KDE Archive

The KDE Project today announced the immediate availability of KDE 3.0.2. KDE 3.0.2 primarily provides useability and stability enhancements over KDE 3.0.1, which shipped in late May 2002. The new KDE version also compiles with GCC 3.1, so it would be a great opportunity to build it manually for better perfomance (change the "i686" option with the kind of CPU you have).

"Recently Dennis E. Powell wrote a commentary entitled "The future belongs to GNOME; inertia, to KDE" that has generated much feedback, and a lot of flames in the KDE community. From my perspective as a software company that was/is doing KDE specific applications I think I see where the fundamental disconnect is between the two, and in my discussions with a number of the core developers, they have substantiated my opinion on this." Read the editorial at LinuxAndMain.

The KDE Project today announced the immediate availability of KDE 3.0.1, the third generation of KDE's free. KDE 3.0.1 is primarily a translation release for KDE 3.0, which shipped in early April. In addition, KDE 3.0.1 offers a number of performance and usability enhancements. For an extended list of changes since KDE 3.0, please see the change log. Our Take: I spent most of the day yesterday compiling KDE 3.01 from source on my Red Hat 7.2 box. Here's a screenshot.

"There are many toolkits to choose from for building Linux desktop applications. Some say this is Linux's downfall; others say it is its greatest feature. I'll stand somewhere in the middle and say choice is good if you choose what meets your needs. Most graphical user interfaces (GUIs) on Linux are based on X, a client/server architecture that allows for networked computers to share GUI applications." LinuxJournal has the tutorial.

KDE 3.0 was finally released. The official announcement will come soon, but for now, you can download KDE 3.0 for Conectiva, FreeBSD, Mandrake, Red Hat, Slackware, SuSE, Tru64, YellowDog or the source code. Debian, IRIX, AIX or Solaris packages not available yet.

Just two days ago the last "Release Candidate" for KDE3 was released with major bug fixes. There are source and RPM packages for Slackware 8, SuSE, Connectiva, Tru64, RedHat and Mandrake. One of the interesting new features that KDE developer Nikolas "WildFox" Zimmermann was working the last few months, was to add SVG support to KDE (screenshot 1 and 2 - the icons shown are just test icons borrowed from Nautilus). SVG is a vector graphics format, similar to Flash, but more standardised as it is recommended by the W3C Consortium. While the code is completed, Nikolas will not see his work integrated to KDE, at least not before KDE 3.1, simply because no one has created some original artwork, SVG graphics for KDE (this iconset in SVG format should look good). If you own tools that can export to SVG (free tools like Kontour and Sketch should do the trick too, in addition to Adobe Illustrator or Macromedia Freehand, etc), and you are a graphics artist, you may want to join the KDE team and contribute your icons to be used by millions of users worldwide.

The IBM developerWorks article by David Faure discusses KParts, an architecture for graphical components, found in KDE, the KDE. KParts allows applications requiring the same functionality to share a component by embedding the graphical component into the application's window. The article also compares KParts with other component models, such as CORBA, and describes the main concepts used in KParts, including actions, plug-ins, part managers, and GUI merging.

KDE 3, Beta 2 was released today after a short delay. There are packages for Linux and Tru64. The final release is scheduled early in the second quarter 2002, with one or more intervening "RC" releases preceding the final release. Just two weeks ago, Gnome 2 also had a second alpha release.

KDE 2.2.2 has just been released. New features include the QuickTime plugin, wheelmouse support for PDF viewer, icon loading optimized, file dialog speedups and more.

KDE 3.0 is mostly a release for supporting QT 3.0 rather than a full blown release with major new featues. Some new features (like font fading) and other minor visual changes do exist, but primarily this release will feature lots of new bundled KDE applications compiled for QT 3. Screenshots of KDE 3 can be found here (mirror page here) and even more info can be found at dot.KDE.org.

"Richard Dale recently announced that he has committed C bindings for the KDE3/Qt3 libraries to KDE's CVS. Richard generated the C bindings automatically using a hacked kdoc, with relatively little manual intervention. According to him, "The bindings wrap about 800 classes 13,000 methods, with 200k of C/C++ generated." The same hacked kdoc can also generate Objective C and Java bindings, and Richard hopes to be able to consolidate generation of these various KDE bindings (Java/Objective C/C) with this one tool." Get the rest of the news at .DOT KDE.

The KDE Project today announced the release of KDE 3.0 Alpha1. This is a developer-only release and it is making full use of Trolltech's QT 3 API. The release brings an impressive array of new features to KDE developers, including new database classes, new data-aware widgets, improved RAD development with a much-enhanced Qt Designer, a new powerful regular expression class (with full Unicode support), improved internationalization support (including the ability to mix different character sets in the same text), bi-directional language support (for languages such as Arabic and Hebrew), multi-monitor (Xinerama and multi-screen) support, better integration of pure Qt applications into KDE, and hardware-accelerated alpha blending. With the QT3 port out of the way, the KDE developers can now focus on the new KDE improvements.