Packages for the first KDE 4 developers snapshot “Krash” have started appearing. Most exciting is packages for a whole new platform, Mac OS X. More details are on Benjamin Reed’s blog. For the traditionalists packages are available from openSUSE and Kubuntu. If you are a KDE application developer, this is the easiest way to start porting your application to KDE 4. Meanwhile work is continuing on KDE on Windows where developers have successfully got all of kdelibs compiling. Finally the KDE Women project has a new tutorial to get you started in KDE4 development.
This is exactly what we need. Just like firefox i will now be able to use kde on windows mac and *nix. Making a portable and familiar computing environment for anyone who cares to use it on a great deal of platforms is what ive been wanting for a long time.
I agree that it is very nice to have even more cross-platform applications headed our way especially when many of them are mature in their own right, but you should be careful to note that not all KDE apps will easily run under Windows even if kdelibs works perfectly. There are many applications that have direct dependencies on things such as X. Kdelibs is a very vital piece, but there will be other barriers to overcome for some applications.
That’s a good point. And, I know an older version of X (with KDE) will run on Windows via Xcygwin. It actually runs pretty well. However, now that XFree86 (or whatever I’m supposed to call it) has forked, maybe we will see a native X environment on Windows soon, as well. I guess, that would satisfy a whole other host of dependencies.
It would be cool to have a live CD with KDE 4 alpha, just for the sake of testing safely
It would be cool to have a live CD with KDE 4 alpha, just for the sake of testing safely
That doesn’t really make that much sense because look&feel is more or less unchanged from 3.5.4
The release isn’t meant to be a testing release to get bug reports and stuff, it is a developer snapshot so application developers are able to start working on apps that interface with the new APIs.
Therefore a live-cd is not that useful, you’d rather want to install KDE4 in a non-standard directory so it can coexist with your current version of KDE and you can test builds for KDE4 on a seperate X server.
Are there screenshots anywhere???
I did some googling and couldn’t find anything usefull accept for this:
http://web.inter.nl.net/users/jospoortvliet/kde4/kde4.html
and
http://www.digiplace.nl/images/full_render_view.png
If anyone has high res screenshots that would be great!
Found even a shockwave application that let’s you try the menu’s
http://img396.imageshack.us/my.php?image=kdemockup7sj.swf
Edited 2006-09-14 21:25
Those are all fake. Currently, KDE4 looks like broken and unfinished KDE3. Here you go:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:KDE4-prealpha-kate.png
http://clarencedang.blogspot.com/2006/04/so-whats-up-with-kolourpai…
http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/1777
http://www.tabuleiro.com/mauricio/kmahjongg_svg.png
Those are pretty bet, I think i’ll keep on dreaming with the fake screenshots
that kmahjongg looks pretty smooth indeed .. thanks for the pics !
Edited 2006-09-14 22:24
Does that mean you can run KDE4 under Windows. And if so could you run KDE and then also native Windows Applications like Outlook etc. …. if so that would be great, i could run KDE at work.
> Does that mean you can run KDE4 under Windows. And
> if so could you run KDE and then also native Windows
> Applications like Outlook etc.
No, the other way around. You will be able to run ported KDE4 applications on the windows desktop. AFAIK there are no plans to replace the graphical windows desktop itself with KDE.
But of course you will be able to run windows apps and the ported KDE4 apps in parallel.
Edited 2006-09-14 21:28
The last I heard, and that was a while ago, they had decided not to provide the desktop for Windows. Only applications. I think you can run the whole thing through Cygwin already, though, if you really wanted to.
Edited 2006-09-14 21:49
Dear KDE 4,
I’ve heard so much about you! I can’t wait to meet you in person. We could go everywhere together: Linux, BSD, Mac, even Windows! This could be the best relationship ever! Please hurry!!
xoxoxo, yours forever,
mrcool
Edited 2006-09-14 21:13
How is the Plasma project going?
