“This article, the first in a three-part series, introduces you to the world of GTK+. It explains what GTK+ is, why you should consider using it, and the benefits it provides. Together with the rest of the series, this installment provides enough introductory information that, if you decide to use GTK+ in your own projects, you’ll know where to look for further materials.”
Better docs.
More intuitive.
C++ Native, Gtkmm (Gtk for C++) uses strange template systems which make it very unintuitive and the docs uncomprehensible.
Runs flawlessly on Win32 (Gtk is very slow)
#1 reason why gnome is the enterprise desktop and not kde is gtk. GTK is licensed under lgpl allowing businesses to write proprietary apps with it and integrated into gnome.
Lets see vmware write the vmware player in QT4 without paying trolltech a steep licensing fee, oh wait, they can’t…
QT is great and the more recent builds of KDE are very impressive but the fact remains that you can’t write proprietary software with QT. Trolltech’s licensing is the only thing keeping kde from being the “enterprise linux desktop”
WARNING: This post is from a longtime gnome user who switched from kde in SUSE 8.
All fine and dandy, but for us GPL-Developing-Programmers, everything you mention above is irrelevant.
Because C is a far better language than c++.
Happy?
You’ll laugh, but that’s honestly the reason a lot of people like Gtk; it’s c, and that means they can use their favorite language which they understand and enjoy using.
reason why gnome is the enterprise desktop and not kde is gtk.
Sigh. What is an enterprise desktop?
GTK is licensed under lgpl allowing businesses to write proprietary apps with it and integrated into gnome.
You can do that with KDE. I assume you’re talking about this ‘pay nothing’ thing that people always promote. Sadly, that’s all GTK can give you and the only selling point it has. If you actually knew the amount of money that businesses spend on development tools, be they .Net, Java or anything else, you’d know that that just does not happen.
Besides, in the future we will probably see LGPL development tools (GPL compatible stuff) and frameworks sitting on top of KDE and Qt to enable the usage of different toolkits and frameworks, as well as kdelibs being LGPLed as well. A lot of people will deny to the hilt that this is possible, but it is. Qt will merely provide you with a nice out-of-the-box, enterprise ready, development option.
Lets see vmware write the vmware player in QT4 without paying trolltech a steep licensing fee, oh wait, they can’t…
I wonder what VMware uses to develop their Windows version and how much they pay……..
QT is great and the more recent builds of KDE are very impressive but the fact remains that you can’t write proprietary software with QT.
Untrue, as has been pointed out for the last two thousand years.
Trolltech’s licensing is the only thing keeping kde from being the “enterprise linux desktop”
Since there is no enterprise Linux desktop…….
WARNING: This post is from a longtime gnome user who switched from kde in SUSE 8.
Wow. Thanks.
GTK+ uses LGPL, so you can create and sell your programs. In case of QT you can create but if you want to sell, hmm, it will cost you some $.
What if I dont want to sell, and just make a GPL app?
The reasons given above by me are plain development ones. I never mentioned any licensing issue.
“GTK+ uses LGPL, so you can create and sell your programs. In case of QT you can create but if you want to sell, hmm, it will cost you some $.”
Yes! In my boook, that’s the only reason to use GTK+. The LGPL is way more business friendly to those businesses that can’t afford to purchase a Qt license.
Although, for most businesses the license fee for Qt isn’t that expensive (or rather, it’s affordable for most businesses) especially for such a wonderfull toolkit.
Am I the only one who finds K-apps usually much more kludgly and overwhelming to look at?
Amarok vs Banshee
http://amarok.kde.org/images/stories/albums/album03/amarok13.png
http://www.banshee-project.org/images/5/54/Banshee-main.png
While I’ll admit sometimes KDE seems a little quicker, the GTK Apps just blow KDE apps away IMO, I really cannot stand looking at them and much prefer the simplicity of a GTK app.
I wonder if anyone will try to make a KDE centric desktop without 50000 things on every screen?
“Am I the only one who finds K-apps usually much more kludgly and overwhelming to look at? ”
no, you’re not. thats another difference between gtk and qt – gtk is much more attractive and qt is impossible to de-uglify. there are some fantastic kde applications, but i just hate the kde interace and the general bugginess.
