- Mac os x yosemite 10.10.5 free download. StyleProject StyleProject is a style for qt4 and qt5 that requires kde for the window decoration. Aim is to make.
- OS X for Linux developers. One point to remember is that OS X is a customised version of BSD, so while it feels fairly familiar to a Linux developer, there are the occasional banana skins to slip you up. The OS X filesystem, despite appearances, is by default not case sensitive, so KDE kde kDe.
- Jan 25, 2008 This week Slashdot (and many, many others) reported that KDE 4.0 has been released for Windows and OS X. KDE (K Desktop Environment) has been a popular GUI for.nix systems and there have been ways of getting it to run (mostly) on OS X prior.
- Qt 4 is available under the LGPL for Mac OS X and Windows, which allows KDE 4 to run on those platforms. The ports to both platforms are in an early state. As of August 2010, KDE Software compilation 4 on Mac OS X is considered beta, while on Windows it is not in the final state, so applications can be unsuitable for day to day use yet.
Prelude
Jan 16, 2007 To be frank, I'm not entirely sure why, but somebody has taken it into their mind to port Linux KDE4 applications to Mac OS X. As we've previously mentioned, K. Getting KDE Software. As KDE produces Free Software, you can download and install KDE programs in most cases free of charge. On this page can read below about various ways to get KDE software.
A little more than an year ago I wrote my rant postThe Linux Desktop Experience is Killing Linux on the Desktopand for the first time in 8 years I wasn’t a desktop Linux useranymore. I spent about a month wrestling with Windows 7, but let’sface it - Windows is ill suited for professional Ruby programmers likeme (and it’s ill suited for most programmers, except maybe Java & .Net Iguess).
Anyways, it was never my intention to stick with Windows - I was justdoing my Mac due diligence. Now with 1+ year of OS X usage I’dlike to share a few things about my experience thus far with you.
From Linux to OS X
The transition was initially painful - I felt very odd dragging appicons to the
Applications
folder to install them. To be honest I wasquite puzzled what was I supposed to do the first time I had toinstall an app this way (it didn’t have those helpful hints with the arrows most appsdo). The Linux distro package management is definitely infinitelybetter, or at least it seems so from where I’m standing. Luckily for me most of thetools I use are available from the third-party homebrew packagemanager for OS X. It’s like an extremely basic version of the mightyGentoo portage
, but it generally gets the job done.On a more positive note - I was impressed with the quality andresponsiveness of the OS X desktop and the fact that Emacs keybindingsare used by default in its editor toolkit (and strangely puzzled bythe lack of right control key - how is one supposed to hit
Control +a
I dare ask?). One app in particular - spotlight
, blew me off thewater, especially after having dealt on Linux with crappy clones likebeagle
in the past. Spotlight can truly find just about anything,was it’s own SQL-like query language and is blazingly fast.I quickly found a good terminal emulator (that would beiterm2 - it’s actually thebest terminal emulator in the world IMHO) andmost of the command-line apps I used from day to day were already lying around(after all OS X is Unix) - to my great surprise even stuff like PostgreSQL(only on OS X Server) and
zsh
came preinstalled. Most of the otherapps I really needed had native OS X ports; the others - worthyalternatives.Having hated OpenOffice.org for many years I was very pleasantlysurprised by quality of apps like
Keynote
& Words
.Being a keyboard chap preaching in the church of
Das Keyboard
I wasa bit underwhelmed by the whole multi-touch mumbo-jumbo at first, butafter a while I came to the conclusion that Apple have the onlytrackpads and mice that are actually worth using (even though I stilllike using the keyboard way more).To sum it all up - I got up to speed fairly quickly, but it was abumpy ride.
Here’s a bit more details… Syncaila 2.1.1 crack.
The things I love about OS X
The Desktop
It’s pretty, it’s quick, it’s stable. It makes KDE4 and GNOME3 looklike school projects in comparison. And did I mention that the fontson OS X are even prettier than the ones in Windows?
The OS X flavored apps
Sparrow is the first desktop mail client I ever liked (shame onyou Google for killing it).
iTerm2 is the ultimate terminal emulator. It alone warrants thepurchase of a Mac.
Keynote is the best presentation program I’ve come to use thus far.
Parallels Desktop is light years ahead of VirtualBox and KVM (as faras desktop virtualization is concerned).
I could go on a lot like this, but I’ll stop now.
It’s obvious that Mac users have developed a taste in extremelyrefined software.
Hardware compatibility
If something is supposed to work with OS X - it works superblyout-of-the-box. I’ve almost forgotten now the days of constant battlewith crappy hardware. Sleep & Wake just work. Battery life isexceptional (due to very advanced power management capabilities).
Certainly controlling all of the hardware an OS will run on helps alot, but we still have to acknowledge Apple’s achievement.
