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Mupen for kde ?

matthew

Member
I love Mupen since its a very good n64 emulator and the only one for linux
but is there any possibility for a kde version anytime soon
as i noticed in Gnome the video display is excellent but in kde when i play any game at all i get frequently get sporadic pauses

or at least make a binary that isn't gnome specific like Visualboy at least that way someone could make a frontend for it

I'm using Gentoo Linux 2.6.9.r2 kernel
KDE Desktop
with Nvidia drivers and NVagp on 256DDR nvidia 5700 le
 

BountyJedi

New member
huh is it bad in kde? im running it in kde.
Maybe it works better for me cuz i got gnome aswell and i might use it if mupen64 feel like running better under that i'll go test that sometime.
 

Hacktarux

Emulator Developer
Moderator
If you're having pauses only when you use kde, it's very probably because you have a problem with your kde installation... I'm currently using kde and i have no problem with mupen64. Btw, mupen64 doesn't use gtk for the emulation window, it's a sdl window.
 

ciruZ

New member
Erm, just to mention:
GTK+ (that's what Mupen uses) is _NOT_ GNOME or the other way around.
GNOME uses GTK+, but GNOME isn't GTK+.
So you don't need anything from GNOME for Mupen...
 
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matthew

Member
ciruZ said:
Erm, just to mention:
GTK+ (that's what Mupen uses) is _NOT_ GNOME or the other way around.
GNOME uses GTK+, but GNOME isn't GTK+.
So you don't need anything from GNOME for Mupen...


I understand what your saying but native QT bindings would be faster in KDE
and it also fits in better with the central theme of kde
GTK seems to fit its designs in with the Gnome widgets
 

Hacktarux

Emulator Developer
Moderator
Again, if the GUI is slow on your PC it should have serious problems.... To answer the original question, no i'm not interested in writing a kde gui and i don't have the time required anyway. Another thing is that most plugins are requiring that gtk is initialized for their own configuration GUIs.

It wouldn't be harder to write directly a qt GUI integrated in mupen64 source code, than writing a front-end... Anyone who would be interested in doing that can contact me and i'll do my best to help.
 

ciruZ

New member
matthew said:
I understand what your saying but native QT bindings would be faster in KDE
and it also fits in better with the central theme of kde
GTK seems to fit its designs in with the Gnome widgets
No, even under KDE GTK+ is a lot faster than the bloating QT.
If the window manager uses QT and you run QT apps under it they won't be faster than under a non-QT window manager.
Just think of a window manager as an application that simply draws a border around the windows and handles a few window signals. And things like the taskbar are only windows without borders...

It would be simply waste of time, diskspace and so on if QT will be used. QT needs very long to compile, has a lot of dependencies, is too big and needs a lot more CPU. GTK+ 1 compiles very fast, is very small, has less dependencies and everybody has it. GTK+ 1 is still the standard for graphical Unix Applications, even if GTK+ 2 is out. That's because it's one of the fastest and smallest GUIs avilable for the XServer, so nearly everybody has it. Also, it's default on nearly every distribution. QT isn't - and that's good.
Also QT has a bad license. GTK+ is LGPL.

That GTK+ application looks like GNOME is normal because GNOME uses GTK+. So GNOME looks like GTK+. ;)

Hacktarux: I suggest you to don't port Mupen to QT, it would be just another GUI you have to care about when changing something on Mupen, but it wouldn't be useful. It only would be slower than GTK+. And that only so that the GUI, which you don't see when you're playing, looks like other QT Apps? People who need a QT GUI for selecting ROM and making some Prefs are ill. Everybody can use GTK+ for selecting a ROM aand making the Prefs. It's not worth it. Really not. It only slows down Mupen and development because you have to care about another yet another GUI when you develop...
 
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blight

New member
First of all, Qt does not have more dependencies than GTK+ - in fact it depends only on the Xlib, or Win32 API on windows.

Qt's license is not really worse than LGPL, it's GPL compatible so what you're saying is nonsense since mupen is GPL anyway.

Why would you think GTK is faster than Qt? Just because you have read so I would guess. Qt is not slow, just people who do not know what it does seem to think it is slow.
 

ciruZ

New member
blight:
[x] You have never tried QT on a slow machine.
Try GTK+ 1 on a slow machine, even there it's fast like hell.
It doesn't make fun to use QT on a PII with 400 MHz, GTK+ is no problem.