Here’s the thing, I feel the same way, but in reverse. Hate the gnome interface, and think the only way to partially deuglify it is to force the kde theme onto it.
You know what though, it’s ART. IN ART THERE IS NO UNIVERSAL TRUE OR FALSE STATEMENT! Ugly or not ugly is just laying our own taste onto it. Discussing these issues, there’s times when I just don’t get computer people.
“You know what though, it’s ART. IN ART THERE IS NO UNIVERSAL TRUE OR FALSE STATEMENT! Ugly or not ugly is just laying our own taste onto it. Discussing these issues, there’s times when I just don’t get computer people.”
i’ll have to remember that the next time i judge the attractiveness of gtk/qt, and also when i compare bridget bardot in her prime with that slapper down the road with curlers in her hair and half her teeth missing.
Totally agree
I am a gtk user (don’t use gnome desktop, but mainly gnome apps). I really like gnome look, especially with the ultra clean pharago theme. And I had always dislike kde look. But now with the KDE theme named QtCurve, KDE looks quite like GTK. And I now use KDE apps (qjackctl, qsynth and AMAROK!) and they suit my taste.
What restrained me during a long time using KDE was the themes. I just wish Pharago theme be ported to KDE and my desktop will be the best (at least for me 🙂
Are you joking? Yet another GTK app that it’s not better than its Qt counterpart but hey, don’t worry, its not uber-supah-overbloated.
These 50000 things on the screen are all the things that Banshee can’t do now, but one day it will. When that day comes, of course, nobody will use it. Too many things on the screen :/
I didn’t like the flame Linus started, but he was right, of course he was. GTK is less productive than Qt and less powerful for the programmer, and so GTK apps do less things. Period.
P.S.: sorry, poor English :/
“P.S.: sorry, poor English :/”
given your judgements, its not your english thats poor.
I didn’t like the flame Linus started, but he was right, of course he was. GTK is less productive than Qt and less powerful for the programmer, and so GTK apps do less things. Period.
GTK apps tend to do fewer things as a design choice. Developers of GTK and Gnome apps tend to go with the Unix philosophy of small programs that do few things but do them very well, and providing a clean, simple interface to the user. Thus, for many people, the result is something that is far more productive than equivelent apps that have more features, because they don’t waste time having to click around on a lot of things to get things done.
GTK and Gnome apps tend to be very easy and intuitive, and provide few choices and make functionality obvious.
By contrast, some QT and KDE apps tend to throw lots of features and options at the user, which can be overwhelming, or at least cause a lot of wasted time clicking on stuff before one comes across the functionality desired. With GTK and Gnoe apps, the functionality desired is usually obvious, and one gets it done quickly and easily.
Torvalds made a good point in that if certain features are not included that some people might want to use, it denies “usability” to those users. For those people, KDE is quite often the better choice. But what Torvalds, and others who joined in on the chorus of anti GTK/Gnome ranting, over looked was the fact that many people don’t need all those features that Torvalds and others ranted about, and those features would only get in the way, and cause more clutter, and more annoying clicking on stuff to find desired functionality.
So it boils down to what individuals need or desire, and it’s a choice between full featured (but sometimes cluttered and messy and non productive), and clean and simple (but sometimes lacking features desired by many).
Both approaches are great, and have their strenghts and weaknesses. I’m very glad there is the choice – I quite often switch between Gnome and KDE (with a very slight nod in favor of Gnome). And the good thing is that both Gnome and KDE are moving towards each other (their developers are actually quite friendly with one another – it’s the fanboys in either camp that flame) with Gnome gradually adding key features it formerly lacked, and KDE cleaning up it’s interface.
But what’s bad is Torvalds’ attitude (as much as I admire his work) and the attitude of many KDE users who’ve chimed in with thinking their way is the only way, and often saying that Gnome is bad and it’s users are idiots. That kind of trolling is less than useless.
Fine. Use GTK+ apps and Banshee if they suit you. But don’t try to tell me features that are present in Amarok and other KDE apps are useless, I’m sick of that. I and others wouldn’t use them if they didn’t have those features. Why is so difficult for some of you to understand that?
Edited 2005-12-25 12:03
On the contrary, over the last few months I’ve migrated from gnome-terminal to konsole, JuK instead of rythmbox, konqueror instead of nautilus+galeon, kate instead of gedit. K apps usually have more options and features, and I appreciate that. Maybe KDE is not for everyone, but it suits me more than GNOME.
