KDE News
KDE in the Google Summer of Code 2010
This summer the KDE project will once again participate in Google Summer of Code! Summer of Code will allow KDE to grow and bring in new developers to the community.
KDE will begin accepting student applications on March 29th, and interested students should check out the KDE Community wiki for a list of potential ideas. Of course, individual ideas not on that page are encouraged as well, so submitting a proposal based on a new KDE application or feature is great as well.
For a list of success stories from the 2009 edition of the program (including pretty screenshots!), see our GSoC 2009 wrap-up.
The Tokamak4 Files: Solid
This is the first article in a series of articles that wrap up achievements, work in progress and some background of what happened during Tokamak4, the Oxygen, KWin and Plasma sprint. Tokamak4 took place from 19th to 26th February 2010 in Nürnberg, Germany in the openSUSE premises and was kindly made possible by Novell and KDE e.V. During the sprint, 26 hackers gathered to work on various aspects of the KDE user experience. The combined sprint of the workspace and window manager teams and the Oxygen artwork team made cross-collaboration possible across these KDE software components.
In this article, we actually start off with a side-track of Tokamak4 which was hardware integration. It turned out that many people working on this were actually participating in Tokamak4, so the team took the opportunity to sit together and hack some on different aspects of hardware integration in KDE SC and specifically Plasma.
Desktop Summit 2011 - Call for Hosts
The KDE and GNOME communities are looking for a host for the Desktop Summit 2011, the combined annual conference featuring KDE's Akademy and GNOME's GUADEC events. Following up on the successful Gran Canaria Desktop Summit, the second edition of the combined event in 2011 will be the premier place to learn about, discuss, and work on free software on the desktop.
The goal of the desktop summit will be to present and discuss the state of the art of free software for end users, do community building, enable cross-community collaboration, and enable partners from industry and other communities as well as individuals to get informed and involved.
Amarok 2.3.0 "Clear Light" Released
The Amarok team just released Amarok 2.3.0. It comes with many bugfixes and improvements such as a new funky toolbar and a rewritten file browser featuring much better integration with the rest of Amarok. Read the release notes and enjoy rediscovering your music!
Oh and a new Amarok Insider is out with some tips and tricks including how to search your music collection easily.
Come Out as Part of KDE
Part of the repositioning of the KDE brands was choosing an appropriate 'KDE Software Label' for developers working on applications outside the main KDE Software Compilation. Technology developed by KDE is used far and wide, as can be witnessed on kde-apps.org and other sites. Some of these applications are developed by people closely entrenched in the KDE community, others by developers who just happened to like KDE technology and don't feel part of the KDE community in any big way. To allow authors to express their connection to the KDE community, the KDE community has chosen three appropriate labels.
We are also presenting the first draft of a guide for distributors of KDE software on how to integrate their communications with our brands.
Akademy-es 2010
The KDE España association is organizing Akademy-es 2010 in collaboration with Itsas (the Free Software group of the University of the Basque Country, UPV/EHU) and the Department of Culture of the Basque Goverment. This event gathers contributors to and users of KDE software and will be held in the Engineering Technical School of Bilbao from the 7th to the 9th of May.
Kate, KDevelop and Okteta Developers Meet in Berlin
Berlin, probably one of the most frequented KDE hacking locations in the world, saw another hack sprint from 13th to 21st of February. This time four of the KDevelop and five of the Kate developers shared a week of very productive programming. Additionally team members from Okteta and KDE on Windows joined the meeting.
An Interview with KDEPIM Contributor Tobias König
Welcome to another interview with a KDE contributor. Last time we interviewed Marco Martin from KDE Plasma team, this time we talked with Tobias König from KDEPIM about Akonadi and the TV series Lost ;)
The original interview in Italian is available in Giovanni Venturi's KDE blog.
Camp KDE Videos Now Available, Get Them While They're Hot!
A little over a month ago, the KDE community had its yearly Americas event in San Diego. In the final article we promised you all the videos of the talks and now the KDE promo channel on Youtube features a series of Camp KDE talks. Check it out!
