KDE 3.0.1 Ported to MacOS X and Darwin

The Fink project, which
"wants to bring the full world of Unix
Open Source software to
Darwin and
Mac OS X
", has
announced the
successful port of KDE 3.0.1 to the platform.
The package list for the initial release includes a great part of the KDE
core distribution, including Konqueror
(screenshot). Importantly, it also includes both
KOffice
(screenshot)
and KDevelop, as well as
kio_fish and, you guessed
it, the Liquid style.
Hopefully they can resolve the linker/libtool issues which are responsible
for the rather large size of the binary packages.
Nevertheless, a number of Fink project members have reported successfully
using KDE on their Mac OS for several weeks. Congratulations to the
Fink team!

Comments

well... the first place u should look at is kde-look.org .use karamba , and superkaramba to aplly the variety of themes they have to make ur kde look like osx

in the "kde improvments" they have a script called "smoothdock" try to find the older version "mria"

i've been trying to get my kde look like osx for about a week ... scanning the net for themes scripts.....
and i didnt get it to look and feel exactly like the osx. when the icons are larger they dont look as good .. they arent smooth like in the osx ...

but i think that if u'll scan kde-look.org from left to right u'll find what ur looking for ..
good luck.

Well, we have all gotton our selves flusterd havn't we??

Lets look at this argument the way we're meant too. Each OS is aimed at a different market to for fill a different niche and do a different job. For example....

Mac OS X... Desinged for Audio/Video production (I.e. Avid stuff)
Windows XP... Desinged for Audio/Visual/multimedia playback (i.e. media player 9)
Linux....... Desinged for the people who just can't leave the frekin thing alone!!
Unix..... Desinged (orginally) for network server's..

Now... the above list is how the os's plain work.. they do the aobve better than there rivals.. THe way you want your system too look is purly personal.. so you want your mac to look like win xp... its still gunna do the above task better than XP ever will but if the user likes the look of xp they can have it.... its the same argument for all of these situations.. you buy the system that does the job best.. you find an interface that pleases you most.. full stop.

I recently switched from Windows XP to Mac OS9 (yeah, full platform switch) becuase i wanted to run protools and the windows version seemed rubbish, slow and blotted in comparison to the mac version.

Bob.

I agree with Bob. Any OS can look like another OS,but each OS is for a different usage. I feel like if you want to make your favorite look like another OS that's fine.
Now,about KDE looking like OSX give me a break! It's meant to mimick Windows from the start. That's what it's function is.To be easy for Windows users moving to Linux. And it is that. I don't have aproblem seeig people do that. It's cool. But it will never be good at mimicking it from a default standpoint. I am a Linux users who uses both Gnome and KDE. I perfer Gnome 2.4. To me it is closets thing to looking halfway like Mac OSX in it's default look. It always gets the bad mojo from users,but I don't see how. It mimicks OSX features pretty well,even has themes and a graphical login screen that is themeable. And Gnome has FAST USER SWITCHING ala OSX and XP. Try that in KDE. Only version I know of a Linux using KDE with FAST USER SWITCHING is Xandros and it is slow as a snail. I recently made a Panther theme for Gnome 2.6,and let me say I fooled my own mother who uses a Mac at work! Rumour has it that Gnome was around before Mac decided to start calling it Aqua in OSX. Hmmmm...could it be the two are the same just with a little tweaking? Why maybe so.

Long live the Simian,
Miss Trin

I'm a linux user, I've used Mandrake with KDE and I now use Ubuntu with Gnome. I like the look of Gnome, it just looks so clean and slick. I liked KDE, although it reminds me a little of tin foil and can be buggy. I've also used OSX, and it is simply the best looking. It kills any version of Windows, Gnome, KDE, *box, and everything else I've ever used in the looks department. Each OS has its uses, Linux makes a great firewall, server, or desktop for someone that can handle it. Windows is good for the everyday person that can't really use a computer well, it "just works" without much buggering about. Mac OSX looks great, but I don't think we should just say that's all it's good at. OSX is a very competant OS, not just for looks but for all your everyday use. It is, however, particularly strong as a graphical editing OS. I am a linux user, but I will use anything, and judge it on it's strengths and weaknesses, not just on what does and does not look good.

I think if people want to skin GTK to look like OSX or get an iTunes XMMS skin they can...why the hell not?! People made them because someone, somewhere in the world wanted it. We wouldn't be here talking about it if it was just one or two people that actually do this. People do it for a reason, people copy other people for a reason, they think it looks good, if you don't then don't do it, it's much easier than complaining about it, and much less annoying too.

I don't really see the argument here, but here's my 2 cents. I work with Linux at my job and at home. I can do anything that anyother OS can do. The thing is, Linux is a bit more underground than the leading brand. It's really cheap as f***. Point I'm trying to make is why not make it look like the leading brands? I like to throw people off with it too both parties wheather they are MS or OsX users 90% of them do not have a clue what to do when they step on to my platform. They come up and ask if they want to use my computer...I always say yes...no matter what. They see the winampclassic skin on my Desktop and then they see the dock positioned in the bottom-center with the similar icons that resemble OsX. They don't know what to do. I really think this fight is worthless and it bores me. Don't bother replying cos I won't answer.

by Rayman (not verified)

Mac OSX requires the best hardware available; hence it is fast. How does KDE performs in Mac OSX?

by x4ce (not verified)

Slow as a bugger, but so was Gnome. Its largely XFree86's fault, as its not accellerated at all, but i heard the current CVS xFree86 was getting optimised for 10.2.