Earlier. I gave 3 points. And people took the argument to really pathetic paths, comparing KDE vs Gnome, Licensing issues. I simply gave 3 Issues why I switched,as a developer, from 3 years of developing Gtk/Gkmm to Qt3 and now Qt4.
I will be clearer this time:
-Better docs.
Simple example
http://doc.trolltech.com/4.0/qmenu.html
vs
http://www.gtkmm.org/docs/gtkmm-2.4/docs/reference/html/classGtk_1_…
Gtk docs are just terrible, no examples, not a hint on how to get the item inside the menu, etc.
Add a few menu Items in Qt, with a generic callback for
item selected, one of them checkable, with a separator in between:
menu->addItem(“Hello”);
menu->addSeparator();
menu->addItem(“World”)->setCheckable(true);
QObject::connect(menu,SIGNAL(activated(QMenuItem*),this,SLOT(menu_sele cted(QMenuItem*)));
Dare you to do the same in Gtkmm and compare how huge the Gtkmm code is.
-More intuitive.
In the above case, you read the QMenu class and you have in there everything you need. To understand the Gtk::Menu class you need to read several pages of docs.
Want to see more comparisons on how gtk is just inmensely more difficult? compare
http://www.gtkmm.org/docs/gtkmm-2.4/docs/reference/html/classGtk_1_…
vs
http://doc.trolltech.com/4.0/qtreewidget.html
If this isnt proof of how UNNECESARY COMPLEX Gtk API can be vs how intuitive/simple Qt API is, I give up.
-Runs flawlessly on Win32 (Gtk is very slow)
Just try gimp or inkscape under windows in a relatively old machine and it crawls to death. Qt apps run perfect
AND nantively in Win32 and OSX.
License issues are for those who care about that. i was just stating that in my personal experience, developing for C++/Gtkmm means wasting a LOT of time, I’ve developed Gtkmm since 1.2 and up to 2.0, then I just gave up because I was wasting too much time figuring out each thing, or having to see the source of gtk/gtkmm constantly, while Qt had everything just where i expected to be it. I could read a class and then automatically understood how to use it.
You’re on to a loser there. If you try and itemise any of this stuff, what does make a better option, and talk about why GTK isn’t a terribly great option, you’ll just get marked down without a reply.
-Better docs.
<cite>Simple example
http://doc.trolltech.com/4.0/qmenu.html
vs
http://www.gtkmm.org/docs/gtkmm-2.4/docs/reference/html/classGtk_1_…..
Gtk docs are just terrible, no examples, not a hint on how to get the item inside the menu, etc.</cite>
You are comparing a GTK binding documentation with a QT official documentation.
You should use this, instead:
http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/2.0/gtk/GtkMenu.html
Which is a bit low-level, but gives you links to GtkMenuShell (the interface for menus) and GtkMenuItem (the single menu item); also, it has examples.
Obviously, this would mean that you’re interested in facts and not in spreading FUD.
Good question. It’s slow, it’s ugly, it’s buggy, it’s difficult to write for. The only thing in its favor is the fact that it has an LGPL license. That’s fine for commercial apps that really can’t go GPL, but there’s a billion other GTK apps that are already GPL and really could (and should) use Qt.
Indeed. when Gtk reaches an intuitive api/docummentation status that rivals Qt, I’d think about it again.
Good question. It’s slow,
Wrong.
Xfce – lightning fast. Gedit -fast. Epiphany – fast. Gnome terminal -fast. Glade – lightning fast. Evolution – fast for a big program. Abiword – very fast. Gnumeric – Fast. Gnome running on my Debian Sarge install, on a Thinkpad with 300MHz cpu and 228meg memory, very fast.
it’s ugly,
Wrong. Eye of the beholder, actually. But to me (and many, many others), it’s beautiful, clean, simple, attractive, has great themes/skins, great font rendering, and great looking widgets.
GTK widgets,
GTK widgets are very, very nice looking.
fonstit’s buggy,
I’ve never had any problems with it.
it’s difficult to write for.
