8 ms·

KDE makes Qt

158 points by emilsedgh 12y ago

MrUnderhill 12y ago
It's linked at the end of the article, but I think it deserves a mention here as well: https://www.kde.org/fundraisers/yearend2014/ https://www.kde.org/fundraisers/yearend2014/
Nullabillity 12y ago
The server is down.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  no cache either. found this elsewhere: "Recently I was trying some statistics on the qtbase-module (where QtCore, QtGui, QtWidgets and so on lives) and was wondering who made them. Not based on their current paid affilation, like Thiago’s graphs, but if each commit was made by a person coming from KDE. So, I got hold of Thiago’s scripts, a lovely mix of perl and zsh, and a QtBase git repository. First steps was to try to classify people as person coming from KDE or not. Of course, I’m a KDE person. Thiago is a KDE person. David Faure is a KDE person. Olivier Goffart is a KDE person. Lars Knoll is a KDE person. By the help of the KDE accounts file, and some of the long time KDE contributors, I got after a half day of work a good list of it. Then next steps was trying to put it into Thiago’s perlscripts All of it kind of succeeded: qtbase-KDE.graph So, KDE people makes up for 40-60% of the weekly commits to QtBase. This is again shows that KDE is important to Qt, just as the reverse is. So, let’s keep KDE healthy. KDE is running a end-of-year fundraiser over here https://www.kde.org/fundraisers/yearend2014/ https://www.kde.org/fundraisers/yearend2014/. Go ahead and donate, and help KDE stay healthy. For your own sake. And for Qt’s."
istoica 12y ago
I love KDE,I like QT, why is GTK the preferred toolkit on Linuxes these days ? I would really like to see an objective analysis, I am not in the camp of KDE/QT against Gnome/GTK, but in modern times, what makes GTK a better goto choice in respect to other frameworks(QT, FOX, FLTK)? Is it inertia, is it philosophy, is it technical details, is it licensing policy ?
- Sammi 12y ago
  One of the best discussions on the subject, made by old hackers, but new guys to GUI programming, who tried both: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON0A1dsQOV0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON0A1dsQOV0
- yoz-y 12y ago
  I think one of the main points is the language. GTK is a C framework, Qt is C++. A lot of people in Linux community prefer to use old school C. Also licensing was certainly an issue at some point. The open source project I was working on made the choice to use GTK because it was Free. If we had to make the choice now, again, we would choose Qt. But it is too late to rewrite years worth of code.
  - adrusi 12y ago
    Also, while GTK is written in C, it is designed with cross-language compatability in mind. GTK has first class support in C, C++, Vala, Python, and Javascript (there are still more official bindings and countless unofficial bindings). Qt is almost exclusively a C++ framework. There are Python bindings, but they aren't comparable to GTK's.
    - Sammi 12y ago
      I haven't tried these, but there seems to be QT bindings for quite a few languages: https://qt-project.org/wiki/Category:LanguageBindings https://qt-project.org/wiki/Category:LanguageBindings
    - Zardoz84 12y ago
      It's a real problem. I really like to use QT, but I found that is problematic if you aren't using C++. For example on C, D or Java. There is bindigns, but or are lagging behind the last version of QT (ie Qt 4.8 or more older) with very few support or are abandoned some time ago.
  - lmedinas 12y ago
    I'm not so sure if most of the people want to use GTK because it's C. Because usually that means that they have to deal with GObject which is not so nice.
nnnnni 12y ago
Wait, this is news to someone? I thought that EVERYONE knew that QT came from the KDE developers?! ...but yeah, it'd be nice for some money to be thrown their way.
- Sammi 12y ago
  Well I thought it came from the company behind it.
- nknighthb 12y ago
  Qt came from Trolltech, KDE was originally just using it. KDE developers being major or majority contributors to Qt has been a more recent and gradual phenomenon. I haven't followed closely, but I imagine it also got a big boost with the governance changes in the last year or two.
wheels 12y ago
From what the article says, it seems to imply that simply being in the KDE accounts file (a list of everyone who's able to commit to KDE) puts one in the "KDE" camp. That's almost certainly a bit misleading since many of the early engineering hires at Trolltech were KDE people who for more than a decade have been more "Qt" than "KDE". Also, since there are obvious dogfooding benefits to using a desktop built on the toolkit you develop, there are a good many people who worked for Trolltech (and later Nokia, then Digia) who used KDE and would have accounts created to commit an occasional patch. A more interesting metric would be to see what percentage of Qt commits come from people who commit more to KDE than they do to Qt (and vice versa). As such, this just seems to establish what everybody already knew -- that the two projects are very intermingled.
- Shamanmuni 12y ago
  But that's not what he wanted to point out, at all. It's not about percentages of contributions. He classified them as coming from KDE or not and wanted to demonstrate that many important Qt contributors started in KDE. If someone started contributing to Qt before they contributed to KDE, even if they contribute 99% to KDE, then they don't count as "a KDE person" for this metric. As far as I understand, it's a message to everyone who uses Qt. Even those who don't use KDE have an interest in keeping it healthy as many valuable Qt contributors come from there. And the graph supports that wonderfully.
giancarlostoro 12y ago
I love KDE, except when my graphics card doesn't cooperate with it. When I first tried KDE3 when I installed Slackware the first time I tried Linux it was perfect. Now years later, Kubuntu with KDE4 is perfect. I really love the IRC client. I love Qt as well, I wish Qt Creator had a plugin for developing KDE apps. Great projects that solve many problems.
- Zardoz84 12y ago
  In my personal experience, Qt can handle buggy graphics drivers better that Gtk . In special with the Radeon drivers, were with GTK you got an unusable screen with deformed menus, and with Qt was fine. Or that with the SVGA driver (yep, not acceleration) GTK runs painful slow when with Qt you run soft and with alpha effects.
emilsedgh 12y ago
Now that this story is on front page and is getting attention, I'd like to remind you guys that KDE is having a fundraiser [0]. If you use Plasma Desktop, Okular, Kate, Krita, Amarok , Calligra suite or any KDE product, consider donating. [0] https://www.kde.org/fundraisers/yearend2014/ https://www.kde.org/fundraisers/yearend2014/
- anonbanker 12y ago
  Donating now. Thanks.

