Review of Knoppix and KDE 3.1

By Staff Staff | Posted at 12:35 AM

Welcome to a review on Knoppix and KDE 3.1. Knoppix is a distribution of Linux, the open source operating system, that runs completely on a single CD, making no use of the hard drive. This is perfect for people like me, who have always wanted to try out Linux, but never could because they didn't want to completely install a new operating system. This is my first time trying Linux, and my primary operating system is Windows XP. For me, Windows XP is fine. It does everything I need, which is mostly web development and regular computer usage, and is completely stable. However, after KDE 3.1 was released, I felt like I needed to try it out because it looked very nice.

In Windows, I love to program using Visual Basic 6.0. (In fact, I'm an MCP in VB 6 Desktop Applications). The whole design-approach is so fast and I can quickly build a professional application in a matter of minutes. Anyway, I found this program in KDE called Qt Designer. Knowing that Qt was the UI library used to make KDE applications, I decided to launch it. I was really amazed, it looked very professional and the form designer functioned exactly like VB. The controls were in the left pane, and you could drag and drop them onto the form. Although I don't know much C++, I could probably use this designer as a RAD tool to design complex applications.