KDE Archive

KDE 3.0.3 primarily provides stability enhancements over KDE 3.0.2, which shipped in eary July 2002, and also contains a security correction for SSL (Internet security) certificate handling. The full announcement can be found here.

"A letter was received by one member of the KDE development team asking the KDE Project to use Red Hat Linux on machines at LWCE and to display RedHat's shadow man logo on those machines. In exchange, the letter from RedHat explained, KDE would "benefit from many valuable marketing benefits in our booth, on our website, and in our newsletter." At press time, Open for Business was unaware of any response by Mann or others at RedHat concerning this PR disaster. It does, however, raise an interesting question of what the software vendor hopes to accomplish with its continuing near boycotting of KDE. As Red Hat's might is considerably weaker in the desktop segment, with its preferred desktop (GNOME) taking only about 20% of the desktop market versus KDE's over 50%, they would be wise to change course. While being at 70% market share 2-3 years ago, Red Hat hardly enjoys more than 25% market share nowdays." Read the whole story about the PR fiasko at OfB.

"In Dennis Powell's 'The view from the desktop' column last week, he noted a problem with the development of KDE (and other Open Source projects). Generally speaking, KDE developers work on KDE for fun, and while interested, they are not necessarily concerned about the needs of end users. Obviously hobbyist developers should not be required to do anything for those using their code, but this situation often causes features that users want and need to be overlooked." Editorial at LinuxAndMain.

"I guess I started it, this round at least. In this space last week I discussed what I saw (and see) as a disconnect between users of KDE and those who develop it. A few days later, Shawn Gordon offered a moderating view. Soon others weighed in. Many people grew angry. I'm sorry for that, but I think that if the use of Linux is to become more widespread, the questions demand answers: What, if anything, is the responsibility of developers to users? How does this affect the future of Linux as a desktop operating system?" Read the editorial at LinuxAndMain.

"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 following is the outline for the KDE 3.1 release schedule. KDE 3.1 is the first feature release in the KDE 3.x series. The list of planned features can be found in a separate document. All dates given there are subject to revision.

"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.

As seen on PCLinuxOnline: "KDE 3.0.1 Release - According to Dirk Mueller, KDE-3.0.1 is supposed to be released this coming Wednesday. He is asking all developers to double check all bug fixes and get them checked into the main branch."

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.

From dot.KDE.org: "Adam Treat released the initial version of Qt bindings for C#, which consists of 476 Qt classes converted to C#. The bindings work with the Mono compiler, runtime environment and class libraries, enabling a fully Open Source implementation of C# for Qt. While not yet ready for a real application, Adam has managed to write and execute a Hello World! program (screenshot). KDE bindings are on the drawing board. Shortly thereafter, Phil Thompson, Jim Bublitz and theKompany.com released KDE 2 and KDE 3 bindings for Python. Together with the Java, Objective C and C bindings in the kdebindings module, as well as the Ruby bindings, KDE is providing developers a broad gamut of application development languages."

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.

The KDE Project today announced the immediate release of KDE 3.0beta1 based on QT 3.0, the third generation of KDE's free & easy-to-use, Internet-enabled desktop for Linux and other UNIXes. This second pre-release of KDE 3.0, which follows two months after the release of KDE 3.0alpha, ships with the core KDE libraries, the core desktop environment, and over 100 applications from the other base KDE packages (administration, multimedia, network, PIM, utilities, development, etc.). KDE 3.0 is scheduled for final release in the second quarter 2002, with one or more intervening "RC" releases preceding the final release. Read the changes made to Beta1.

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.

The German Linux web site Tuximus is interviewing the KDE 3 co-ordinator, Dirk Mueller. Dirk talks about how KDE compares to the Windows desktop and Gnome, about KDE 3 and more.