The KDE Community is happy to announce the immediate availability of the first alpha release of the
KDE Desktop Environment, version 4.0. This release is a basis for the integration of powerful new
technologies that will be included in KDE 4. Read on for more details.

The fourth quarterly report from KDE e.V. is now available. It covers the board meeting in Darmstadt, the fate of the technical working group and the status of the SQO-OSS research project. As usual there are reports from the working groups, including business cards, a branding meeting, an active HCI group and 27,478 commits. New members and finances are also covered. If you have been contributing to KDE for some time and want to get involved in the administrative side, do consider joining KDE e.V.

Trolltech, the Norwegian company behind
the Qt toolkit has become the second Patron of
KDE. Trolltech itself should not need an introduction, since they
have worked together with the KDE project since its inception ten years ago. Knut Yrvin,
the community manager for Trolltech points out that "KDE does an excellent job of making
UNIX-based desktops easy to use. Trolltech gains from feedback, bug reports and
the spread of Qt through the success of KDE".

The KDE project announces the availability of the third development snapshot of the upcoming KDE 4. This snapshot is meant as a reference for developers who want to play with parts of the new technology KDE 4 will provide, those who want to start porting their applications to the new KDE 4 platform and for those that want to start to develop applications based on KDE 4. This snapshot is not for end users, there is no guarantee that it will be stable, and the interfaces are subject to changes at any time.

KDevelop 3.4 has been released, bringing many new features to KDE's Integrated Development Environment. The first major release in over a year closes more than 500 bugs. There is an impressive list of additional features including improved Qt 4 support, new debugging abilities, more attractive default user interface layout and improvements for C++, Ruby and PHP support. Packages are available for Kubuntu and openSUSE with unofficial builds for several others on the download page. Update: The developers have put together a slideshow to showcase the new features.

The KDE project today announced the immediate availability of KDE 3.5.6, a maintenance release for the latest generation of the most advanced and powerful free desktop for GNU/Linux and other UNIXes. Significant features include additional support for Compiz as a window manager with Kicker, session management for browser tabs in Akregator,
templating for KMail messages, faster frame rates with video chat in Kopete and new summary menus for
Kontact making it easier to work with your appointments and to-dos.

In a move to promote the KDE desktop in the Enterprise, the UK's Open
Source experts, Sirius Corporation, have become a Supporting Member of the KDE project. Sirius' commitment to KDE is our second supporting membership and follows Canonical's recent patronage of the project. Sirius and KDE are joint participants in SQO-OSS, an EU-funded project
that assesses the quality of Open Source code.

The KDE e.V. Quarterly Report is now available for July to September 2006. Topics covered include the outcomes from the 2006 membership meeting, the status of the Technical Working Group's improved charter, the new press channel from the Marketing Working Group and for the first time a report from the Sysadmin Team. All long term KDE contributors are welcome to join KDE e.V.

The KDE developers are pleased to announce the release of KDE 3.5.5. This release includes plenty of bug fixes and updated translations for 65 languages but also features improvements such as version 0.12.3 of Kopete, sudo in kdesu, CUPS 1.2 support and speed improvements in KHTML. See the changelog for everything new. Grab the source from the info page, compile with Konstruct or get the packages for Archlinux, Debian Sid, Kubuntu, Pardus or openSUSE.

aKademy 2006 has been kicked off at the Trinity College in Dublin. The first two days consist of the contributors conference with a fully packed programme of presentations on aspects such as the community, KDE 4, cross-desktop collaboration and KDE & the Free Desktop in Asian countries. On Monday, members of the KDE e.V., KDE's legal body will hold their General Assembly. From Tuesday to Saturday will be the time to work -- mostly on KDE 4 -- and to team up for BoF sessions to discuss all kinds of issues in person. Read the official announcement for full details. Tonight the participants are enjoying free pizza and Guinness thanks to Nokia who sponsored the social event at the university sports pavilion.