[NCLUG] GUI-Appl Tie In

[Michael Dwyer]

> Newbie type question: How "tight" is the tie in between the GUI and
> applications that run on Linux? Do many applications have hard
dependencies
> with the GUI environment, or do they offer binary compatibility
between
> GUIs? Or something in between, like a recompilation of the app source?

X is the great equalizer.  That is to say that certain applications
have dependencies on certain GUI toolsets.  For instance, XV requires
the XView (OpenView?) libraries.  Almost anything that starts with a "G"
requires the GTK/Gnome libraries.  On the other hand, anything that
starts with a "K" requires the KDE libraries.

The interesting thing is that since they all run on top of X, they can
all run on the same desktop at the same time.  You can run KDevelop,
Gimp, and XV using the OpenLook windows manager, and everything will
run fine.

There is, of course, the problem of UI, though -- they will all run
with their own unique widget sets.  There may be other problems as
well (cut/copy/paste? drag-and-drop? I'm not sure.)  but they will
all work, at least.

Did that answer your question?  I should also mention that the fact
that apps depend on their widget library, while locking them
in in some ways, also makes them more portable.  Dia and Gimp are
both able to run under Windows because the underlying GTK libraries
were ported to Windows.

> If you pick one GUI, does that then constrain what application set
that you
> can use?

It constrains which applications match the rest of your desktop, but
if you install the right libraries, it doesn't constrain which ones
you are technically able to use.

> And do all distros support RPMs? Unique RPM versions for all distros?

Slackware doesn't /support/ RPMS, but includes tools to handle them.
Debian uses its own package system, as well, but I suspect it is able
to manipulate them.

RPMs are somewhat distro-myopic (Cool word!).  That is to say that
distros that look like Red Hat can easily use Red Hat RPMS.  KRUD is
pretty pure RedHat so cleanly uses RedHat RPMS.  Mandrake often has
both i386 and i586 RPMS, plus their appear to have an MDK tag on them --
I'm not sure if that means they wouldn't work across RedHat, though.

I hope this helps.