At about the time the London Linux Expo was ending, sixty KDE developers converged on Stuttgart, Germany for LinuxTag 2001. LinuxTag is the largest Linux and Open Source exhibition in Europe, drawing in 15,000 visitors and 110 exhibitors this year. Besides having a great time seeing each other in person again (or for the first time), the KDE developers greeted thousands of visitors to their booth and presented several talks and workshops. More details, and lots of shots from the event, are available below.

 

DATELINE JULY 11, 2001

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

KDE Report: LinuxTag 2001

Sixty KDE Developers Converge on Stuttgart, Germany for LinuxTag 2001

July 8, 2001 (Stuttgart, Germany). More than
sixty
KDE developers from all over the world
gathered at the KDE booth during LinuxTag 2001.
Among them were KDE developers from the United States, Austria,
the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Norway.
Special guest-star from the US was
Noatun-developer
Charles Samuels,
who will probably release KJetLag (which consists of lots of sleep()
calls) soon after he returns to the US this week ;-).

On six TFT
equipped demopoints, KDE developers displayed the latest stable
version of the award-winning KDE desktop, theKOffice office suite and the
KDevelop development IDE.
They also offered a preview of
KDE 2.2
Beta 1, KDevelop 3.0 pre-alpha (a/k/a
Gideon) and
Reaktivate. The latter
enables Konqueror, the KDE
web browser and file manager, to embed
ActiveX
controls, such as the popular
Shockwave
movies, for which to date no native Linux/Unix solution exists.
The well decorated and overcrowded 24 square meter KDE booth and its
crew enjoyed the feedback and interest of several thousand visitors,
among which remarkably many stopped by to talk to the
KDE women team.

The event was highlighted with several KDE-related talks and
workshops. These
included a presentation on "Universal Components" by KDE founder
Matthias Ettrich;
a tutorial on "Developing a GUI Using Qt" by Jesper K. Pedersen of
Klarälvdalens
Datakonsult AB; a presentation on
"aRts und
Brahms -
Multimedia in KDE 2.x"
by Jan Würthner and
Stefan Westerfeld;
and, last but not least, a presentation entitled
"KDE 2.2 - Your Personal Desktop", by KDevelop developer
Ralf Nolden.

In addition to the lectures, developers hosted several workshops on KDE
development. Particularly noteworthy was
Michael Goffioul's
presentation on CUPS and the
KDEPrint System, of which a
KPresenter slide show is
available for download.

A considerable number of well known representatives of the Linux
community attended the KDE booth, including people from
Prolinux,
LinuxUser and LinuxMagazin,
and Tuomas Kuosmanen (a/k/a "TigerT").
Rob
Malda (a/k/a CmdrTaco of
Slashdot fame), frequently
popped by the KDE booth and proudly displayed the latest KDE beta
on his laptop.

In addition, on Thursday Margareta
Wolf,
State Secretary of the German Federal Ministry of
Economics and Technology, expressed her interest when she
obtained information on current issues concerning Linux and the KDE
project, but also shared here concerns about pending patent legislation
in the EU and its potential impact on the development of Open Source
Software.

Several sets of photos from the event and the KDE booth are available:

• Tackat's photos


• Rob
  Kaper's photos


• LinuxTag team photos


• Winfried Trümper's photos (KDE photos)


• Deti Fliegl's photos

The KDE-events-team would
like to thank all KDE developers and others who contributed to the event
for once more making LinuxTag 2001 a huge success for KDE.
Specifically we'd like to thank:

• Klarälvdalens
  Datakonsult AB, TrollTech AS
  and others for providing the admission charge for the LinuxTag social
  event;


• SuSE for providing the five TFT
  monitors, hotel rooms and miscellaneous hardware;


• The KDE League for paying for
  promotion material and KDE t-shirts;


• RedHat for supplying three
  demo points; and


• Frontsite for the "dragon food";

and of course we'd like to thank the people who organized LinuxTag 2001.

About LinuxTag

LinuxTag is the largest Linux and Open Source exhibition in Europe.
This year 15,000 visitors and 110 exhibitors (among them more than 30
free software projects) attended. The event was hosted in Stuttgart,
Germany from July 5 through July 8.

About KDE

KDE is an independent, collaborative project by hundreds of developers
worldwide to create a sophisticated, customizable and stable desktop
environment employing a component-based, network-transparent architecture.
KDE is working proof of the power of the Open Source "Bazaar-style" software
development model to create first-rate technologies on par with
and superior to even the most complex commercial software.

Please visit the KDE family of web sites for the
KDE FAQ,
screenshots,
KOffice information,
developer
information and
a developer's
KDE 1 - KDE 2 porting guide.
Much more information about KDE is available from KDE's
web site.