This simple guide will go over the basics of setting up and running KDE on MacOSX. You’ll need at least Mac OS 10.3, Fink, and some experience with the command-line.
This simple guide will go over the basics of setting up and running KDE on MacOSX. You’ll need at least Mac OS 10.3, Fink, and some experience with the command-line.
How fast it is to run KDE on OS X ?..is it like cgywin on windows! or it is native port..does running it with aqua affects speed ? Is it possible to run KDE on OS X without having aqua with it ?
Is it possible to run KDE on OS X without having aqua with it ?
Yes, it’s called Darwin with KDE on top.
Why.????
I like OSX as it is..!!
Cause I enjoy both KDE and OS X and if I can run Kile for instance plus a variety of other OSS apps under OS X I will.
I also publish using TeXShop but I prefer Kile.
i’ve never had any problems with Apple’s X11 and KDE working together.
i also love os x desktop. why would i like to run kde??? i would rather tun linux in my dell laptop.
but it is good to know that this can be done. i love os x.
-2501
.. why? put something as FUGLY as KDE on a system that already has a nice GUI (aqua)…
Why use something as fugly as aqua when you can use KDE?
See how that works?
bravo ^_^
A lot of people like the look of OSX, but I cant stand it after awhile. At first, it really grabbed my attention and then it slowly started to grow on me. It’s like looking at a rapper with too many gold teeth and gold chains or that big, bright, and shiny pimple on my ass.
i want to do this on my mini….so cool
You can grab the XDarwin from Fink and use it as well or download from XDarwin.org and install from there. Then rsynch with Fink and get the KDE for 10.4 Unstable.
KDE, Gnome, and almost any other window manager/desktop environment will work fine on a Mac on top of Darwin.
The point is not that KDE is better than OSX, it is simply that KDE is multiplatform. One can have the same desktop environment on PPC, X86, SPARC, Alpha, and whatever else.
While to many Mac users KDE would be ridiculous, to some this is very nice because they can maintain the same desktop environment between their Mac, X86 PC, and at work.
Just so people are aware, this cannot be done using OSX 10.4 (Tiger). The kde packages are not available.
you can still build from source, all from fink.
You CAN install KDE on OS 10.4:
1) You have to set fink to use the unstable packages. This is fairly easy if you use the Fink Commander GUI front end, it’s an option selectable from the menus.
2) You have to have fink compile it from source. This will take several hours.
This is exactly what I need, now I can run things like kdiff3, khexedit or other great utilities AND all the benefits of OS X. Thanks for the article!
The maintainer of this package is Benjamin Reed. I have exchanged a few emails with him, and he claims that KDE is ready to be released into fink-stable, but some of KDE’s dependencies aren’t ready yet, so it will remain source only for the time being. I waited for months for a binary release because I couldn’t compile KDE on my poor ibook’s 15gb hd. Now I have a 60gb HD in my ibook (don’t ask about replacing it… it’s HARD.) Anyway, I compiled it, took about 3 1/2 days, but it worked really well when it finished… until I had an x11 crash, and then things got screwy. It’s a shame to me, because KDE 3.4 is REALLY GOOD, and macos x and KDE really complement each other well, each compensating for the other’s lackings, but why does open source software seem to flake out so much?
At least in my experience, when something goes wrong with OSS, it is possible to fix it, but there’s little in the ways of error recovery or, in other words, it fails to operate if everything is not [right.] Perhaps it’s because it is written to be cross-platform, and flexible, but this flexibility seems to have its cost in that it has to cover a wider variety of usage scenarios, and is not as finely tuned to any specific one. Perhaps it is the job of the maintainer of a piece of software to ensure that it works right in a given usage scenario.
Anyway, back on the topic of KDE, on my ibook 600, runtime speed is great, but loadtimes are even longer than OSX apps. (KDE uses a lot of linked libraries, and OS X is SLOW at dynamic linking.)
We should all be thankful for the hard work that Ben and probably countless others have put in to make KDE on OS X a pleasant experience. Kudos!! Now if I can only figure out how to enable font smoothing in X11.
This looks like a good guide but I have a question about removing Apple’s own X11. I use Matlab on my Mac and it makes heavy use of Apple’s own X11. If I replace it with XFree, will it still work?
I’d like to try this method of installing KDE with fink out, but if it means I trash my system and will no longer be able to get work done with it, I’m gonna pass.
From: Anonymous (IP: 68.167.119.—)
2) You have to have fink compile it from source. This will take several hours.
…or several days, depending upon what you’re doing. In my case, an unstable install of bundle-kde from scratch (although I already had current tarballs downloaded) on a G4 733. Fortunately the buildlock system is now working as intended (previously Fink kept falling over itself).
…instead of putting lipstick in a pig, you take your good looking girl and dress her as a sow…
As we all know, looks are everything right?
Anybody have success installing KDE using Darwin Ports and X11.app? I tried but dependencies failed on “lesstif”, which is a bug explained here:
http://bugzilla.opendarwin.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3835
It would be great to get this working. I understand that Benjamin Reed is doing the KDE packages for both Fink and Darwin Ports (from the Fink FAQ) I’d like to use the excellent tools that come with KDE, especially Kate. That’s why I’d like to see KDE on Mac OS X.
I run Xorg with XDarwin with Kde on a 933mhz G4.
They were installed useing Fink with Fink Commander. Fink commander turns operating Fink into an almost cakewalk.
Join Fink’s mailing list. They are cool and helpful.
Open Commander. Go to Bundle Kde. Highlight. Open Package Info from the menu. The instructions are right there on what to put in your .xinitrc file
KDE Rocks, and last nigt I was able to play around with OpenOffice beta
1.9.128 for OsX because of X11. Found here.
http://www.freesmug.org/newsitems/news249
KDE stands for the K Desktop environment.
KDE is a graphical user interface much like OSX or Windows, it was originally written for Linux but has been ported to many different OS’s.
So I’m setting up KDE so that my interface may more closely resemble the OS X interface I’m using already.
Sure, makes perfect sense.
[ok, I read about how people want to have the same environment regardless of their OS, so don’t point that out please. It’s just that this is not going to be an easy sell for most Mac drivers today, it being kind of overkill in the good looks department.
I don’t think Aqua looks like too much bling. It’s a great UI, it has some quirks [of course] but it just kicks ass. If there is something better out there I’d like to give it a spin, but I haven’t really seen it yet. It’s not often that I realise I have a good thing -before- I lose it. So bear with me.