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Fisrt of all I am a Windows developer guy but really like Linux. On Windows, Visual Studio provides an excellent IDE for C and C++ development. The only other IDE and toolkit I like is the Qt SDK and I've used it a bit on Windows.

I currently run Linux in a VirtualBox VM on Windows 7 so that I can mess around with it fearlessly. I have a KDE-based Kubuntu 11, which is quite heavy. I also have an Xfce-based Xubuntu 11 VM (which I like) and Linux Mint 11.

I want to delete the Kubuntu VM but KDE is based on Qt, and the other distros I have use gnome/GTK+. Would Qt on a Gnome-based distro be any different than using it on a KDE-based distro?

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You can develop with the Qt SDK on all the distros where it is available (and compile the open source edition often enough when it's not directly packaged, provided you can use that license).

What the primary desktop environment is based on is largely irrelevant (you could develop non-GUI Qt apps on a headless server if you felt like it).

What you can expect to not be "as pretty" as on a KDE-base environment is theming/look-and-feel issues - your Qt apps might look foreign on some desktop environments.

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that's what I thought...about your last statement..I think compiling source against non kde gui(say gnome) wuld gime my app gnome like look.wouldn't it?? – rsjethani Jan 8 '12 at 11:16
If you use GTK, you'll get proper Gnome L&F. If you use Qt, you'll get a Qt L&F. If your theme engine supports both GTK and Qt apps, then you'll get mostly the same thing in both cases. You can't "link a Qt app to Gnome UI libraries" - they are different toolkits, completely different code is required. – Mat Jan 8 '12 at 11:19
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a little confused...say I have a Qt application now if I compile it agiainst windows 7,mint 11 and kubuntu 11...the app will run..fine..but the L&F will change or will retain that of the original dev platform?? – rsjethani Jan 8 '12 at 11:27
Depends on your app and the environment it runs in. It will look native to windows on Windows if you didn't do anything special, and might look native on the Linux environments depending on how they are set up. You can influence that in your code (see the QStyle docs) – Mat Jan 8 '12 at 11:30

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