Wrong. It’s a simple library. It’s even easy writing in C. You can write it pure OOP C++ with GTKmm. Plus, you can even bind it to easier higher level languages like Java, C#, Perl, Python, Ruby, and many others. Plus, Glade makes point and click GUI design an abosolute breeze. For good documentation on both GTK and Gnome development, get “The Official Gnome 2 Developers Guide” – an excellent book that makes everything in GTK and Gnome development simple and clear. It will even make you a better C programmer.
The only thing in its favor is the fact that it has an LGPL license.
That’s one among many things. See my above comments.
That’s fine for commercial apps that really can’t go GPL,
It’s also great for GPL (or other open source licenses) licenced software.
but there’s a billion other GTK apps that are already GPL and really could (and should) use Qt.
There’s no reason for a billion other GTK apps to migrate to QT. QT is fantastic (I’ve programmed with it too, and I like it a lot). But GTK is very very good as well.
Personally I’m glad there is both GTK and QT, and I’m glad there are DEs based on GTK (Gnome and Xfce) and QT (KDE). They’re all great. I tend to favor slightly GTK/Gnome, however, due it’s simplicity and cleanliness.
Good question. It’s slow,
Wrong.
Xfce – lightning fast. Gedit -fast. Epiphany – fast. Gnome terminal -fast. Glade – lightning fast. Evolution – fast for a big program. Abiword – very fast. Gnumeric – Fast. Gnome running on my Debian Sarge install, on a Thinkpad with 300MHz cpu and 228meg memory, very fast.
OK, I don´t like GNOME for several reasons that I won´t state here since most of them just reiterate what others have been saying for a while but now you stretched here: GNOME Terminal fast? GNOME Terminal is not only one of the slowest pieces of software that I´ve ever seen on my life but it is a resource hog as well. Try to compile* anything on GNOME Terminal and watch its resource comsumption on another tab running ‘top’ but also follow the text scrolling down. It´s hideous at the very least.
Even the most hardcore GNOME fans knows that and don´t dispute this one. I can´t even start to imagine how you got the impression that GNOME Terminal is fast. Really!
By the way, is just GNOME that bugs me. There´s a lot of good GTK programs out there that don´t suffer of this oversimplification syndrome (mainly the GIMP and Inkscape). Too bad that HIG disease seems to be spreading fast: Bamshee compared to Amarok is a good example.
DeadFish Man
*<sarcasm>I know that my example is somewhat hypothetic because everybody and their dog knows that compilation is only for uber-geeks and that no newbie *nix user would ever (EVER!) need to compile anything but I´m sure that you´ll get my point…</sarcasm>
“Even the most hardcore GNOME fans knows that and don´t dispute this one.”
i use both and i agree with the gnome-terminal is fast and it is indeed a lot faster than konsole.
Gnome terminals speed is partially bad because of VTE; I know cause I’ve tried to use VTE to make a terminal before. About two years ago it was a slow lib, and it consumed noticeable cycles when doing nothing at all.
It’s probably improved quite a bit since then. My recommendation is to just use xterm and quit complaining about those “fancy” terminals
.
It’s probably improved quite a bit since then. My recommendation is to just use xterm and quit complaining about those “fancy” terminals
Hey, hey… You don´t need to give up eye candy just to be lightweight. One could use eterm with a semitransparent background and use GNU Screen to replace the tabs functionality and still keep the low footprint. 🙂
DeadFish Man
Lets see vmware write the vmware player in QT4 without paying trolltech a steep licensing fee, oh wait, they can’t…
Let’s see… Qt Desktop Light edition for two platforms: €2390 per developer per year. Hardly out of reach for VMware considering what their software costs.
QT is great and the more recent builds of KDE are very impressive but the fact remains that you can’t write proprietary software with QT.
You can argue that the price is steep for some small organizations but stating that it is categorically impossible to write proprietary software with Qt is just trolling.
Can banshee do the same as amaroK? Create dynamic playlists? Smart playlists? Get covers for yours albums? Find the song text, if you want it too? Have a complete index over all your music, even if it isn’t in the current playlist? Or all the other nice features that amarok have?
Yes, amarok take up a lot of screen space in its playlist, but let me tell ya a little secret; You don’t have to have the playlist open, it has a small primary window much like that of xmms.
And you know the sidebar/metabar? It can colapse, then not used.
I’ll admit that banshee is beautiful though. It just looks a little too simple, like it can’t do anything special.
