KDE Archive

Developers on the projects expected to make up the next major version of the K Desktop Environment want KDE 4 to offer features and software interaction beyond what is available now, and better, easier access for users to their files and information. Among the ideas are universally available personal information and a desktop that is tailored for and responds to the things users do most. Ian Geiser, a KDE developer and official US representative for the KDE project, says KDE 4 will most likely be released in late 2006, though internal debate could push the release back to early 2007.

"The KDE Project today announced the release of KOffice 1.5 beta 1, the first preview release for KOffice 1.5, scheduled for release this March. KOffice is an integrated office suite with more components than any other suite in existence. Never before has a new version of KOffice brought this many exciting new features including Kexi 1.0 and the first release of project management application KPlato. Read the full announcement and the changelog for more details or read on for the full article."

"The KDE marketing group is pleased to announce the release of SpreadKDE.org, the new home for KDE's promotional activities. Such a hub for marketing activities has been sorely lacking in KDE until now, and we consider this site a to be a key milestone in establishing a solid foundation in growing KDE's promotional activity. In the past, the KDE community has had no centralized location for holding promotional materials or listing related tasks. However, with the release of SpreadKDE.org, we hope to meet and exceed those basic needs."

For the fourth consecutive year a group of KDE PIM developers followed the gracious invitation of Intevation GmbH to meet at their headquarters in Osnabrueck, Germany on the first weekend in January. As in the past years, the face-time proved very productive especially since everyone felt that with KDE 4 the time for more fundamental changes has come. By the end of the meeting the group had agreed on a vision and initial architecture for a unified, extensible storage service for PIM data and metadata, allowing all applications on the desktop fast and reliable access as well as powerful search capabilities. This service, codenamed 'Akonadi', together with intiatives like Plasma and Solid will form the basis of an exciting KDE 4 experience.

KDE developer George Staikos recently announced that now KHTML uses a version of KJS that is nearly 100% in sync with Apple's JavaScriptCore. Other portions of KHTML will be shared with Apple's WebCore in the near future. This comes after a long and heated debate.

"After a lot of hacking behind the scenes, a new initiative to improve KDE's interaction with network and hardware devices has been launched. Solid will provide a robust basis for the dynamic modern desktop in KDE, which needs to be aware of available hardware and networks, paving the way for innovative functionality. Users should see KDE applications taking advantage of Solid in KDE 4, from the most basic Plasma applets and complex applications to desktop-wide awareness. Developers will be able to take advantage of a robust, flexible and portable API and will be integrated into the Plasma engine. It will make use of existing technologies like HAL."

SUSE developer Stephan Binner has released a VMware image of SUSE 10 with KDE 3.5 installed, enabling people to run KDE 3.5 inside any platform supported by the freeware VMware player. "I created an image which contains a standard KDE desktop installation of SUSE Linux 10.0 OSS, upgraded to KDE 3.5 including KOffice 1.4.2 excluding non-KDE applications. It's a fully working installation so don't forget to install and try some additional KDE applications - and to run the security update when you're asked to."

From the Dot: "Welcoming in the new year is People Behind KDE bringing us one of the little known stars of KDE development. Sebastian Trüg is the man behind one of KDE's most successful applications, K3b. Read the interview to find out how K3b started, what KDE needs to conquer the world and what keeps Sebastian motivated to work on the premier CD burning application."

"KOffice development is currently going on at a tremendous pace. Version 1.5, with Open Document as the default file format, will be released in March 2006 , and it is time to start collecting ideas for version 2. KOffice has received a donation of $1000 to be used as the prize in a GUI and Functionality Design competition. So whip out the RAD tools and your imagination and design the next big thing in office automation! Submissions to the competition should be GUI mockups accompanied with a written description of the intended workflow with ideas for the design of KOffice 2. See the KOffice 2 competition page for an example of how this could be done."

"This document was created to show non-KDE people what they're missing - and if you haven't used KDE a lot, you're missing a lot of things and you may interested in reading this page to learn how many wonderful things you've been missing. I promise, this is a subjective analysis of why KDE rules. I was a GNOME user for a long time, one of those users who loved GNOME UI, and I didn't know how much things I was missing with KDE until I tried it."

The 'People Behind KDE' interviews the people resposible for Qt and KDE packages in the Debian project. "More work needs to go into a definitive set of new and improved hardware configuration tools. Work is being done, fortunately, so I'm optimistic."

"As the release of KDE 3.5 draws near , work is already underway at the Appeal project to integrate 3.5's major changes into the 4.0 series. Subprojects beneath Appeal's umbrella target simplified usability and progressive adjustments to the graphical user interface: The Tenor and Plasma projects will add functionality, while Oxygen and Coolness will enhance visual freshness."

The KDE Project is happy to announce a new major release of the award-winning K Desktop Environment. Many features have been added or refined, making KDE 3.5 the most complete, stable and integrated free desktop environment available. For a quick look at some of the new features see the visual guide to KDE 3.5. Packages are available now for ArchLinux, Kubuntu, Slackware and SuSE or try Konstruct to build it yourself.

Oxygen is the new icon theme being created for KDE4. Everything started in March 2005 when a bunch of KDE contributors met in Berlin to form the Appeal Project with the goal to promote KDE related projects and to push the open source desktop to another level. Oxygen aims to bring a modern, cool and very usable and consistent icon theme, in SVG format.