KDE Archive

The article yesterday on KDE4 triggered both Sebastian Kuegler and Aaron Seigo to respond via their blogs. Kuegler writes: "The Free Desktop and KDE have come a long way during the last years. There have been various huge changes in KDE's social structure, in it's infrastructure and of course in the sourcecode itself. I've split this into three different areas where I think a shift in paradigm has taken place." Seigo writes: "Mark my words: KDE4 is a revolution unfolding and you're getting to watch it all happen from the very beginning."

"The next-generation of the KDE open source project, version 4.0, has been touted as the beginning of a new era in desktop computing, but only two months from the first release some users are wondering if it's just all hype. KDE 4.0 will bring a collection of new technologies to the Linux and Unix desktop, but there are uncertainties around how much of it will be included in the initial release. KDE user Andreas Pakulat expressed doubt about how the release will take shape in a blog post titled 'Where's the KDE4 desktop?'." KDE's Aaron Seigo also shares his thoughts on this.

"KDE 4.0 is very exciting, though not yet production ready, and that shows with this weeks' release of the first beta. It's a beta release for a major software project (using the traditional definition of beta, and not Google's it's-production-ready-but-we-don't-want-to-support-it-officially-yet definition of beta) and thus, it comes complete with bugs, crashes, missing artwork, and other goodies one would expect such as new code, new technologies and fun toys. For those of you who are unaware, KDE is one of the largest open source projects ever conceived. A major milestone release such as 4.0 is a long time in the making. Here follows a number of things to look forward to for those of you brave enough to try this early beta."

Five weeks later than planned, the KDE project has released KDE 4.0 Beta 1. "The KDE Community is happy to announce the immediate availability of the first Beta release for KDE 4.0. This release marks the beginning of the integration process which will bring the powerful new technologies included in the now frozen KDE 4 libraries to the applications." Update: Screenshots.

A look inside what makes KDE tick and a glimpse of what the future holds and more in the LXer interview of Sebastian Kügler.

A quick look at the state of KDE 4, including screenshots. "Over all, KDE 4 alpha 2, was a pleasant experience. Not much worked on a user level, but large parts of the underlaying infrastructure seems to be in place. I'm looking forward to the more releases and the final version due in October."

"The KDE Community is happy to announce the immediate availability of the second alpha release of the K Desktop Environment. This release comes straight out of Glasgow, the largest city in Scotland where aKademy is currently taking place. For the bravehearts who want to try KDE 4.0 Alpha2, please refer to the alpha 2 info page to find ways to have a peek at the current status yourself."

"If you visited the Plasma project's outdated Web site in past weeks, you might have gotten the impression that the team behind the project to revitalize the KDE desktop hasn't been up to much these past months. Delve into KDE's SVN repository, mailing lists, or the mind of lead developer Aaron Seigo, however, and you'll find a more exciting story." More here.

The KOffice team has released KOffice 1.6.3. "This is the last maintenance release of the 1.6 series, containing mainly bug fixes. There are bug fixes for almost all of the components. See the complete changelog for the complete information."

"Nepomuk-KDE is the basis for the semantic technologies we will see in KDE 4. Sebastian Trug, the main developer behind Nepomuk-KDE, provided me with some up to date information about the current state and future plans. The Semantic Desktop describes the idea where users will not only be able to search existing information, but also to search for the meaning and relation of these information. The Nepomuk project creates open standards and APIs around this idea. Nepomuk-KDE is the implementation of these standards for KDE."

"Recently I wrote about locking down the GNOME desktop environment with Pessulus. In this article, I'll show you how to do the same for KDE, using Kiosktool, a front end for changing the KDE configuration files in users' home folders and the /etc/kde* folders."

KDE 3.5.7 has been released. "This release has a renewed focus on KDE PIM applications. KAddressBook, KOrganizer and KAlarm received attention with bugfixes, while KMail additionally witnessed new features and improvements with both interface work and IMAP handling: it can manage IMAP quota and copy and move all folders." In addition, Munich's KDE distribution LiMux has been certified to meet the international usability standard ISO 9241.

"The KDE Community is happy to announce the immediate availability of the first alpha release of the KDE Desktop Environment, version 4.0. The release is a basis for the integration of powerful new technologies that will be included in KDE 4. It has been given the codename 'Knut'." Meanwhile, the KDe HIG team is looking for help with finding applications that violate the (unfinished) KDE HIG.

"k3b is one of the most important applications for many Linux users. The immensely popular and fully-featured CD/DVD writing application has been a mainstay of the standard Linux desktop since its early releases. Since last year, Sebastian Trüg, the initial author and present lead developer of k3b, has been employed by Mandriva both to work on k3b and to work on the Nepomuk desktop project. We asked Sebastian a few questions about k3b, Mandriva and Nepomuk."