“Can banshee do the same as amaroK? Create dynamic playlists? Smart playlists? Get covers for yours albums? Find the song text, if you want it too? Have a complete index over all your music, even if it isn’t in the current playlist? Or all the other nice features that amarok have? ”
are those features even necessary? no, they’re not. they just confuse. remember those devices that tried to do everything? – they were always buggy. and thats why the average user would much rather have banshee than amorak.
are those features even necessary? no, they’re not. they just confuse. remember those devices that tried to do everything? – they were always buggy.
Let’s cover up for Banshee’s total lack of functionality and complete immaturity. I never cease to be amused by the excuses people come up with for GTK and Gnome apps.
Tried Amarok on my PC (Pentium III-750, EPoX Cu-133a+ motherboard, 320MB PC133 RAM, 8MB SiS 6326 videocard, 80GB Seagate 7200.7 ST31800; Ubuntu 5.10). I sufferred massive slowdown (HDD indicator was lit up constantly). I like the features (e.g., the global keyboard shortcuts), but I think I need to add more RAM and maybe upgrade the CPU if I’m going to use it regularly.
Banshee is pretty buggy, but at least it runs fine most of the time.
I dunno, this is my opinion as a Mac/Windows user, planning on building a new box for Linux next year.
Simple looking != not functional, something KDE people never seem to be able to grasp.
Maybe in KDE4.
removing features != more usable.
maybe the gnomes get it in gnome 3.0 (but i don’t think so)
acutally, you’re right – a clean interface doesn’t mean less features. tough the guy DID a stupid comparison, ararok showing all features it has, while you won’t see most of them most of the time.
and juk is much more like banshee (acutally it looks even cleaner) but still has more features.
I have to say it – GTK is the best, totally free multiplatform toolkit you can find anywhere with absolutley no strings attached (ie LGPL License).
For doing sensible GUI apps, you need to use a high level language with it like python or mono and thats where the interface of GTK is best. With its C based GObjects you can autogenerate bindings for almost any language out there and it especially rocks when used with an OO language where the native object to GObject interface is seamless.
I would say its pretty hard to beat GTK – its a proven and mature framework with tons of cool widgets including loads of MVC widgets for creating really powerful apps. QT may be cool too but there’s no denying GTK is a superb toolkit in its own right.
Buggy?.. I can’t say I’ve had a problem with them yet. been using Amarok for quite a while now. love it’s features.
I like being able to add 1 track to my list and say make your own playlist based on suggested songs. that way I don’t have to make a play list and I get good songs.
Confusing? what’s your IQ? I don’t mean to sound mean or anything but come on its not that difficult is it?
Average user? anyone thats ever seen me use my amarok go “thats pretty cool, how do I get it?” your banshee looks alot like Juk in which I thought was really cool at one point too. Found amarok and got rid of Juk forever.
At any rate its all about person preferences. What you like isn’t always what everyone else likes. I’d rather have a powerful program than something so simple I can’t have much fun with it.
Amarok crashed on me a lot, everytime I’d change playlists by double clicking in fact; or every other.
Amarok is a cool app; much nicer than rhythmbox, but I just kept crashing it. I’m about to go nuts on rhythmbox though, with the stupid popup telling me everytime it changes songs. I suppose that setting is buried somewhere in gconf though right?
“Amarok crashed on me a lot, everytime I’d change playlists by double clicking in fact; or every other. ”
that happened a lot to me too. thats why i don’t use it anymore.
“Confusing? what’s your IQ?”
164. and you?
lots of features and options != less functional/productive
Not saying I don’t agree with you by the way.
It really is time to start seriously considering Qt for your software development, if you haven’t had a chance to do so already.
The article doesn’t touch on the most important part of a toolkits design, its API. On that front, Gtk+ is dreadful compared to toolkits like Qt and Swing. The amount of boilerplate cruft code that you have to grind through in Gtk+ to produce less-than-flexible results, is astonishing. I feel it’s starting to become the next Motif – a standard, yet unloved and hard to use.
Anyway, I’m playing with the latest Qt on Windows… and it’s awesome. The demos are amazingly fast and good looking and it’s the easiest thing in the world to use: http://doc.trolltech.com/4.1/index.html . It’s worth checking out if you are doing any sort of GUI development (or you just like eye candy!).
