Native KDE Applications Coming for OS X

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, KDE has been able to run using Apple's X11 Window System, but this new effort will be better integrated into OS X, including the use of Aqua. What this means is that the KDE Workspace (desktop environment) itself won't be ported, but certain applications like KOffice and Konqueror will. They will appear to run just like native OS X applications, with Aqua windows, etc.

The author mentions at the end of his article the advantages of bringing KDE applications to the other platforms. His main point seems to be that KDE users will benefit as developers on other platforms are exposed to the KDE Applications (e.g. Safari's underlying HTML rendering engine-Webkit-started out life as KHTML from KDE, so as websites have moved to support Safari better, Konqueror users have benefited as well). Perhaps it's just because I'm not that familiar with the KDE applications, but I'm just not really seeing how this benefits OS X users that much. That said, I guess I'll chalk this one up to more is better, and besides, it's a pretty cool technical achievement if nothing else. Let me know in the comments if there are any applications from KDE you're really looking forward to.

Thanks Paul!

[Update: As usual TUAW readers are great. Thanks for all the app suggestions; now you've got me excited!]

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Source: http://dot.kde.org/1168899755/

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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...

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TheIggy

I'm looking forward to Quanta just as long as all the kioslaves (i.e. native sftp/etc. access) get ported too. I love being able to work on my test server from anywhere in the world without having to worry about copying files back and forth for testing using an (s)ftp program. Konsole could be cool too, but I don't find iTerm all that horrid. Koffice is nice. It doesn't handle most of the needlessly complex files my clients seem to send me all the time though. Neither does OpenOffice. Only MS Office seems to handle the really weird ones. Sorry... mind wandering...

January 16 2007 at 10:40 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

zerock

is kopete, KDE? if yes, then count me in.

January 16 2007 at 8:14 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Catt

Kivio is the KDE version of Visio and it rocks! I'm looking forward to the port.

January 16 2007 at 6:36 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

minty95

Kolf! Yesssss!!!

January 16 2007 at 1:44 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Andreas Haller

OSX would defnitly benefit from some KDE apps.

Like Scribus for instance, that already runs under OSX. It's something like Adobe InDesign, but OpenSource.

It would be nice, if there are more OpenSource apps ported to OSX.
I am using gnome, so i am used to and i like applications like Rhythmbox, F-Spot, Ekiga, Tomboy, ... there are so many useful apps out there. And with Linux you can install them with a few clicks (i count four clicks using gnome-app-installer and benefiting from the ubuntu repositories). No searching on the net, no paying 19$ for a small utility app, just click to install, try, deinstall or keep. Having this on OSX would be nice.

January 16 2007 at 12:23 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

stefans

Awesome! Konquest on my Mac: I'd love it...

January 16 2007 at 11:32 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Ray

A better Konsole than OSX's would be nice.

I'd love to have Konqueror on the Mac. Finder is a hateful and lame dodo bird of a file manager, no cut-file command, move-file is screwed, etc. The other Mac substitutes like Pathfinder are obtuse, leaving you feeling like you're trying to masturbate with toothpicks. Finder needs to be replaced in Leopard or be completely updated. I'm a switcher but there is simply no way to manage files as flexibly with Finder as you can with Windows Explorer. And Konqueror is even better.

Finder is the absolute pits and Terminal stinks. OSX deserves much better basic utilities.

January 16 2007 at 11:17 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Carl Caum

Actually all KDE applications will run on Mac OS X and Windows as well as Linux. KDE is built on QT which is a fully cross platform toolkit. KDE 4 will utilize QT4 to its full potential which means that any application written for KDE 4 will automatically run on any OS with KDE libs installed.

January 16 2007 at 11:00 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Lerxst

Amarok is amazing. Would love to have it in my Mac!

January 16 2007 at 10:34 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Michael Salmon

One of the things that many forget is that KDE is built on top of QT and not X11. I don't think that it is going to be easy but as QT is available for the Mac it is a good deal easier than it might have been.

January 16 2007 at 10:19 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply