KDE Amarok Music Player Receives Revived Port To Qt5 / KF5

[phoronix]

Phoronix: KDE Amarok Music Player Receives Revived Port To Qt5 / KF5

While Amarok was once KDE's dominant music player, it hasn't seen a new release now in about five years and has yet to see a release based on Qt5 and KDE Frameworks 5. But there's hope that might still happen...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Amarok-Qt5-KF5-2018-Revised

[andre30correia]

Kubuntu 18.04?

[Michael]

Kubuntu 18.04?

Whoops, 8.04.

[mphuZ]

#Offtop

Michael, Vulkan 1.1 in the Radeon Pro Software!!!

https://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/Radeon-Pro-Software-Enterprise-Edition-18.Q1-for-Linux-Release-Notes.aspx

[Vasant1234]

The stupidity of breaking API/ABI every few years is mind boggling. It is no wonder that the total number of applications available over the past 10 years for the Linux desktop has not increased. And with this constant churn it is very unlikely that commercial developers will ever port their applications to the Linux desktop. In other words Linux desktop will remain largely irrelevant to mainstream users.

[Linuxhippy]

I wonder why the KDE desktop environment projects wastes so many person-years re-implementing stuff that already exists, just to apply the "K"-branding.

[Charlie68]

I wonder why the KDE desktop environment projects wastes so many person-years re-implementing stuff that already exists, just to apply the "K"-branding.

You're not very informed, Kde's policy has changed and now K has been banned!

[dragon321]

The stupidity of breaking API/ABI every few years is mind boggling. It is no wonder that the total number of applications available over the past 10 years for the Linux desktop has not increased. And with this constant churn it is very unlikely that commercial developers will ever port their applications to the Linux desktop. In other words Linux desktop will remain largely irrelevant to mainstream users.

Nonsense. Linux kernel ABI is stable (userland for applications). You can run even 15 years old applications on modern Linux. glibc and X11 are stable too. Only external toolkits like GTK or Qt break API/ABI, but they do it on Windows too. It's not limited to Linux. Even on Windows You have several versions of .Net Framework. On Windows it isn't problem to develop applications, so why You think that this is problem on Linux? What blocks You from release application with all dependencies just like Windows does? Nothing. Kernel won't break ABI so Your application will be working for years.

Qt5 has mostly compatible API (source code) with Qt4. KDE changed structure of frameworks so thats why porting is needed instead of simple recompilation.

[Vasant1234]

Nonsense. Linux kernel ABI is stable (userland for applications). You can run even 15 years old applications on modern Linux. glibc and X11 are stable too. Only external toolkits like GTK or Qt break API/ABI, but they do it on Windows too. It's not limited to Linux. Even on Windows You have several versions of .Net Framework. On Windows it isn't problem to develop applications, so why You think that this is problem on Linux? What blocks You from release application with all dependencies just like Windows does? Nothing. Kernel won't break ABI so Your application will be working for years.

Qt5 has mostly compatible API (source code) with Qt4. KDE changed structure of frameworks so thats why porting is needed instead of simple recompilation.

Yes, the Linux Kernel API is very stable and that is because Linus rules with an iron fist and makes sure developers adhere to this very simple rule.

Unfortunately the Linux desktop is a developers nightmare with constant API/ABI breakage. And being "mostly" compatible is not good enough. If it was that simple all the QT4 application should have been running on QT5 when they got released.

Talking of Windows, I have a 20 year old application that still runs on Windows 10.

[polarathene]

Yes, the Linux Kernel API is very stable and that is because Linus rules with an iron fist and makes sure developers adhere to this very simple rule.

Unfortunately the Linux desktop is a developers nightmare with constant API/ABI breakage. And being "mostly" compatible is not good enough. If it was that simple all the QT4 application should have been running on QT5 when they got released.

Talking of Windows, I have a 20 year old application that still runs on Windows 10.

And you think there isn't an equivalent application on linux that still runs? There are applications that don't run on windows 10 from 20 years ago too.

Amarok still works on modern linux today, what are you trying to say? This is just a port to support/migrate Amarok to using Qt5 and kdeframeworks instead of kdelibs.