While I enjoy all the work I do, I do miss being closer to the machine. The average PC is ridiculously powerful these days, but your average web application can’t do much with that power.

I’ve switched my home desktop to Ubuntu recently, and loving it. But, there’s a few Windows apps I miss. What’s a developer to do? What is a developer, skilled in C++ GUI development, to do, eh? Answer me that.

The recent release of Qt4.5 and it’s accompanying licence change couldn’t have come at a better time. I had an itch to scratch, and it looked gooood. One simple install, and you have a great IDE, a GUI designer, and a stack of great classes and widgets. I was sold on the ease of integrating a WebKit browser and the fact I could build a ECMAScript based scripting engine for my app. But there’s so much more! I was a little skeptical of the smoke and mirrors behind the signals and slots paradigm, but having used it for a weekend, I’m sold.

Bottom line is that I spent more time writing my app than figuring out the framework. There’s hardly any “boilerplate” crap in each class. Once you’ve written your first signal and slot handler, you’re away. It’s all thriller, and no filler

As if that wasn’t exciting enough, recompiling for Windows and Mac is easy too. Qt doesn’t just get you closer to your machine, it gets you closer to *all* machines. Hallelujah, Flying Spaghetti Monster be praised, I’ve rediscovered a love of programming I didn’t know I’d lost.

Anyway…..

I don’t want to say too much about the app I’m writing, aside from the fact that it’s aimed at geocachers. It’s called Ammotin, and will probably get released much later in the year. I think it will be spectacular, because Qt has got me so fired up and focussing on the app, that I don’t need to worry too much about the framework.

Am I over excited?

Installation under Ubuntu 8.10 is straightforward, but I’m writing this post just to note the install steps I took. Hope it helps someone!

• Download and install the SDK, which includes an IDE
• Once installed, there’s a few packages you’ll need to ensure your first build completes:
• sudo apt-get install libfreetype6-dev libfontconfig-dev libxrender-dev libsm-dev libglib2.0-dev

Now you’re good to go!

Edit: Edvaldo in the comments noted he needed to install some additional packages as follows:

• sudo apt-get install libxext-dev libxext6-dbg x11proto-xext-dev

While I’m not sure that the certificate itself will carry much weight with employers, what is interesting is how studying for the certificate forces you to investigate areas you’ve not previously explored, rounding out your knowledge.

The only cost is the exam itself, which at the test centre closest to me would cost £78 per exam (US$150), and you need to sit two exams for each level of certification. Should be an easy task to persuade an employer to stump up such a small amount for getting more knowledgable employees.

There are some books around to help too. Rob read LPIC I Exam Cram 2 and wrote a review of the book on Slashdot, but (sadly) his (admittedly profusive) use of (too many) parentheses drew a few less then complimentary comments. I noticed Amazon also have an O’Reilly book published in August which I guess would be more to date too – LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition.