Can I use KDE software on the latest version of macOS?

[René J.V. Bertin]

On Thursday July 21 2022 08:22:15 Yurii Kolesnykov wrote:
>You definitely can install some of it, easiest way is official binaries
>or nightlies from Jenkins[0], but most of the apps are barely usable.
>
>[0]https://binary-factory.kde.org/
>
>On лип 21 2022, at 6:52 ранку, Turritopsis Dohrnii Teo En Ming
><tdtemccna at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Subject: Can I use KDE software on the latest version of macOS?
>>  
>> Good day from Singapore,
>>  
>> Can I use KDE software on the latest version of macOS, macOS 12.4 Monterey?


It may depend on whether you have an Intel or ARM cpu. I haven't followed at all how well (or not) Qt5 works on the M1 or M2 archictectures.

I've long maintained my own add-on KDE/KF5 packaging for MacPorts but started losing motivation when Qt started dropping support for "old" OS X versions (and Apple started introducing OS changes I wasn't so happy about). It was a nice bit of sparring to get most things to work but that required heavy patching (of Qt in particular) and I grew tired of having to keep up and wait hours for compilations to complete (there are now around 60 KF5 frameworks in my collection). The DE in KDE stands for Desktop Environment, and it's clear that the everything is designed with an idea of resources that are shared in a traditional Unix way, with heavy use of a "desktop bus" for inter-application communication and interaction.
The Mac's OS is a Unix too, but its application model, desktop environment and protocols are very different and Qt is written around those so if you just build and install KDE apps using stock Qt, KF5 frameworks and build systems you get applications that may run but are crippled.

Do you have specific KDE applications in mind? A number of application maintainers have long gone the extra mile to maintain their own packaging of just their own application. You still lose a lot of the niceties of KDE (like centralised customisation of the look & feel) and cross-platform Qt applications tend to look bad on Mac (as if designed for visuo-motor impaired users) but they mostly work. Digikam is one of those applications.

R.