Why is Qtopia much faster?

[Lorn Potter]

Tilman Baumann wrote:
> Am 21.07.2008 um 20:08 schrieb Lorn Potter:
> 
>> Tilman Baumann wrote:
>>> Yorick Moko wrote:
>>>> This might be a stupid question, but it isn't the first and will not
>>>> be the last stupid one I ask :).
>>>> I have glimpsed at the 2007.2, ASU and qtopia image (the latest
>>>> builds) and a very noticable difference is the speed.
>>>> Will this improve in the ASU and the 2007.2 or should I not get my
>>>> hopes on? Qtopia just responds and seems to load everything faster.
>>> Qtopia has a more integrated aproach. They load plugins for different
>>> features. (AFAIK)
>>> And the other systems launch new programs for each task. Sometimes  
>>> even
>>> based on different frameworks. (e,gtk,qt)
>>> There are ideas how to speed them up. Like pre-loading or integrating
>>> the basic phone apps into one binary.
>>>
>>> If you want speed now, take qtopia. What you get is a phone.
>>> The other systems go a few steps further...
>> how so?
> 
> Well, a almost desktop compliant x11 system with a wide variety of  
> frameworks, libs and programming languages.

It will be hard to achieve a consistent look and feel across all these toolkits.
Not to mention inter process communication.


> Openmoko is by design more something like a mobile computing platform  
> wich has GSM too.
> 
> I might do qtopia more wrong than is fair. But they modelling just a  
> regular smart phone like you can get from most vendors.
> With a very closed (but opensource) framework wich you can develop for.
> 
> You can not port your garden variety x11 app to qtopia. Which you can  
> (almost) do with the other frameworks.

Any Qt app can be 'ported' easily. Just as with gtk, or efl, or pick-your-toolkit for any library 
that is on the device.
So yes, you _can_ port your garden variety app to Qtopia. It just needs to be written with one 
common toolkit - Qt.

> 
> And of course the fact that it does not use x11, i expected you to  
> know that. ;-)
> 
> It really depends, many people like the simple qtopia stack. But i did  
> not buy my Neo to have a phone that does essentially what any better  
> Motorola or Nokia could do too.

Qtopia is not simple. The ui is (or should be), as that is needed on these devices that are screen 
real estate challenged.

What do the other 'stacks' available for neo do any better?


-- 
Lorn 'ljp' Potter
Software Engineer, Systems Group, Trolltech, a Nokia company