Stability
One year, three Macs - only two or three system crashes. For adeveloper that likes to tinker a little bit more than he should -that’s impressive.
That having said I had some Linux desktops that used run for more thanhalf an year without reboots (and the reboots were often caused bypower outages or distro/kernel updates). Linux stability on a (fairlynew) laptop? Well, that’s a whole different story…
The things that are OK
The default apps
The apps bundled with OS X are not bad at all, but they aren’tparticularly great. Still - Safari is a very good browser, Mail is amuch better desktop client than Evolution/Thunderbird, Calendar is agood organizer (but a bit buggy when it comes down to Google Calendarintegration), Messages is so-so.
The bottom line is - you can go a long way with the bundled apps, butthey aren’t exactly perfect. My advice - shop for alternatives (bothopen-source and proprietary).
Mac App Store
Decent way to distribute proprietary apps, but with all therestrictions on the app sandboxing there aren’t many interesting appsout there. Hopefully it’ll get better in time. The ability to upgradeyour OS X by purchasing the new version from the App Store is very cool(for a proprietary OS of course).
Emacs
The Cocoa port of Emacs is a bit immature and there are some visualglitches here and there (try out
M-x linum-mode
for instance), butthey are forgivable. I’m also missing the deep integration Emacs had with Linux.And who the fuck designed all the official Mac keyboards without aright control key? I finally understood why so many Mac users where onvimBtw, remapping the
Caps
to Control
is not the answer. I do it now,I did it on Linux as well. You simply not supposed to hit Control +any other key with the same hand. It’s disruptive to yourtyping… But then again - you should probably do most of your typingwill a full sized keyboardSoftware Development
OS X doesn’t nurture software development as much as Linux does, but itcomes pretty close in second place. All the tools you know and loveare available, but their installation & setup is a little bit moreinvolved on OS X. There is a reason why the screenshots in mostprogramming books show OS X.
System administration
Definitely a step back from Linux. Programs like
launchctl
(for instance) are notexactly fun to work with, but they do get the job done. I’d never usean OS X box for anything more than a desktop workstation. Setting up asensible $PATH
is not as trivial as it was on Linux either(/etc/paths
and some plist I forgotten come to mind).The things I hate
Kde4 Os X 10
The special keys
Not exactly an OS X feature, but still…
One year and I still hate
Command
and Option
- option is basically Alt
on a strange location and Command is totally useless IMHO. I’dprobably wouldn’t have hated them as much if there were room left onthe Apple keyboards (expect of course the old wired Apple keyboard) for an addition control key. Luckily for me I use anexternalDas Keyboard Ultimatemost of the time…Command and Option do have some value, I’d probably would haveappreciated it if they didn’t come at the cost of my beloved rightcontrol (which I guess only Emacs users are missing anyways).
Kde4 Os X Factor
No standard all mighty package manager
![Kdeos live iso Kdeos live iso](/uploads/1/2/5/5/125521872/748863990.png)
Kdeos Live Iso
On Linux I had
aptitude
, yum
, portage
and pacman
- all amazing at whatthey do. On OS X - homebrew
is a decent option, but it’s a far cry fromthe might and magic of the Linux package managers. Still, homebrew
is better than it’s alternative, so beware!Ugly XML config files
Here and there in OS X you have to write some appalling XML configfiles. I thought I’d never see the likes of those again after I putJava development behind me.
XCode
You need to install a giant lame IDE just to get a bunch of commandline development tools? That’s one of the most annoying things I’veencountered up-to-date in OS X.
Yep, I know about the tools being availableseparately forcouple of months now, but requesting an Apple developer registrationjust to get them seems a bit to much to me.
Epilogue
Am I happier now without Linux? Definitely! Is OS X a better OS thanLinux? Absolutely not! It does have a much better desktopexperience and since I spend most of the time on a computerinteracting with the desktop - that’s a big win for me. Of course Iwouldn’t mind seeing Linux achieve this level of desktop maturity andstability.
Should you dump Linux and join me in darkness? How the hell shouldI know? I’m just sharing my two cents - if you’re happy usingLinux you should definitely stick with it. Obviously I wasn’t andthere weren’t that many alternatives lying around.
Not having to deal with hardware problems and immature desktop apps islike a breath of fresh air and it more than compensates for the fewshortcomings of OS X. Nothing compensates the lack of that rightcontrol key on most keyboards, but after all that’s not an OS problem.
There is great vibrant hacker community gathered around OS X and it’sone of the main driving forces of the OS. There is unfortunately a lotof corporate pressure from Apple as well, but as you already know bynow - there are never perfect things, there are alwayscompromises. I’d rather use a proprietary OS that stays out of my way,than a free OS into which I bump at every turn.
Soon I’ll blog a little bit more about the practical aspects andimplication of the migration. Cheers, mates!
P.S. I’ve updated the original post a bit to reflect some of theinitial feedback I received.