I started to publish on Twitter some days ago to not stay completely silent about the good stuff that is happening with KDE/openSUSE. Most of the time my posts even appear on other people's pages and in Twitter Search. According to the "Find People" function I don't exist though.

There have been endless complaints about the KDE4 desktop shell missing certain functionalities like being able to have different wallpapers on each virtual desktop. The openSUSE KDE team has now listened and worked hard to bring back all desktop functionality as you know it from KDE2. A technical preview in form of a Live-CD (for i686 only) is now available. As additional bonus, Time Machine functionality was included too.

New KDE Four Live CDs with KDE 4.2.1, KOffice 2.0 Beta 7 and much more are up.

They were built within openSUSE Build Service's KDE:Medias project in which also automatically Live-CDs with KDE trunk snapshot packages (currently 4.2.65) from KDE:KDE4:UNSTABLE repositories are built. The ISOs appear (without prior testing by anyone) here.

Like some other [open]SUSE developers I was casted and am now forced to look for a new day job. It could have happened in better economic times for sure.

Pointers to new interesting job positions are gladly accepted. Bonus points the more they have to do with Open Source, Linux, Qt and KDE.

KDE 4.2 has been released and gives "The Answer".

With the usual openSUSE KDE4 packages available comes also a new release of KDE Four Live, the most comprehensive KDE4 Live-CD, with following changes:

• x86_64 version available for the first time
• kdelibs3 is not contained anymore, NetworkManager-kde4 is responsible for managing network connections
• qt3 is not contained anymore, as result YaST Control Center doesn't show icons and offer search currently
• the freed space is used for new stuff not contained before: kepas, krename, krusader, yakuake, ...
• kdebluetooth4 version working with bluez4

Have a lot of fun...

A new version of the KDE Four Live CD with KDE 4.2 RC 1 packages is up. </twitter>

Thanks Nokia! It will be really interesting how this will impact the Qt and KDE communities, desktop, embedded, mobile, cross-desktop collaboration. Looking forward to a friendly competition on technical merits only.

• Nokia Press Release: LGPL License Option Added to Qt
• KDE News: Qt Everywhere: 4.5 To Be Relicensed As LGPL
• Ars Technica: Nokia Qt LGPL switch huge win for cross-platform development
• QtSoftware.com: Frequently Asked Questions about Licensing
• YouTube: Nokia to License Qt Under LGPL

A follow-up to the previous post, the KDE:KDE4:Factory:Desktop repositories now contain KDE 4.2 development snapshot (4.1.87) packages. This is also the repository that will contain KDE 4.2 RC1, KDE 4.2 and the first bug fix releases of KDE 4.2 in near future.

If you have been using the KDE:KDE4:UNSTABLE:* repositories for the last weeks you likely want to change them to KDE:KDE4:Factory:* + corresponding KDE:KDE4:Community repository NOW!

The next packages that will appear in the KDE:KDE4:UNSTABLE:* repositories will be snapshots from trunk representing very early KDE 4.3 development.

openSUSE 11.1 Live CDs and USB images featuring KDE 3.5 are now available for download. openSUSE News has the full story.

Tomorrow most people will be back from the holiday season, time to start again with the biweekly IRC meetings of the openSUSE KDE Team. This time we will look back to last year or rather to the openSUSE 11.1 release shortly before Christmas and the biggest reported problems. And also, despite the schedule discussion not being finished yet, we will start to collect and discuss ideas for openSUSE 11.2.