summary.
Have you ever tried nedit on non-ASCII utf8 files?
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.