Looks like the OS X packages are for 10.4 only. My poor 10.2 machine is getting left in the dust. I wonder if there’s any functionality being used that makes 10.3 or 10.2 incompatible.
Found this about Qt4:
On Mac OS X, the binary package requires Mac OS X 10.4.x (Tiger) and GCC 4.0 to develop applications. Its applications will run on Mac OS X 10.3.9 and above. If you develop with another compiler/version of OS X, please use the source package instead.
Since this is supposed to be used by developers, there is a chance the final versions might work on 10.3, but I wouldn’t count on it. 10.2 is definitely out.
Edited 2006-09-14 23:09
Looks like the OS X packages are for 10.4 only. My poor 10.2 machine is getting left in the dust. I wonder if there’s any functionality being used that makes 10.3 or 10.2 incompatible.
Well if your system is a G3 or better you can probably purchase 10.4, or better yet wait for 10.5 Leopard.
I’m not so lucky though. I have an Apple IIe and Mac SE 30 and doubt I could put OS X on them. X-D
Seriously, why would I want to install KDE on my Mac?
Before I am construed as a troll, let me say I’ve used KDE off and on for a while (as well as OS X for a shorter period of time).
I just cannot imagine mashing together two distinctly different UIs and interface behaviours will be good for anybody.
Flame away if you must but I think this is a legitimate question…
Why not go further and do something new?
The applications!
Kate? A much better text editor than any I’ve found for OSX (and I’ve looked!) Currently I’m using Smultron, and its decent, but I’ve tried BBedit, jEdit, and many others…
Konqueror? A very configurable browser (this could be a pro or a con, depending on your view) but aside from webbrowsing, its a *FAR* better file manager than Finder. Finder has a lot of issues, maybe they’ll be sorted out in 10.5, though its not looking like it. In the meantime, Konqueror is just about the most flexible filemanager I’ve ever used, especially with the kio-slaves to back it up. You’ve used KDE, so I assume you know about FISH, audiocd, etc.
AmaroK is pretty good too, and I think I’d prefer it to iTunes, though some people who use iTMS would rightly disagree.
Those are my personal favorites, though I could easily see someone making the case for certain KOffice apps, Kopete, KPDF, and Kontact. I guess what it comes down to is, Are the OSX apps good enough for you? If they are then I guess you won’t need KDE apps. If not, and you want something more flexible/configurable then yay, there they are.
Bill
Yes, the applications.
It’s the same under WinXP. I’d like to use KOffice (specially for Krita and Kexi) instead of MSOffice, and generalize the use of Kopete as an IM platform.
The UI difference is one question, and it can probably be answered by theming.
The main goal, though, is to offer the platform (and vicariously, the apps) on as many systems as possible for functionality.
more importantly than “running kde apps on windows/macos” is that developers on those platforms will be able to write software that is easily portable to linux/bsd/unix. i see it as much more valuable to encourage and help developers on those platforms write portable, Free software than to ship our best apps off to other platforms.
Although portability is already possible (Qt-licensed or gpl’d, GTK, SDL, XUL, Mono/Net, winelib and soon Portland for integration), yes it will bring cross-platform to a new level, as KDE’s rich platform integration abilities will be usable (ported) for multiple operating systems. They are developing Solid, Phonon etc. for that purpose.
Yeah, I think that turning KDE into a rich, cross-platform toolkit is what this is all about.
Each desktop environment out there provides some very nice integration facilities, but they are currently not portable.
This encourage people to write applications for only one desktop environment to be able to use all of its advanced features.
Edited 2006-09-15 11:32
Well, you wouldn’t necessarily. But I imagine the reasons would be much the same as those for running Firefox on a Mac – to get apps that do the stuff you want, even if they don’t fit in visually (I wonder how much effort the KDE folks will make regarding look & feel, though).
I know Benny, ( hmm. in fact I can see him from here ) and he’s been working night and day to get this thing out the door.
If no one else says it, I will:
Thanks, Benny.