KDE Archive

"Stephan Binner, a well-known KDE and openSUSE developer, has released a set of live CDs featuring the latest development snapshot of KDE 4 (screenshots). Unlike the SLAX-based live CD called KLAX, which he used to develop in order to demonstrate new KDE releases, his 'KDE Four Live' images are based on openSUSE. After a large, uncompressed live DVD released earlier in the week, a set of smaller live CDs (compressed with Squashfs) is now also available for download. Don't expect trouble-free computing with these early KDE 4 snapshots, but as demonstration tools designed to give KDE users an early taste of things to come, they aren't too bad. The first alpha build of KDE 4 is scheduled for release early next week."

"After a short delay due to a heavy dosage of 'Real Life', I return to bring you more on the technologies behind KDE 4. This week I am featuring Strigi, an information extraction subsystem that is being fully deployed for KDE 4.0. KDE has previously had the ability to extract information about files of various types, and has used them in a variety of functional contexts, such as the Properties Dialog. Strigi promises many improvements over the existing versions."

"If you run KDE, you aren't just stuck with the standard 'kicker' panel to operate as your app launcher and taskbar. There are a bunch of nice panel replacements that will spice up your desktop nicely. The ones that I've used and tested are kooldock, kxdocker and kiba-dock. So, what do these docks do, and what's cool about them?"

The KDE 4 release team started a discussion about a possible release schedule for KDE 4. Of course nothing is set yet but the topic is now hot and some interesting problems and point of views come up. In other but related news Oxygen hit the mirrors, or better, kdelibs.

"On Friday, the KDE Project released the third in a series of development previews for the upcoming KDE 4.0 release. Dubbed 'Kludge', the 3.80.3 release includes the Sonnet language library, the new Dolphin file manager, and the Solid hardware library." Read on for an overview.

Boudewijn Rempt writes about the KDE image manipulation program Krita. He writes about Flake support and various features regarding image rendering quality like a new fast scaler. Zack Rusin writes about the ongoing effort to port WebKit to Qt4 for possible inclusion in KDE 4. A new issue of the KDE Commit-Digest has also been released, telling us about various topics like NetworkManager support in KDE 4 or the installment of techbase.kde.org. In addition, this document presents what has been accomplished in the Nepomuk-KDE project so far.

When a project with the size and scope of KDE gets to be as big as it is, sometimes changing a decision established almost a decade earlier is very difficult. KDE has relied on autotools to build most of the project since its inception, but for the last year, KDE 4 has been building with CMake, a newer build system that is rapidly becoming a heavyweight contender. Read on for more.

In the transition from KDE 3 to KDE 4, a new file manager, Dolphin, was often discussed and now officially moved to the base part of KDE. "I just stumbled over this message saying that the file manager Dolphin is now part of kdebase (of KDE 4): 'Moving Dolphin to kdebase, as discussed with Peter and others. The big plan is: Dolphin will become the default file manager (kicker buttons and file:/ links bring it up).' The question remains what now happens with Konqueror - keep in mind that one of the goals of KDE 4 was to only keep one app for each task inside the base packages. But with Dolphin as the potentially new file manager and Webkit as the new browser we may see Konqueror vanish."

"Focusing again on applications this week, specifically I'll look at two of the promising document viewers for KDE 4, Okular and Ligature. They are two of the rising stars of KDE 4, but they both have their roots as KDE 3 applications that have grown up."

"The KDE development team is working hard on the KDE 4 platform. KDE 4 will include many exciting new technologies which will greatly enhance the functionality of KDE. One of these new technologies is Decibel. We would like to give you an idea of what Decibel is all about."

"Like the previously featured articles on new KDE 4 technologies for Job Processes or SVG Widgets, today we feature the shiny new multimedia technology Phonon. Phonon is designed to take some of the complications out of writing multimedia applications in KDE 4, and ensure that these applications will work on a multitude of platforms and sound architectures. Unfortunately, writing about a sound technology produces very few snazzy screenshots, so instead this week has a few more technical details. Read on for the details."

"As one of our readers has pointed out to us, the latest (3.5.6) release of the KHTML rendering engine passes all of the tests in our CSS selector testsuite - making the Konqueror 3.5.6 browser the most CSS3-compatible of all. Also in the latest release is the implementation of text-overflow: ellipsis. It really is a shame that only a tiny proportion of web users have access to this excellent browser."

KDevelop 3.4 has been released, bringing many new features to KDE's Integrated Development Environment. The first major release in over a year closes more than 500 bugs. There is an impressive list of additional features including improved Qt 4 support, new debugging abilities, more attractive default user interface layout, and improvements for C++, Ruby, and PHP support. The developers have put together a slideshow to showcase the new features.

"The KDE Project today announced the immediate availability of KDE 3.5.6, a maintenance release for the latest generation of the most advanced, powerful free desktop for GNU/Linux and other UNIXes. This release includes a number of fixes for KHTML, Kate, kicker, ksysguard, and lots of other applications."