KDE on Windows

[Brendan Kidwell]

I've been using Okular from the KDE desktop as my PDF viewer ever
since I installed Windows 7 RC last year in the office. At least this
app is definitely production ready (except I think printing is
missing) and likely many of the others are.

Okular is the only PDF viewer I could find with bookmarks and
type-to-search in the TOC.



On 1/30/10, Tom Metro <tmetro-blu-5a1Jt6qxUNc at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> The February 2010 issue of "Linux Journal" has an article on running KDE
> 4 applications on Microsoft Windows. Apparently what's been holding them
> back is the licensing on the Qt UI library they use, which Nokia (after
> acquiring Trolltech) has since changed, making a GPL version available
> for Windows.
>
> So in a short period of time, there seems to be a flood KDE applications
> that now run on Windows. (That seems to imply the porting effort was
> minimal, and perhaps Qt gets all the credit for that. Still, an
> impressive feat.)
>
> Unlike the many Gtk apps you can find that run on Windows, which are
> each packaged and installed individually, the KDE developers took the
> approach of creating a combined installer, due to the large base of
> common code shared by most KDE apps. The installer looks like much like
> a GUI package manager, like say Synaptic.
>
> You can even install the KDE Plasma desktop shell in place of Explorer,
> to get a more complete KDE experience, but it is experimental, and the
> reviewer says it isn't all that usable yet.
>
> Aside from some rough edges when dealing with file paths, the reviewer
> said the applications worked pretty well on Windows.
>
> I've sampled many KDE apps on Linux, and while none have risen to my top
> choice in their category, this still seems like a useful tool for
> helping people migrate from proprietary to open source. Add KDE apps to
> the list with Firefox, Thunderbird, Pidgin, and OpenOffice, and they'll
> have even fewer reasons to stay locked-in to Windows.
>
>   -Tom
>
> --
> Tom Metro
> Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
> "Enterprise solutions through open source."
> Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/
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