The KDE desktop environment is going cross-platform with support for the Windows and Mac OS X operating systems. In addition to porting the core KDE libraries and applications, developers are also porting popular KDE-based software like the Amarok audio player and the KOffice productivity suite.
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2005-07-07
Whether or not Konqueror will switch to webkit remains to be seen. My impression is that the KHTML devs are still unwilling to abandon "their" child in favour of Apple's fork.
It is not a matter of either/or.
Given the availability of a WebKit KPart, it is just a matter of selecting which one to use for "text/html"
Yes, K3B would be nice, provided all the command line tools it uses work on Windows.
I think they do. At least cdrecord does, a friend of mine is using it in Batch scripts for automated CD burning.
The point of a KDE4 version is to not to be limited by a specific implementation of hardware detection through the use of the KDE Solid framework.
Member since:2007-11-17
First of all: I have precisely zero experience with Microsofts Operating Systems > Windows XP SP2 / 2000 SP4, so please correct me if I get things wrong. But I definitely see potential for several KDE4 applications, like for example :
- A centralised document viewing app like Okular would be a godsend to have on MS Windows platforms at least.
I'm not familiar with the status of running evince on MS Windows, but feature wise, Okular looks more useful (at least to me).
- While probably not having a top position on most peoples priority list, there are several applications under the KDE - Education umbrella, that are either already outstanding (like for example KStars, which is complemented nicely with the already cross-platform non-kde stellarium app) or approaching a very promising state (being a physicist myself, the Step simulator, which is scheduled for KDE 4.1, is a personal favourite of mine).
- Given that the NVu project status seems to be currently "comatose", Quanta Plus *will* imho be the best dedicated (as in : not Eclipse et al) libre / gratis Web IDE.
- While KOffice was so far not in a shape to give other
Office suites like OpenOffice.org a run for their money (har har, pun intended) (e.g. import of binary MS Office formats was/is still a hit and miss game, ODF support is/was far from complete, etc.), KOffice 2.0 should - judging from my limited experiences with the current alphas - be a far better competitor. I think the close integration of a wider range of applications (compared to OpenOffice.org) and components (e.g. dedicated flow charting, project management and pixel based picture editing/creation applications and components) in combination with technologies like pigment and especially painterly is quite attractive. While I have no problems with GIMP and its UI, I know at least four MS Windows users that prefer krita over GIMP and GIMPShop and will migrate to krita once it is available for Windows. Additionally, there will - afaik, please correct me if I'm wrong - be no native (Aqua, non-X11) version of OpenOffice.org 2.x in the near future (at least not before the OpenOffice.org 3.x branch goes stable).
- Finally, I look forward to the time when I will be able to run kile, kbibtex, ktorrent, amarok, digikam and kate without cygwin or virtualisation at work.
I'm sure, others can point towards other applications, that have a chance of finding a not too small niche on MS Windows.
Side remark:
There is another aspect of this cross platform-ness of KDE 4 (and F/OSS applications in general), that is imho often overlooked, because it affects not primarily home users, but schools, universities, agencies, (local) governments and SMBs.
My pet theory is, that the availability of F/OSS applications on non-libre OSes has only little impact on the likelihood of switching in the short run. But it should allow system administrators to prepare a future switch from lets say MS Windows XP / 2000 towards Linux gracefully by converging the range of installed apps over the course of several months or even years, thus keeping the costs and risks for training / testing in a more controllable range.
EDIT: Clarified stellariums non-kde status
Edited 2008-01-25 01:23 UTC
Member since:2007-03-29
- A centralised document viewing app like Okular would be a godsend to have on MS Windows platforms at least.
I'm not familiar with the status of running evince on MS Windows, but feature wise, Okular looks more useful (at least to me).
I don't believe this will be the case for many. Most users will have to deal with a single format only, i.e. PDF and they typically have the Acrobat Reader installed.
If ocular wanted to be a serious competitor, the rendering quality of poppler would have to be increased dramatically. Quite unfortunately it still fails for non-trivial layouts, which is probably one of the reasons, why the documentation for Scribus, the popular qt-based Free DTP programme, recommend Acroread for use with Scribus.
[...]
- Given that the NVu project status seems to be currently "comatose", Quanta Plus *will* imho be the best dedicated (as in : not Eclipse et al) libre / gratis Web IDE.
Nvu is dead, sure. I understand that its unofficial successor KompoZer ( http://www.kompozer.org ) is still alive. However, Quanta is something completely different.
There is a downloadable alpha of OpenOffice for Quartz/Aqua. I understand that KOffice 2 is pretty much alpha, too.
Member since:
2007-03-29
[...]
And I think Konqueror/Dolphin may end up being popular on Windows/Mac as well. Konqueror may be the 1st good Webkit browser on Windows (Safari sucks there)
So for the time being, Amarok is the only serious contender. (and not yet available for KDE 4, apart from the current alpha).
Whether or not Konqueror will switch to webkit remains to be seen. My impression is that the KHTML devs are still unwilling to abandon "their" child in favour of Apple's fork. For the moment I would clearly prefer Safari for Windows, as it works with all those popular Web 2.0 sites and Konqueror doesn't, mainly because its Ecma/JavaScript engine is not state of the art.
Yes, K3B would be nice, provided all the command line tools it uses work on Windows. I believe that K3B heavily relies on HAL for Hardware detection, which if my understanding is correct would limit its platform independence.
I honestly don't believe that Koffice will make it. Honestly, KOffice has been around almost as long as KDE itself and it never really stabilised to a degree where I would entrust my valuable data to it. I don't believe it has a chance against the almightly OpenOffice.org.
Dolphin? Its basic functionality is too similar to Windows Explorer to make it a serious contender, I fail to see which killer features would tempt Windows users to use it to replace their default file manager.