KDE Archive

Wikimedia / KDE Collaboration Announced

At LinuxTag, Wikimedia Foundation chairman Jimmy Wales has announced plans for a co-operation with KDE to create "The knowledge-integrated desktop". This will comprise two components 1) a Wikipedia web services API (applicable to any application / desktop environment) and 2) KDE APIs for easy integration of applications with Wikipedia / Wiktionary. This announcement follows news that the next release of the Amarok media player will incorporate Wikipedia lookup for instant access to band biographies.

KDE 3.5-beta Observations

A few screenshots of an early build of the upcoming KDE 3.5 release. Among notable features, Konqueror gets Adblock, and KDE gets some usability features that were introduced in GNOME 2.10. This will be the final release of KDE in the 3 series.

Konqueror passes ACID2 Test

KHTML Developer Allan Sandfeld announced that KDE's browser Konqueror now passes the ACID2 test from webstandards.org. While some patches were taken from the Safari fixes, a good part of the fixes have been written from scratch. Konqueror is the second browser to actually tackle the hard test.

KDE 3.4.1 released

KDE 3.4.1 has been released. It is a maintenance release which "provides corrections of problems reported using the KDE bug tracking system and greatly enhanced support for existing translations and new translations. "

KDE Developer clarifies KHTML/Webcore relationship

In an effort to stem the tide of misinformation that has swirled around this topic since the initial blog post was picked up several weeks ago, Kurt Pfeifle has authored an 18 point article , which clarifies the KHTML/Webcore relationship in hopes that the confusion will stop. Comments on this story on dot.kde.org indicate that a lot of work is going on behind the scenes; it is not being mentioned in public (such as through blogs) due to the amount of flaming the topic has caused thus far.

KDE developers, usability experts complement each other

Usability has always been a controversial aspect of free software development, but one that is becoming increasingly important along with the uptake of GNU/Linux distributions in businesses and homes. Developers' discussions about usability are often marked by shrill accusations and defensive responses. Implementing usability suggestions can mean giving up months of feature-building. But according to a few developers and usability experts working on KDE, bringing usability experts into the hackers' work processes can be a big help.

Tenor: Beyond Search and into the Contextual for KDE

There's been quite a lot of buzz around so-called 'search' tools lately, from the on/off WinFS, to Beagle and Apple's Spotlight. Tenor is KDE's proposed 'framework' for taking this even further. Kurt Pfeifle, along with insights from Scott Wheeler (one of Tenor's authors and primary designers), sat down to talk about the current problems, Tenor itself, how the thinking is different and how KDE's flexible technology provides a solid basis for making it happen.

KDE 4 and beyond: The Linux Box interviews Aaron Seigo

The Linux Box has interviewed Aaron Seigo on their latest episode of The Linux Box Show. He discusses Appeal and the plans for making KDE 4 the leader for usability, development and cool eye candy. Specific topics he covers include KControl, package management, KOffice and using high level programming languages. Start 5 minutes in for a brief history of KDE and 10 minutes in for the interview, or read the transcript.

KDE-Bluetooth 1.0-beta1 Released

The KDE Bluetooth Framework is a set of tools built on top of Linux' Bluetooth stack BlueZ. It provides easy access to the most common Bluetooth actions. The first beta of the upcoming 1.0 version is available for testing. My Take: I had a quick look and I was positively surprised by the level of depth and abilities offered in this beta (notification icon & daemon, action's kio addons, kcontrol pref panels, konqueror registered protocol, other utils). However, much work remains to be done in the usability department, as it's pretty complicated to do anything more than send a file to another Bluetooth device (many of the related dialogs are scattered in many places and they feel disconnected).

KDE on the Fray of User-Developer Interaction

Following the recent complaints regarding the lack of proper market research in the F/OSS world, KDE users suggested paying money through Bugzilla to see their features/bugfixes done, a proposal that was denied by the core KDE developers. The lengthy discussion comes down to SuSE's Waldo Bastian reply which illustrates once more the developer-centric nature of F/OSS (in contrast to the more user-centric nature of commercial products): "KDE will be able to sustain itself just fine without users, while it will not last a single day without developers. So when it comes to choosing between scaring away developers and scaring away users, the choice is rather easy actually." (2nd reply)

Special Note: My article the other day that seemed to have created a huge controversy, was not about implementing every damn thing people wanted, but only implement things that are really needed by the majority and only when these things are not coming in contrast with the general direction of the project. For example, if someone was asking Gnome to implement a "KDE-alike control panel", that should be rejected because that design is not Gnome's way. But when someone says "make Shift+Delete to delete a file on Nautilus automatically", that's a legitimate feature request to be taken under consideration, and many users would expect it to be there already (that's not my feature request btw).

It's about market research, it's about putting together things that really need to get done (that's feedback filtered by a special team, not by the developers who are already under a lot of pressure). That's what market research is about. It's not about listen to every single idiot out there and his little or big feature request. So, don't take my article out of context and don't make it about myself or specific feature requests, because it is not so. It is about evolving a project to become better by taking in some well-structured user feedback in it. That's all.

KDE 3.4-b2 Preview

KDE 3.4 is currently in the beta2 stage, and preparations are being made for the final release. I thought it would be nice to give people some advance information on new features in KDE 3.4, so I have written this beta2 preview.