Because you’re a whiner who constantly complains that Qt’s license isn’t friendly to ISV’s when you fail to realize there is no market for you, and there never will be.
All the players that will decide the commercial fate of desktop-Linux can afford to pay a relatively insignificant fee.
But hey, it seems pretty clear that KDE/Qt won’t be the platform of choice, at least for the time being.
Luckily for me, Qt isn’t going to vanish
Adobe
HP
Rohde & Schwarz
Agilent
IBM
Scania
ARM
i-penta
Shell
Boeing
JD Edwards
Sharp
Bosch JMP
Siemens
Cadence
Lockheed Martin
Skype
CEA Technologies
LogicaCMG
Sony Computer Entertainment Japan
ChevronTexaco
Mentor Graphics
STN-Atlas
DaimlerChrysler
Michelin
Stryker Leibinger
Deutsche Telekom
NASA
Synopsys
Earth Decision Sciences
NEC
WesternGeco
Hennessy Group
PGS
Fraunhofer
Pioneer
http://www.trolltech.com/company/customers.html
What about FOX and FLTK?
http://www.fox-toolkit.org
http://www.fltk.org
Both LGPL
They can’t handle BiDi languages IIRC.
Open source is about sharing, among other things. You can’t just take and not give back to the community. If you don’t want to give back, then you have to pay for it somehow. This is why dual licensing of trolltech makes sense. If you want to use their tool kit for free, you have to make your codes open source. Pay fot it and you get to keep your source code to yourself. What more can you ask for?
“are those features even necessary? no, they’re not. they just confuse. remember those devices that tried to do everything? – they were always buggy. and thats why the average user would much rather have banshee than amorak.”
Once gotten used to having them; YES! they are necessary too ME.
And they don’t confuse, don’t need just don’t use them.
Edited 2005-12-25 10:16
Do you happen to have tried it on (k)ubuntu? I’ve seen amaroK, eat all RAM on several machines on those, simply by playing music.
Come on, banshee looks just plain ugly, especially compared to amarok.
Bussiness friendly, rrright. It is only friendly for thieves that want to do some quick buck on someone other’s work. If you are bussinessman then you know that in order to use something you have to pay for it in some way or another.
KDE is a dying project. given its lack of adoption, the only place for it to go is down.
Come on dude. I can’t stand KDE in its current form (maybe KDE4 will change it), but KDE is nowhere near to being dying.
“Tried Amarok on my PC … I sufferred massive slowdown (HDD indicator was lit up constantly)…”
You might actually have been “bitten by Gnome” there, in the form of GStreamer, which Amarok uses by default these days. I’ve seen that GStreamer fares much worse than its options — however, it does have much promise.
You might want to try it with the Xine (or perhaps artsd) backend, both of which work better (more reliably, less resource-hungry) at least for the time being.
“Because C is a far better language than c++. ”
Even though that is true, it doesn’t necessarily follow that coding in GTK is better than coding in QT.
I have only experience in the former, but I feel that they have essentially built a C++ (or something a bit uglier even) around C in GTK.
”
What about FOX and FLTK?
http://www.fox-toolkit.org
http://www.fltk.org
”
FLTK especially seems rather nice, but it may be that they have missed the boat — that there is not any momentum for them anymore.
And C++, that’s the other reason
Because I don’t understand why gui routines should be written in C.
Because I don’t understand to write C libraries containing a pointer to functions that in the end it emulates C++.
Gnome terminal -fast.
Are you out of your mind? Gnome terminal has got to be the slowest terminal emulator ever written.
“Are you out of your mind? Gnome terminal has got to be the slowest terminal emulator ever written.”
Well, in my experience Gnome Terminal is faster than Konsole. While Konsole has a few more features than Gnome Terminal, Gnome Terminal is full of features as well.
Actually, I like Rxvt better than both Gnome Terminal and Konsole – that’s lightning fast. I don’t need many features in a terminal program, I just want speed, and Rxvt excels there.
Both have their market.
The reason that GTK is used is the same reason Qt is used, the marked, there is marked for both, Qt fills a portion of the marked GTK+ can’t fill and GTK+ fills a portion of the marked Qt can’t, both can coexist.
GTK+ won’t die, Qt won’t die.
