gui linux programming

just looking for any type of help with programming on linux, mandrake 9 running KDE 3.0 to be specific. i allready know how to do console style programming with *nix and some basic commands with the visual end of things, but im looking for full info on KDE programming specifically. Anything from creating basic text output, file IO, even visual socket programming would be great.

the other thing that would be helpful is a decent developer studio, the links for KDevelop are down and i really dont have $1,500 bucks to drop on QT, im really not concerned about the deveoper studios right now.

any bit of help would be more than greatfull.

QT is free last time i used it

Maybe Kylix from Borland can be what you are looking for.

Here's Qt's free/open source version. http://www.trolltech.com/download/qt/x11.html

Here's a tutorial. http://doc.trolltech.com/3.0/tutorial.html

We have a store called Microcenter -- http://microcenter.com -- that has an 'Overstock' section in the book area where you can get the Programming Qt book from O'Reilly for about $3. I live in southwest Ohio, and see you're in Pennsylvania so there might be one there.

It's a national chain, there's one just a few miles from here...

Qt can be used for free so long as you don't mix your code with proprietary libraries, and don't make your own program proprietary. At least, that's my understanding of it.

I'd go straight for Qt, and use KDevelop if you like a full IDE, or Qt's Designer and an editor like Kate or Glimmer if you like something more lightweight.

I'd also learn Python and use PyQt to prototype, which makes developing large(ish) applications an awful lot quicker and easier. You can use KDevelop, Kate, Glimmer etc. and also the excellent Eric, an IDE written in PyQt

Oh, and the other good thing about Qt is that you can always add in KDE extensions should you need to integrate it further with a DE.