Linux GUI Toolkits, Languages and IDEs
 

hello to all.

here's my situation;
Last month I already finished a multimedia center application for bus passenger in Windows + vb.Net. My application features;
(screenshot: http://i137.photobucket.com/albums/q...l9537/main.gif)
- full screen application. (small monitor/display: 7"-10.8")
- multimedia function: video, audio, internet, games, e-book reader (pdf,html,chm).
- auto start after windows boot. (user didnt see windows start menu)
- easy navigation screen (big buttons/fonts, tab order, etc.)
- navigate with usb/serial gamepad/joystick to select functions/modes (e.g; video, internet, games, etc.)

however, today my boss want me to convert it to use Linux instead of windows (due to expensive licensing, footprint and stability).

So I want to have advise from other LQ member who already did this kind of application in Linux on the right tools (IDE/programming language/etc) to develop the same resulting application as what i did in windows + vb.Net.

I'm very familiar in Linux environment but not with the X Windows programming like Qt/gnome.
I prefer KDE than Gnome (so that mean i must use Qt, right?)
I planned to use gentoo/lfs/kubuntu linux.

I also want to know whether 'mono' is an option and why?

thanks!

You can use GTK or Qt on either KDE or Gnome, however, KDE is built on qt and Gnome is built on GTK, so the look and feel is more "gnome-like" for GTK+ apps and more "KDE-like" for Qt apps. But, your app will run fine on either so long as the required libraries are installed.

Some project go so far as to use KDE-like icons in KDE and GTK-like icons in Gnome.

Im a GTK+ guy myself, but it's up to you. Qt in KDE has a very nice IDE KDevelop. You could program in C++. Should you go with GTK+, you can use any number of languages (Python, Ruby, C, C++, C#, etc.)

Mono also has a really nice IDE (monodevelop) and that would be familiar to you coming from VB.Net. However, VB.Net support in mono isn't complete nor stable. Should you go with mono, I would suggest using C# and GTK#.

Thank a alot MicahCarrick, you gave me a big picture of linux gui development.

After spending few hours 'googling' for 'linux gui development', i found that there's too many option to develop Gui application in linux.

Toolkits;

• Qt
• GTK+
• wxWidget
• Mozilla XUL
• FLTK
• TK
• Java Swing
• Java AWT

Languages;

• C/C++
• Python
• Ruby
• C#
• Java
• Perl

IDE/Designer;

• Qt Designer
• Glade
• Boa Constructor
• PythonCard
• Kdevelop
• Wing
• Mono

I need someone to advise me before i dive in into specific solution as my background is from Ms Visual Basic / vb.net, i don't have a strong knowledge in C++. I personally think that GTK+/python (pyGTK) fits me well for my project i'm doing. But i'm not sure which ide is good for pyGtk.

please advise me which one have a faster learning curve.

and one more thing is, if i wrote my application in linux using pyGtk, can the same application run on windows if i have all the pygtk libraries installed on my windows machine (and vice versa)?

thx.

Yes you should be able to compile and run the same code under windows if you also have all the libs installed. Not the same ninaries mind you, but binaries compiled with (mostly) the same code. Since you are from a VB background you should look into Gambas as your IDE. GTK is probably the most universal toolkit library in use under linux. You can use C or C++ -using C will cause less compiler-compatibilty problems than C++. You can then compile the code for windows using the MingW or cygwin compilers. Cygwin is more complete, but also requires dlls to be installed on the machine for runtime-compatibilty, while mingw binaries don't need any dll's installed in order to run.