Re: KDE on other OSes ???

[John Gay <johngay@eircom.net>]

On Sunday 11 March 2001 16:34, jhbass wrote:
> Just a thought that I am having (please forgive me if this is considered
> stupid question, I'm very new to this), would it be possible to port KDE to
> say BeOS ?? Or would it be too difficult ??

I once read about someone who ported Gnome to WindowsNT?!? Once he had all 
the gnu tools running in NT, it only took 100 lines of code change to get 
Gnome to compile. After this, he discovered that WindowsNT has many 
incomplete dll's and such that coused many more headaches to chase down and 
fix. He eventually got his Gnome desktop running, though.

In relation to your question:

1, you would need all the gnu tools installed and running in BeOS. I.E. gcc, 
shells, libs and whatnot.

2, Then you would need to try compiling the code to see what failed.

3, You would then need to track down and fix whatever failed to compile.

4, Once it compiles cleanly, your headaches just start. Now this executable 
will show where BeOS handles system calls differently than Linux. Now you 
will need to modify the code to work with BeOS's system calls instead.

Finally, why would anyone take on such an enormous task? I've only played 
with BeOS a little. I've found it to be nice, but the desktop that comes with 
it is designed to work with it. KDE isn't. This is similar to those who 
ported Linux to the Palm. They got a working Linux, but the user interface 
was commandline, and very difficult to do much with. The Palm comes with a 
great interface that is small, intuitive and efficient. Putting Linux added 
nothing to this. It made for an interesting project, but I wouldn't use it on 
my Palm.
>
> -thanks
> James

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

	John Gay