Ubuntu and Qt, MeeGo and GTK+ [LWN.net]

Ubuntu and Qt, MeeGo and GTK+

Posted Feb 3, 2011 19:58 UTC (Thu) by n8willis (editor, #43041)
In reply to: Ubuntu and Qt, MeeGo and GTK+ by Priscus
Parent article: Ubuntu and Qt, MeeGo and GTK+

Two things. One, you're equating "shipping" with "installing by default." Many distributions offer users the choice between a "GNOME desktop" or a "KDE desktop" as an install-time profile; but that is not the same thing as installing a combined environment that incorporates both frameworks in one desktop, which is what the 11.10 announcement relates to. Second, I have never seen a KDE-based distro install GIMP as the default image editor in place of Krita, which has long been a part of KOffice. Here again, the issue is not whether or not the "other" tool is available for installation, it's about whether it's the default.

Nate

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Ubuntu and Qt, MeeGo and GTK+

Posted Feb 6, 2011 9:01 UTC (Sun) by ctreb (subscriber, #4406) [Link]

I've just booted the latest Mandriva in Virtualbox to confirm this, as I haven't looked for a while, and the GIMP is indeed in the KDE only live CD. It's not much of a stretch to assume that double clicking in "Install on Hard Disk" will also install the GIMP. In fact their much vaunted Control Center is a GTK+ app, which I never really see advertised anywhere.

As far as I can remember Mandrake/Mandriva have always installed both toolkits by default. They have never installed KOffice by default (thank god).

At installation you can select BOTH Gnome and KDE, and it works very well. I have been using Mandriva as my main Gnome desktop for quite a few years, and the integration issues are so rare that I don't remember any of them.
I think that the little KDE4.0 glitch and the temporary Gnome default install had a bit to do with that.

Ubuntu and Qt, MeeGo and GTK+

Posted Feb 6, 2011 9:29 UTC (Sun) by salimma (subscriber, #34460) [Link]

I've yet to see a KDE-centric distribution not installing GTK+ by default, myself (after all, Firefox, GIMP etc. are still killer apps), but perhaps this more qualified claim is still true: the first Gnome-centric distribution that installs Qt by default.

Fedora certainly does not do this -- install from the GNOME live media and Qt is not pulled in until you install a Qt-specific app (e.g. Scribus, VLC)

Ubuntu and Qt, MeeGo and GTK+

Posted Feb 6, 2011 12:34 UTC (Sun) by ctreb (subscriber, #4406) [Link]

It seems your qualification is spot on. I loaded the Gnome live-cd of the apparently "KDE-centric" Mandriva and ran the following commands:

[user@localhost ~]$ rpm -qa|grep -i -e 'qt' -e 'kde'
liblockdev1-1.0.3-9mdv2010.1

[user@localhost ~]$ rpm -qa|grep -i gtk|wc -l
37
[user@localhost ~]$ rpm -qa|grep -i -e gnome|wc -l
71

Not one KDE or QT app or library vs. 37 gtk and 71 gnome packages. A very one-way street.
I've never properly used another KDE distro so I don't know how far this goes in the others.

I do agree with Priscus though. There's too many wide ranging statements in the media talking about Linux distributions when they are just talking about (or looking at) Ubuntu or Debian and their derivatives.

Great marketing.