Mind you, that doesnt mean its not usable, but the interface is slow compared to running native apps and kde on a linux kernel. not all the kde stuff is sorted out yet as well, its in the process of being ported, theyre not finished yet.

Nonetheless I have found it quite usable allready. running gui unix apps next to mac os apps on the same desktop is like having 2 machines in 1... and eliminates my need of reboots or an extra machine. :)

by Jerry (not verified)

Mac OS X doesn't require much hardware, just a G3, not G4.
Unfortunately, I'm running it on the lowest end machine that OS X
runs on, close to a 266mHz G3 66mHz bus. I have to play games waiting for
KDE to boot on X (now sure what's slowing it down, but someone mentioned
the equiv to dlls???, maybe how they were ported???, and the other comment on XWindows). Also, this graphics hardware on the original G3 minitower is not accelerated, only the newer graphics cards were accelerated in Mac OS X.

With that said, I am very glad to be able to run open source software on the hardware I have available to me. Also, to see linux based software until I can get the hw to run natively.

Great job FINK!!

Jerry

by Ranger Rick (not verified)

Actually, we've since figured out what part of the speed issue was. There's a bug in qt 3.0.4 that affects linuxppc as well; a one-line patch shaves 30 seconds off of konqueror's startup, among other things. A new release is due soon (hopefully this weekend if the test binaries are OK).

by Jerry (not verified)

The update is much better. Now I have to find another excuse to play games!!

It keeps getting better, GREAT JOB FINK GROUP!!
Jerry

by g78 (not verified)

I though that the Qt licence fordid the installation of Qt on a not free system for example win32 (ie. you have to pay to get that version). What about the X version of Qt, is it free also ?

Thanks

by Ranger Rick (not verified)

QT-X11 is perfectly fine on MacOSX, we're *running* it in X11.

Not only that, I can only assume they're OK with it, they've accepted patches from the Fink team (3.0.4 includes some of our fixes for building on Darwin with X11).

by fault (not verified)

1. the license for qt/X11 license is the GPL.

2. the GPL does not forbid installation of Qt on a non-free system, like win32, last time I checked. if it did, companies like redhat (through cygwin, would have run into problems a long time ago).

3. the gpl'd qt/X11 itself can be ported to win32 or macosx natively (trolltech would probably not even be unhappy with you as it would not compete much with their commercial offerings since the end result would be GPL). There is nothing in the GPL that says it couldn't be done, however, nobody has done it yet.

This would of course be the key to running KDE apps fast on macosx or win32. The other barrier is some of the X11-specific parts in kdelibs, but that's not a huge issue as the usage of a native qt.

by me (not verified)

why not set aside resources in porting it to windows too when you're at it..., idiots.

i guess it's prestige, and nothing else that is the drive forece...

by nobody (not verified)

eh?

by blashyrkh (not verified)
by Sam (not verified)

Firstly, perhaps you should set aside some of *your* time to improving your spelling.

Secondly, the developers in question are free to do what they wish with *their own time*. Free software is very much about "scratching an itch" - often developers will work on a project just because they "feel like it". Without that mentality, a lot of excellent software would never have been created.

So quit criticising the work of others. Maybe you could even contribute something positive yourself?

by Ranger Rick (not verified)

Or perhaps you can worry about what you do with your own time, and stop worrying about mine. =)

I did it because it's fun, and because I wanted my favorite terminal, konsole, on OSX. The rest is gravy, but I've learned a lot in the process. I had konsole running in just a few days of real work (albeit statically built). At that point, I told others about it and we decided it would be fun to get everything working for real.

I'm not a "resource", I'm a guy who likes to tinker. I do a lot of other "productive" things for the Fink project, but this was a way for me to get my hands dirty in getting a lot of great X11 apps running on MacOS X all at once.

Not only that, in the process of getting KDE working, we've found a lot of other issues in libtool and other stuff that were not 100% on MacOS X, so the things that went into getting KDE working bled over into helping a lot of other software work better as well.

by Al (not verified)

> I did it because it's fun, and because I wanted my favorite terminal, konsole, on OSX.

Konsole is my favorite too. The version at http://konsole.kde.org is even better than the KDE 3.0 one.

by x4ce (not verified)

LOL! Prestige! youre quite funny gr8... you should consider becoming a stand up comedian or sthing... *pinks a tear away...* *snirff*

the guys who ported it maintain a packet manager for OSX. They ported the debian tools to OSX so you can easily install and maintain unix applications on mac os x and darwin. If youre running the opensource darwin, they also provide you the means of installing x11 on it, so that you have a graphical frontend, which doesnt come with darwin. they had the gnome desktop enviroment for a while, and its a Good Thing they were able to add KDE as well. By consequence the gui stuff also runs on mac os x (since they share the same unix underpinnings) so that mac os x users can run things like gimp and other unix gui apps.

porting to W32 would be a whole other beast since its not unix... and its way beyond the scope of their project. BTW why dont you just throw that M$ big bloated with difficult words wrapped crap out (M$ says : if you cant make it good, just slap some difficult words on it and it will appear as state of the art) and try a real OS?

MacOS X users can just run Darwin, without any of the rest of MacOS X, if we want. I'm interested in running KDE from there, as if I were running Darwin on a PC. I wonder if that's possible...

yes, i've done it and it works great. :)

by james sullivan (not verified)

Would you like to tell me how this is done?
Thanks.
James.

by Michael Sitarzewski (not verified)

You have to show username and password fields in the login window... then use this as the user name:

>console

with no password. you'll be sent to the Darwin login screen. If that isn't good enough, let me know and I'll hunt down the changes to the startup system that take you straight to the Darwin login screen.