And about Amarok-Banshee, those are only music players and album organizers, nothing else, I personally still use xmms and winamp for their simplicity, arguing for something as superficial as music players is retard.
Edited 2005-12-25 17:31
“And about Amarok-Banshee, those are only music players and album organizers, nothing else, ”
yes, but you know how the KDE faithful absolutely need each application to also be an editor, spelling checker, development environment, video player, guitar tuner, drum machine, breakfast maker and babysitter(to ensure that the typical KDE user doesn’t start throwing his toys out of his pram everytime the application frequently crashes).
the KDE faithful would be lost if an application just did what its meant to do and didn’t imclude 500 billion features that it doesn’t need.
thats bullshit and you know it. you just can’t handle the fact there is no audioplayer as complete as amarok. the fact it can show info about the songs like lyrics and bandinfo from wikipedia is exactly what users need – they don’t want 10 apps to search for information about one thing. and i dare the gnomes to say they can create an application with half the features amarok has while keeping it even half as usable!
Now, before you get too pissed about nothing listen to this.
Amarok is not the poster chilled for good interface, no mater whether its features are useful or not (I have strong doubts about wikipedia lookups) the interface is overwhelming. When I think about good interface in KDE apps I think KStars or Krita, hell even the LWN’s Grumpy Editor’s review complained about Amaroks interface and he chose it as the winner (out of Rhythmbox, Banshee, Quod Libet and Amarok)! That should tell you something.
Amarok may be nice, but some things should be plugins and not all functions belong into an extra bar or anywhere else immediately visible. Clutter keeps you from doing what you want to do most, and even with Amarok that should be listening to music.
Now let me thank the idiot who could not keep his yap shut in a GTK thread about QT long enough to prevent a flame war, sir you are an asshole.
“you just can’t handle the fact there is no audioplayer as complete as amarok.”
perhaps because creating a highly unstable, unuserfriendly bloat monster like amarok is just not necessary and not wanted on the gnome desktop.
“and i dare the gnomes to say they can create an application with half the features amarok has while keeping it even half as usable!”
usable? *cough*
Why are KDE and Gnome even being dragged into this thread? GTK apps run in KDE, as easily as Qt apps can run in Gnome.
What popular third-party applications for linux are tied into Gnome or KDE as a requirement? Firefox and OOo2 will run fine in a KDE environment, Opera and Skype will run fine in Gnome. The vendors are not going to shoot themselves in the foot and close themselves off from a potential market by integrating their app into one particularl environment.
Maybe if the recent OSDL desktop initiative gains some momentum, and the DE’s begin working on a common framework, then maybe vendors can think about porting their applications to use DE enhancements (ie. native file pickers) without having to code for a specific DE. But until that happens, we’ll still be using vanilla applications with occassional DE customizations thrown in by the distro maintainers.
So really, the Gnome / KDE argument has no place in a discussion on the merits of programming in GTK.
And the LGPL thing is really getting monotonous. Implying that developers will flock to GTK over Qt or other proprietary alternatives because it’s LGPL is comparable to saying that users will flock to linux because it’s free and Microsoft is closed and proprietary. Hasn’t happened yet, and there are many reasons why that go beyond the price of licensing.
The only relevant point to me about the licensing debate is that GTK and Qt both serve to ensure that developers have their choice in frameworks depending upon their requirements and objectives. Only those developers and commercial software vendors can determine the best framework/licensing combination for their requirements.
Despite the number of you that want to believe otherwise, neither Gnome nor KDE will become “THE LINUX DESKTOP”. And neither is going to fade away and die any time soon either. If anything, this pointless bickering back and forth over options and functionality underscores the fact that linux needs desktop choice. CHOICE. -> CHOICE <- ***CHOICE*** C.H.O.I.C.E. CHOICE!
Rather than trying to outdo each other, the DE groups would be much better served by working together to convince vendors and developers that their apps will work seamlessly on everyone’s desktop of choice, this is where freedesktop standards really need to gain some teeth. The rest of the noise over this debate gains nothing and holds us back.
So whether GTK vs. Qt, Gnome vs. KDE, or Ubuntu vs. Everyone, or whatever frickin’ linux app/distro/component/library/DE is being debated, CHOICE must be maintained and protected.
