hello,
i want to develop desktop applications for linux.i have found QT,wxWidgets and some other are available(still searching).which software is best suited for front end applications

I think the main ones are QT, wxWidgets and GTK, theres probably more of them out in the wild too
As for which one is best suited.... they all are. Welcome to the world of choices. Read some of the documentation and see which one you like the sound of, features and coding style. Then give it a go.

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thank for ur quick reply,my main applications rely on parallel port interfacing,serial port interfacing and usb interfacing.
so, what is the best suited software for developing these kind of applications

Well the ones mentioned above are for making the GUI side of things. As for the program you need to be looking at other languages. C is probably the best place for talking to your hardware. But i am no expert on this, and i'm sure others can tell you more on this.

Have a read of this http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-mini/...Languages.html. Its old, but should give you a good starting point.

Would the previous listed SDKs be the appropriate route for my current project?

My current project:
I have a RedHat linux desktop (running KDE) which has a program (called topspin) which interfaces with a chemistry instrument (NMR spectrometer). The goal is to prevent users from utilize this program until they provide specific information. Information such as budget number, professor, and maybe a couple more things (i.e. Project). At that point the duration of time they utilize the software will be tracked by number of hours. I need to accomplish this in order to charge the provided budget for the duration of time utilizing the instrument. In some sense its a simple request.

Thanks!
-Hiram

I think that GTK is easier to program in than Qt.

I like Qt pretty well, and find it to be very easy. It has "wrapper" classes written for a lot of things that make it so that you can compile the same project on GNU/Linux, MAC, and Windows without changing anything. I would guess that it has some classes for dealing with parallel and serial ports too, but I'm not sure. If you want to use it, the best plan is to get a program called "Qt Creator" that combines the GUI designer, source code editor, build system, help system, etc into one environment.

If I just so happen to pull off creating my own gui interface using one of these SDKs, can I do the following:

Prevent a particular piece of software from running until my conditions are met?
Once the conditions are met can I pipe the information into a remote database?

I don't follow what you mean exactly. You can, of course, do anything you want as far as checking the status of the system out. You can then do whatever you want with the information. Qt has classes for working with several databases including sqlite. Gtk may have something similar as well, or you may just have to use their respective C APIs. If that doesn't answer your question, try to state more clearly what it is that you want to do and I'll try to give you more info.

Hi, and Thanks Bob,

I work at a University's chemistry department, and we have a handful of Redhat desktop computers each attached to a separate instrument (NMR Spectrometer to be exact). The goal is to obtain some billing information from the students prior to them using the software on the Redhat desktop which runs the instrument, and keep track of how long the software is running. The software is called Topspin, and I am hoping I can wright a simple GUI that will acquire a budget number (perhaps a few other pieces of information) before allowing the user to run the topspin software. At that point the GUI would also keep track of the time the Topspin software was being run. Now I realize that the functionality of the GUI is up to the developer, but what I'm not sure of, is if I can prevent TopSpin from running until the GUI requirements are filed. I'm not opposed to an easier solution if there is one out there. I would think this request would have been satisfied by now. Thanks!!

Have u tried FLTK library !

I am not saying it is the best, but still u can have a look at it.

Wow, sorry I haven't replied in the past 2 months. I'm not completely clear on what you are/were trying to do, but it sounds like you want to make a GUI that basically requires some specific information and then runs "TopSpin" once it gets it. It should be pretty simple, if that's the case.