Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 16th Jan 2008 22:36 UTC
"The long-awaited KDE 4.0.0 was released last week as scheduled. Even though the expectations - following a couple of less than convincing release candidates - weren't very high and the consensus was that the first release of KDE 4 would be more of a 'technology preview' than a usable desktop environment for general deployment, it's hard not to see the enormous amount of good work that has gone into the new code. As Kubuntu's Jonathan Riddell put it, KDE 4 is the start of something amazing and this is possibly the best definition of the current release - it's here, it's available, but it's nowhere near ready for the prime time. It's a decent start, though. Unsurprisingly, the reaction of distributions was a mixed bag. Below is a summary of information about the availability of KDE 4.0.0 in various distributions."
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Member since:2005-07-06
Just to add a couple of points, the hope right now is that they will be able to feature KDE 4.1 for 11.0, though neither schedule has been finalized yet.
openSUSE's schedule has been finalized. It will be released in June. That's probably too soon for KDE 4.1, because distributions usually want a few weeks of test period on their own before packages get included in the distribution.
Member since:2005-07-13
openSUSE's schedule has been finalized. It will be released in June.
I humbly stand corrected, I misinterpreted one of the emails and thought the roadmap dates were proposed but not finalized.
That's probably too soon for KDE 4.1, because distributions usually want a few weeks of test period on their own before packages get included in the distribution.
Not in this case, openSUSE isn't "most distributions" when it comes to KDE
KDE 4.x is being packaged and tested parallel to factory. Rolling packages will be available built from KDE svn against the rolling packages from factory (as well as 10.2/10.3) through the development cycle. Of course, if something horribly goes wrong with KDE 4.1 during the development, then they will probably have to pull back. But even if openSUSE 11.0 is forced to release with KDE 4.0.x, it will very likely be heavily patched with whatever functionality from 4.1 the devs feel they can port safely. It wouldn't be the first time they do this, every version of openSUSE KDE contains a combination of custom openSUSE-specific patches as well as patches from kde.org when it makes sense.
They even included KDE4 packages built from beta-source as part of 10.3, though mostly the games, which were among the first applications successfully ported over and stabilized against the new framework, and they were intended to be run on a KDE3 desktop.
The next developer meeting is coming up at the end of the month, and with the dust dying down at that point from the KDE 4.0 launch and the release party in Googletown, hopefully there will be a clearer timeline to work against for KDE integration.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 13:17 UTC
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 12:06 UTC
"According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow.More News »
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2005-07-13
Just to add a couple of points, the hope right now is that they will be able to feature KDE 4.1 for 11.0, though neither schedule has been finalized yet.
It's also worth pointing out that as they did during the KDE4 development process, openSUSE will soon be maintaining packages not just for KDE4 stable, but also for svn snapshots built on a bi-weekly basis. This will make it easier for those that want to try and follow the project as developments are pushed into svn, without the hassle of svn downloads and compilation. In fact, the current KDE 4.0 packages apparently contain patches from svn after 4.0.0 was tagged.
With all the complaining about the recent release of 4.0.0, it is worth pointing out that the user experience can be greatly influenced by the amount of work the distro developers put into their packaging of it.
Just my 2c...