158 points by emilsedgh 12y ago

It's linked at the end of the article, but I think it deserves a mention here as well: https://www.kde.org/fundraisers/yearend2014/ https://www.kde.org/fundraisers/yearend2014/

Nullabillity 12y ago

The server is down.

jacquesm 12y ago
no cache either. found this elsewhere: "Recently I was trying some statistics on the qtbase-module (where QtCore, QtGui, QtWidgets and so on lives) and was wondering who made them. Not based on their current paid affilation, like Thiago’s graphs, but if each commit was made by a person coming from KDE. So, I got hold of Thiago’s scripts, a lovely mix of perl and zsh, and a QtBase git repository. First steps was to try to classify people as person coming from KDE or not. Of course, I’m a KDE person. Thiago is a KDE person. David Faure is a KDE person. Olivier Goffart is a KDE person. Lars Knoll is a KDE person. By the help of the KDE accounts file, and some of the long time KDE contributors, I got after a half day of work a good list of it. Then next steps was trying to put it into Thiago’s perlscripts All of it kind of succeeded: qtbase-KDE.graph So, KDE people makes up for 40-60% of the weekly commits to QtBase. This is again shows that KDE is important to Qt, just as the reverse is. So, let’s keep KDE healthy. KDE is running a end-of-year fundraiser over here https://www.kde.org/fundraisers/yearend2014/ https://www.kde.org/fundraisers/yearend2014/. Go ahead and donate, and help KDE stay healthy. For your own sake. And for Qt’s."

istoica 12y ago

I love KDE,I like QT, why is GTK the preferred toolkit on Linuxes these days ? I would really like to see an objective analysis, I am not in the camp of KDE/QT against Gnome/GTK, but in modern times, what makes GTK a better goto choice in respect to other frameworks(QT, FOX, FLTK)? Is it inertia, is it philosophy, is it technical details, is it licensing policy ?