KDE Software Compilation 4.4.1 Out Now
KDE has released an update to the 4.4 series of our Software Compilation. Among other improvements, this update includes a fix for KMail hanging when sending emails that just missed the deadline for 4.4.0 and a number of fixes in many gearheads' favorite terminal emulator, Konsole.
As usual, this maintenance release also brings updated translations, but no new features. KDE recommends this update to everyone running 4.4.0 or earlier. Updated packages for many distros are becoming available as we speak.
Kolab Systems Aims to Bring Kolab Groupware to New Level
Today a new Free Software business was launched with the goal of strengthening the Kolab groupware solution ecosystem. The former Kolab Konsortium now has a new charter and thus a new name: Kolab Systems AG. Offering services, packaging and quality assurance based on a partnership model, Kolab Systems builds its business on the proven Kolab groupware solution. This leads to a continued focus on supporting and deploying KDE personal information management (PIM) applications and server infrastructure on a variety of platforms.
Interview With Netbook Master Marco Martin From the KDE Plasma Team
A while ago, Giovanni Venturi interviewed Marco Martin for an Italian KDE blog (so if you read Italian, please see there for the authentic version). For our Italian-challenged readers, we are pleased to present an English translation below.
Marco "Notmart" Martin is of course well known as one of the primary developers of the new Plasma Netbook workspace and for his habit of teasing us via his blog with news of new features for the X+1 release of our Software Compilation just before version X is released...
Software Compilation 4.4 now available for Windows
Continuing their impressive record of quick delivery of fresh KDE software, the KDE Windows team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of packages with the latest KDE release for the Windows platform.
KJots Takes Advantage of Innovations in the KDE Development Platform
Work on porting KJots to Akonadi started a long time ago (around summer 2008!), and that effort is reaching a milestone this week. The ported version of KJots has been merged into trunk for the next release of the KDE Software Compilation where work will continue on it to refine features and fix bugs.
Important Change to KDE's Security Policy
KDE's Security Policy has had a small update. The change is as follows:
- Information about security vulnerabilities will no longer be published via the Dot at http://dot.kde.org.
This change was made to reflect actual practices. Although the security policy has stated that security information would be published via the Dot, a review has shown that this has rarely occurred due to confusion as to whether the Dot is the appropriate venue for this information. This can mislead users into believing that following the Dot provides them with pertinent security information.
Akademy 2010 Call for Sponsorship
The organizing team of Akademy 2010 is looking for sponsors to help make the annual world summit of the KDE community a success. Akademy 2010 will take place in Tampere, Finland from July 3rd to July 10th and is organized by KDE e.V. and COSS, the Finnish Centre for Open Source Solutions.
Plasma Javascript Jam Session Contest
We are pleased to announce the Plasma Javascript Jam Session. This friendly competition will reward creators of the most original, interesting and beautiful Plasma widgets (Plasmoids) written in Javascript with some great prizes and community recognition.
KDE Software Compilation 4.4.0 Introduces Netbook Interface, Window Tabbing and Authentication Framework
Today KDE announces the immediate availability of the KDE Software Compilation 4.4, "Caikaku", bringing an innovative collection of applications to Free Software users. Major new technologies have been introduced, including social networking and online collaboration features, a new netbook-oriented interface and infrastructural innovations such as the KAuth authentication framework. According to KDE's bug-tracking system, 7293 bugs have been fixed and 1433 new feature requests were implemented. The KDE community would like to thank everybody who has helped to make this release possible.
Read the Official KDE SC 4.4.0 Announcement and the Visual Guide To KDE Software Compilation 4.4 for more details on the improvements in 4.4.
KDE.org Relaunched for Software Compilation 4.4
The KDE web team is pleased to announce a major redesign of the KDE.org frontpage and buzz.kde.org, just in time for the pending release of our updated Workspace, Application and Development Platform compilation. The redesign is the result of many hours of work by artists, coders, writers and testers. Keep reading to gain some insight into the people and processes behind the retooling.