KDE Report: LinuxTag 2001

Thursday, 12 July 2001  |  Dre

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:

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.

Comments:

Universal Components - Navindra Umanee - 2001-07-12

Matthias, please publish your paper on Universal Components! I'm sure many of us are dying to see it. Hey Tackat, why not rotate those photos already? :-) Cheers, Navin.

Re: Universal Components - SD - 2001-07-12

Ack!!! I'm getting a stiff neck from looking at the pictures. Keep up the good work guys.

Re: Universal Components - Navindra Umanee - 2001-07-12

I wish Konqi had the image rotate controls back by default. Well, you can still do it if you use KView instead of the inline image viewer, I suppose.

Re: Universal Components - Carsten Pfeiffer - 2001-07-12

People, use KuickShow, <a href="http://master.kde.org/~pfeiffer/kuickshow/">http://master.kde.org/~pfeiffer/kuickshow/</a> <p> You can tell it to rotate images by default, although I admit, this should actually be Tackat's job :)

Re: Universal Components - Thorsten Schnebeck - 2001-07-12

Try a Option "Rotate" "CW" in your XFree4 XF86Config-file (device section) :-))) -- (Just kidding)

Re: Universal Components - Anonymous Coward - 2001-07-12

Why "just kidding"? I tried it, it works. The rest of the desktop is now turned as well, though. Any idea about how to fix that?

Re: KDE Report: LinuxTag 2001 - Jürgen Nagel - 2001-07-12

There's a spelling mistake in the second headline. The capital of Baden-Wuerttemberg is called Stuttgart... Juergen (who later found out that his company would have paid the trip to the LinuxTag and who thus still wants to kick his butt)

Re: KDE Report: LinuxTag 2001 - Navindra Umanee - 2001-07-12

Thanks...

Re: KDE Report: LinuxTag 2001 - Jelmer Feenstra - 2001-07-12

Hey Rob Kaper, somehow I get the idea the random people on your pictures are mostly nice looking girls :) However, I really liked this one : "The Jolt girl who kept me up for 70 hours (or at least her merchandise did)" *very-big-grin*

Re: KDE Report: LinuxTag 2001 - Rob Kaper - 2001-07-12

<i>somehow I get the idea the random people on your pictures are mostly nice looking girls :)</i> <p> Damn.. is that so? I guess I was so surprised to see any girls at a Linux event that I probably got carried away a little. ;-) <p> Makes you wonder about the pictures that _didn't_ make the page, eh? ;-)

Re: KDE Report: LinuxTag 2001 - Jelmer Feenstra - 2001-07-12

> Makes you wonder about the pictures that _didn't_ make the page, eh? ;-) Heh, at first it didn't, but now it does :) Where can I find them ?

Random idea re: *Next* LinuxTag: - Tim - 2001-07-12

Maybe there are good reasons to not do this, so I will keep it short, but here's the idea: Sell KDE Dragon T-shirts (or other loot) starting well in advance that say "LinuxTag KDE Support Crew" to help pay for otherwise unfunded / unfundable KDE developers to get there. Considering the number of student developers etc, it would be cool to be able to subsidize them so more could gather at once, increase the critical mass, etc. Even if this raised only a few hundred pounds / dollars / marks, it might buy a few train tickets from European cities at least. p.s. Thanks for all the photos, especially the pretty-girl ones. Tim

Re: Random idea re: *Next* LinuxTag: - Rob Kaper - 2001-07-13

I've got some more ideas, but I suggest that ideas for events go to the kde-events mailinglist so they will be read by the appropriate parties and will also be archived in the mailinglist archives - not that The Dot doesn't archive comments, but the mailinglist archives is where I'd look first. So, expect some mail from me on kde-events soon.