Mark Shuttleworth announced on his blog today that starting with Natty+1 (the Ubuntu release after Natty), Qt applications will be evaluated for inclusion on the Ubuntu CD.





Until now Qt applications, even if they were "best-in-class", were not considered for inclusion in Ubuntu because they didn't fully integrated with the GNOME desktop. But that's about to change!

We should evaluate apps on the basis of how well they meet the requirement, not prejudice them on the basis of technical choices made by the developer. [...]



Canonical is driving the development of dconf bindings for Qt, so that it is possible to write a Qt app that uses the same settings framework as everything else in Ubuntu.

But remember: "Qt" is not "KDE" so Mark explains that this doesn't mean Amarok might replace Banshee or anything like that. Unless of course "KDE apps learn to talk dconf in addition to the standard KDE mechanisms" in which case any KDE application "would be a candidate for the Ubuntu default install". But this depends on the KDE community.









So is Ubuntu driving even further away from GNOME? Sure, "To be evaluated for inclusion" doesn't mean we'll see a bunch of new Qt applications by default in Natty+1 but there are a few very good ones which have a pretty good chance! VLC anyone?