Just my 2c. Grrr.
amarok could be better (and they are working on it, i’ve been running SVN for some time, and they are improving it in an impressive rate) but it IS impressive how they put so many usefull features in such an interface. yes, it is still a bit overdone (less in the latest version) but on the other hand – there are much less featurefull audioplayers that look more crowded.
“””
Xfce – lightning fast. Gedit -fast. Epiphany – fast. Gnome terminal -fast. Glade – lightning fast. Evolution – fast for a big program. Abiword – very fast. Gnumeric – Fast. Gnome running on my Debian Sarge install, on a Thinkpad with 300MHz cpu and 228meg memory, very fast. “””
Gnome-terminal fast ???!! Come on, that’s the most idiotic statement I’ve heard so far in this “discussion”. Gnome-terminal is the _slowest_ terminal-app of all. Period.
THERE IS NO DENYING that QT is WAY better optimized with regard to speed (which gives QT apps a more snappy feel, like on Windows or MacOSX).
That’s what you pro-GTK, anti-QT people are. You like primitive desktops and primitive apps. Configuring something like KDE is either too hard or too much work for you. Meanwhile, you’ll tolerate a lack of basic features and a butt ugly DE. I’ve said it a million times, and I’ll say it again. Gnome is ugly. If Gnome was an Attorney General, it would look like Janet Reno. If Gnome was a Secretary of State, it would look like Madeleine Albright…you get the point. For the life of me, I can’t figure out what’s wrong with you people. You can arrange KDE or make it look almost anyway you want. You can’t do that very with Gnome. The chance to customize is largely taken away from you.
“””Gnome terminals speed is partially bad because of VTE; I know cause I’ve tried to use VTE to make a terminal before. About two years ago it was a slow lib, and it consumed noticeable cycles when doing nothing at all.
It’s probably improved quite a bit since then. My recommendation is to just use xterm and quit complaining about those “fancy” terminals
.”””
Xterm is indeed a fast, light and mature terminal emulator.
But:
* No tabs support (`screen’ is no tab-replacement)
* No session support without manually creating cumbersome launch scripts
* Lacks advanced features
* No session profile support with multiple tabs saved as one session.
* Boring to configure via XResources and command line parameters (eventually, one will reach a point where configuration takes more time than actual work, that’s when it’s time to look for alternatives)
In short, switching to xterm is a big step backwards in terms (no pun intended) of functionality.
Konsole provides all of the above features AND it’s fast. Gnome-terminal is also advanced, but still too slow. Yes, faster than it used to be, no, not fast enough. It still crawls compared to konsole or xterm.
“It still crawls compared to konsole”
utter rubbish! i have just this minute compared the 2. gnome-terminal has already loaded while konsole was STILL spinning in the taskbar. it looks like its konsole thats the slow one and gnome-terminal thats the fast one.
utter rubbish! i have just this minute compared the 2. gnome-terminal has already loaded while konsole was STILL spinning in the taskbar.
Maybe because you are running Gnome so it has to load Qt and KDE libraries? Try the opposite: try to start Gnome Terminal under a KDE session and you’ll see that it takes a while to load too.
What the parent poster was trying to say with “fast” is not the loading time: it’s the redraw time. Try compiling some program. You’ll see noticeable slowdowns in Gnome Terminal.
“Maybe because you are running Gnome so it has to load Qt and KDE libraries?”
wrong. i’m running kde.
“Try compiling some program. You’ll see noticeable slowdowns in Gnome Terminal.”
i don’t. thats part of why i have a shortcut to gnome-terminal when i’m using kde. ijust dont use konsole because its slow to load, slow to compile, and less productive(less is more in this case).
Hahaha, konsole spinning in the taskbar? I’m using a slow laptop with standard RAM and SuSE 10. My taskbar doesn’t even find the time to spin at all before the konsole window shows up.
You might have found a way to slow its startup down, by having some huge background image and pseudo-transparency enabled maybe? But unless you tell us what you do, you are just another gnome-troll. For the rest of us, konsole’s startup is for all practical purposes instantaneous.
i always heard that qt would be so simple but i gave up
trying to make a working app after one houer. i could simply not get it to compile. in the same amount of time i had a working gtk app. so i dont know
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-gtk1/
If you RTFA you will have much better arguments on GTK and this flame will over.