Hands on: testing the KDE 4.2 release candidate on Windows

Ars takes the KDE 4.2 release candidate out for a test drive on Windows. The popular open source desktop environment has moved beyond Linux and is becoming increasingly robust on other platforms. Even KDE's Plasma desktop shell is now Windows-compatible.<BR><BR><a href='http://meincmagazine.com/open-source/news/2009/01/testing-kde-42-release-candidate-on-windows.ars'>Read the whole story</a>

 

[Cro Magnon]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">This is really interesting that KDE is installable in Windows, but with the news that even Linus dumped KDE after the 4.0 jump, I think that its market share in the linux community is doomed to shrink. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>But Mr Torvalds did also say:<BR><BR><BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">The GNOME people are talking about doing major surgery, so it could also go the other way. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>Source:<BR><BR>http://www.computerworld.com/a...myId=18&pageNumber=5<BR><BR>That sounds possible. See previous Ars articles referring to Gnome and GTK:<BR><BR><BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Developers have grown increasingly frustrated with the limitations of GTK+ and have started to evaluate proposals for remedying its weaknesses and adding more modern capabilities. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>http://meincmagazine.com/open-so...ed-and-explained.ars<BR><BR>And:<BR><BR><BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">His proposal points out that the current version of GTK makes it difficult to achieve pixel-precise control of software design, doesn't permit overlapping elements, and isn't conducive to creating rich visual effects. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>http://meincmagazine.com/old/con.../reinventing-gtk.ars<BR><BR>Doubtless the Gnome people hopes the "major surgery" will go smoothly. But presumably the KDE people had hoped the same thing.<BR><BR>But rather than "the Linux Community" you should say in X Windows. KDE was never limited to machines running Linux anyway, but on anything that would run X - its the desktop of choice here for example:<BR><BR>http://www.pcbsd.org/<BR><BR>But now, it seems, KDE wants to be potentially capable of running <I>anywhere</I> - and not just limited to any Intel desktop/laptop either, I take it.<BR><BR>I've tried it "natively" - i.e. not in X11 - on OS X and it's terrible there - not really usable at all. (The Windows versions sounds like it's a fair bit more polished.) But I don't really know why anyone would want KDE on the Mac anyway (and if they did they could run it on an OS on which, currently at least, it was happier in Parallels or Fusion virtualization software). But I guess that's not the point: the point for KDE would seem to be not whether anyone would actually want it on any particular platform but that it <I>can</I> run anywhere.

 

[Cro Magnon]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content"> We are going to get to the situation which exists in Linux in both Windows and OSX. That is, one in which the desktop environment, look and feel, can be chosen independently of the underlying OS. So much of the Mac/Windows wars have been about nothing more fundamental than the style and usage of a glorified pair of file managers. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>And that's completely backwards.<BR><BR>The only reason anyone would use a Mac <I>is</I> for the desktop environment. When did you last hear anyone say anything along the lines of, "I'm buying an Apple machine because I want to get Darwin 9.6.0" or "I just had to get a MacBook because XNU is such a great kernel"? No one cares and that's not what they're forking out for.<BR><BR>And, you know, there are <I>reasons</I> for this. It depends partly on the languages that are used and the possibilities they afford. Linked from MacSurfer just today:<BR><BR><BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Every graphical environment works basically the same way: a user with a keyboard and pointing device drags on a window title bar, types into text input fields, drags scroll bars, and so forth and so on. Each graphical environment finds unique ways to deal with this: some use straight C, others use C++, and of course Apple use NeXT's Objective-C.. ... The target-action paradigm [used by OS X] together with the concept of the responder chain affords a flexible, dynamic, context sensitive way to process messages. It's the kind of thing you won't find on other platforms using procedural or 'pseudo-OO' languages and is unique in the GUI programming world of today. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>If you think what you wrote above about "file managers" is true it only shows you have little prolonged and deep experience with the different desktop environments in question and no clue as to what you can - and can't - do with them.