Sammi 12y ago
One of the best discussions on the subject, made by old hackers, but new guys to GUI programming, who tried both: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON0A1dsQOV0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON0A1dsQOV0
yoz-y 12y ago
I think one of the main points is the language. GTK is a C framework, Qt is C++. A lot of people in Linux community prefer to use old school C. Also licensing was certainly an issue at some point. The open source project I was working on made the choice to use GTK because it was Free. If we had to make the choice now, again, we would choose Qt. But it is too late to rewrite years worth of code.
- adrusi 12y ago
  Also, while GTK is written in C, it is designed with cross-language compatability in mind. GTK has first class support in C, C++, Vala, Python, and Javascript (there are still more official bindings and countless unofficial bindings). Qt is almost exclusively a C++ framework. There are Python bindings, but they aren't comparable to GTK's.
  - Sammi 12y ago
    I haven't tried these, but there seems to be QT bindings for quite a few languages: https://qt-project.org/wiki/Category:LanguageBindings https://qt-project.org/wiki/Category:LanguageBindings
  - Zardoz84 12y ago
    It's a real problem. I really like to use QT, but I found that is problematic if you aren't using C++. For example on C, D or Java. There is bindigns, but or are lagging behind the last version of QT (ie Qt 4.8 or more older) with very few support or are abandoned some time ago.
- lmedinas 12y ago
  I'm not so sure if most of the people want to use GTK because it's C. Because usually that means that they have to deal with GObject which is not so nice.

nnnnni 12y ago

Wait, this is news to someone? I thought that EVERYONE knew that QT came from the KDE developers?! ...but yeah, it'd be nice for some money to be thrown their way.

Sammi 12y ago
Well I thought it came from the company behind it.
nknighthb 12y ago
Qt came from Trolltech, KDE was originally just using it. KDE developers being major or majority contributors to Qt has been a more recent and gradual phenomenon. I haven't followed closely, but I imagine it also got a big boost with the governance changes in the last year or two.

wheels 12y ago

From what the article says, it seems to imply that simply being in the KDE accounts file (a list of everyone who's able to commit to KDE) puts one in the "KDE" camp. That's almost certainly a bit misleading since many of the early engineering hires at Trolltech were KDE people who for more than a decade have been more "Qt" than "KDE". Also, since there are obvious dogfooding benefits to using a desktop built on the toolkit you develop, there are a good many people who worked for Trolltech (and later Nokia, then Digia) who used KDE and would have accounts created to commit an occasional patch. A more interesting metric would be to see what percentage of Qt commits come from people who commit more to KDE than they do to Qt (and vice versa). As such, this just seems to establish what everybody already knew -- that the two projects are very intermingled.

Shamanmuni 12y ago
But that's not what he wanted to point out, at all. It's not about percentages of contributions. He classified them as coming from KDE or not and wanted to demonstrate that many important Qt contributors started in KDE. If someone started contributing to Qt before they contributed to KDE, even if they contribute 99% to KDE, then they don't count as "a KDE person" for this metric. As far as I understand, it's a message to everyone who uses Qt. Even those who don't use KDE have an interest in keeping it healthy as many valuable Qt contributors come from there. And the graph supports that wonderfully.

giancarlostoro 12y ago

I love KDE, except when my graphics card doesn't cooperate with it. When I first tried KDE3 when I installed Slackware the first time I tried Linux it was perfect. Now years later, Kubuntu with KDE4 is perfect. I really love the IRC client. I love Qt as well, I wish Qt Creator had a plugin for developing KDE apps. Great projects that solve many problems.

Zardoz84 12y ago
In my personal experience, Qt can handle buggy graphics drivers better that Gtk . In special with the Radeon drivers, were with GTK you got an unusable screen with deformed menus, and with Qt was fine. Or that with the SVGA driver (yep, not acceleration) GTK runs painful slow when with Qt you run soft and with alpha effects.

emilsedgh 12y ago

Now that this story is on front page and is getting attention, I'd like to remind you guys that KDE is having a fundraiser [0]. If you use Plasma Desktop, Okular, Kate, Krita, Amarok , Calligra suite or any KDE product, consider donating. [0] https://www.kde.org/fundraisers/yearend2014/ https://www.kde.org/fundraisers/yearend2014/

anonbanker 12y ago
Donating now. Thanks.