My ideal development environment
Friday 9 May 2008 by Fred
I like Python. It’s a great programming language. Although technically it’s a scripting language and thus interpreted, you can create full blown apps with it. You can use it on almost all OSes in existence. It’s Open Source of course!
After becoming a Linux fan I too had to make the choice: Gnome or KDE. After I investigated the background of both desktops extensively I choose KDE. It’s underlying GUI toolkit, Qt from Trolltech, is superior to GTK+ (the GUI toolkit on wich Gnome is based). Qt is GPL-ed, but you can buy a seperate license if you want to create closed source software with it. Qt is also multiplatform. You can use it on Windows, MAC OS-X and Linux, among others.
Qt is a toolkit to be used with C++. Now wouldn’t it be great if we could use it with Python… Well, we can! Language bindings are made to use Qt classes directly inside Python, called PyQt. For Qt v3.x it’s called PyQt3 and for Qt v4.x it’s called PyQt4 (duh!). The developer of these language bindings follows the same licensing policy as Trolltech does for Qt, so for Open Source development it’s free to use. The same people who made the Qt binding’s also developed Python bindings for KDE. There called PyKDE3 for KDE v3.x (which is based on Qt v3.x) and PyKDE4 for KDE v4.x (which is based on Qt v4.x)
So, with the combo Python, Qt, and PyQt, one can develop GUI applications that run natively on Windows, MAC OS-X and Linux, both as open source or close source.
Neat!
No doubt! KDE looks good and everything. But its a bit slow. I don’t know if its only for me, but if I compare it with the Gnome desktop it feels slow and that is what always stops me from using KDE.
I haven’t tried Kubuntu 8.04 yet, but thats what I have planned todo later in next week. Let see if it will work for me or I will be sticking to Gnome.
Well, this wasn’t a post about KDE, but I do agree with you to a certain point. KDE4 is a developers release. Expect it to advance considerably.