QT doesn't have more dependencies? Well, you don't really have looked what it needs:
x11
freetype
libjpeg
zlib
libtiff
libpng
fontconfig
expat
lcms
libmng

That's a _LOT_ more than GTK+ needs!

And QTs License _IS_ bad, I don't like GPL so I don't want to use it with GPL. And that's the problem. GPL isn't really free. It's a wanna-be-free license. A free license would be the BSD License.

although qt is slower it looks nicer =p
Don't agree. There are a lot of nice skins for GTK+.
 
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blight

New member
I have tried Qt on slow machines.

Obviously you have never heard of "configure scripts" where you can turn features on and off. If you want to load jpeg images with GTK+ you will need libjpeg either, so stfu.
 

evangoav1111

New member
Blight, do you use prelink? QT is in fact slower, because the program has to make so many calls to external libs, more than it does in GTK. I've heard that when using prelink on kde apps, they can speed up and in many cases, start up and run in general as much as 75 % faster.

That's not the point though...
Just like everyone else is saying, writing a special QT version wouldn't speed anything up. Chances are it's slowing down in KDE because KDE has a lot of background services and "flashy" stuff running to make it more user-friendly. It would probably run much faster in blackbox of fluxbox for the same reason.

Also, to CruiZ, the GPL licence if fine. I've looked at the BSD licence and I don't really think it's any more "free".

Blight is right however, QT and GTK+ have the same deps, but with QT it's got it's own libs calling funcitions in it's own libs, calling other libs, calling those. That's an exaggeration, but still, my point is that it has to call on more libs overall then GTK.In my experience anyway.
 
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ciruZ

New member
blight: Well, you have never tried it on slow machines. Otherwise you wouldn't say that QT is fast. So please don't flame. QT is very slow, even GTK+ 2 is faster. On 233 MHz QT is unusable, GTK+ 2 isn't fast, too, but it's usable. GTK+ 1 is even there fast.
Also, QT is C++ - another argument against it.
C++ is such a bloat that nobody knows it complete. Also, it isn't that fast and needs libstdc++.

The GPL isn't ok for me. It doesn't allow me enough. For example, nobody who uses a non-GNU License may use my code. On BSD license everyone may use my code.
 

BountyJedi

New member
well i dont really care about qt being slower becsoue my computer can pump out much processorwise except when running something craving really much out of my comp then i run pure x (without any desktop) sometimes just to not run that many procceses in background.
 

ciruZ

New member
BountyJedi: But if Mupen runs somethis is running ;).
All in all, it isn't that slow that it would be impossible to play with it. But it would be simply waste of time to port it to QT because it doesn't make it better in any way.
 

linemu

New member
ciruZ said:
blight:
[x] You have never tried QT on a slow machine.
Try GTK+ 1 on a slow machine, even there it's fast like hell.
It doesn't make fun to use QT on a PII with 400 MHz, GTK+ is no problem.

QT doesn't have more dependencies? Well, you don't really have looked what it needs:
x11
freetype
libjpeg
zlib
libtiff
libpng
fontconfig
expat
lcms
libmng

That's a _LOT_ more than GTK+ needs!

And QTs License _IS_ bad, I don't like GPL so I don't want to use it with GPL. And that's the problem. GPL isn't really free. It's a wanna-be-free license. A free license would be the BSD License.


Don't agree. There are a lot of nice skins for GTK+.

If you have an old computer, mupen isn't going to run any games well anyways. As for those dependencies, any modern distro has all of that stuff. I don't think GTK could run without X11 either ;)
 

ciruZ

New member
linuemu: Well, it needs xlib and glib, that was it ;).
But you're right. Discussion about how slow QT is on slow machines doesn't help because Mupen won't run on them. And on modern machines it would only be a little bit slower.
 

BountyJedi

New member
well yeah gtk would be running but not more than an xterm if i run only x or am i wrong? =p
(i simply type x in the terminal when i do that then type to start xterm in another terminal)

well yeah qt isnt much slower for fast computers.
but it wouldn't be needed cause now you dont need a flashy gui right? i always play in fullscreen anyways...
 
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matthew

Member
Ok i found my problem in Mupen was that i was using the Mupen Sound plugin which is what caused the choppiness i experienced however now it works fine as i'm using the sdl sound plugin :D
 

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