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KDE 3.5 is almost finished, so we have prepared a first release candidate. We want to have it tested as much as possible, so please give it a show. You can download the sources from download.kde.org. To compile them you can use the Konstruct build script . In the short time frame since tarball creation only binary packages for SUSE Linux got finished, Kubuntu are uploading theirs. Thanks for your help in reporting bugs and giving feedback so far. Update: There is now also a Klax Live-CD for this release available. Read More

Trolltech has released Qt 3.3.5, a new maintenance release to the Qt 3.3 series which incorporates over 200 bug fixes as well as support for new platforms. In related news, a new website "A Qt Blog" has been started whose goal is to summarize happenings in the Qt and KDE worlds. Read More

Linux Today points to an interview with Zack Rusin which was conducted at aKademy 2005. Topics include his employment by Trolltech, his contributions to X.org and upcoming technologies and eye-candy Zack demoed at the conference. A German version of the article was published by Golem.de. Read More

GNUman.com has published a review of KMyMoney, the personal finance manager for KDE. The author is impressed: "KMyMoney is a great program, I’ve tried GnuCash previously and had a heck of a time learning it, but not with KMyMoney." Read More

NewsForge summaries the activities at the recent KDE Developers and Users Conference 2005 "aKademy". Thanks again to our conference sponsors who made it possible, spearheaded by premium sponsor Trolltech and followed by the gold sponsors Novell/SUSE, Hewlett-Packard, Costa de Sol and Junta de Andalucia. Read More

The KDE security team has published a security advisory concerning a local root vulnerability: kcheckpass can, in some configurations, be used to gain root access. All KDE releases starting from KDE 3.2.0 up to including KDE 3.4.2 are affected. Read More

Linux Mag has interviewed KDE developer Aaron Seigo about his sponsorship by Trolltech, how he got involved with KDE and upcoming KDE 4 goodies like Plasma Aaron is working on, usability and more. Read More

Tuxmachines.org has published an interview with Roberto Cappuccio. Roberto is a developer of the Kat Desktop Search Environment which is an open source framework designed to allow KDE applications to index and retrieve files. Read More

Trolltech has released the first bugfix release for Qt 4, the major release on which KDE 4 development is based on. Among the over 450 bug fixes and optimizations are numerous improvements to raster engine, X11 engine and QPainterPath, significantly speeding a range of drawing processes and introduction of top-level window transparency on X11. Read More

KDE 3.4.2 has been released. This is the second translation and bugfix release to the 3.4 series, it includes all security updates to date, numerous minor fixes and improved translations including a new Afrikaans translation pack. See the 3.4.2 Release Announcement for full details and the changelog for a full list of updates. If you want to test KDE 3.4.2 there is a new version of the Klax Live CD. Packages are currently available for Conectiva, Kubuntu, Mandriva and Slackware, see the 3.4.2 Info Page for links. If you want to compile the sources yourself try using Konstruct which has been updated for this new release. Read More

The KOffice team today announced the first bugfix release of the 1.4 series. Among various bugfixes and translation improvements, the KOffice 1.4.1 release further improves support for the OASIS OpenDocument file format. More changes are listed in the changelog. Binary packages for Kubuntu, Mandriva and SUSE have been contributed and the KOffice Live-CD has been updated. Read More

Two security advisories have been issued this week. The first affects Kate and KWrite as shipped with KDE 3.2.x up to including 3.4.0: backup files are created during saving with default permissions, even if the original file had more strict permissions set. The second affects Kopete as included in KDE 3.2.3 up to including KDE 3.4.1: the included copy of libgadu, if installed, can lead to integer overflows and remote DoS or arbitrary code execution. Read More

Linux Magazine regularly makes all articles from older issues online available in PDF format. Recently added is a three-part tutorial about creating a newspaper with Scribus: after introducing the basics, you can learn how to layout page objects and it ends talking about templates and PDF. Scribus recently released version 1.2.2.1. Read More

Qt Quarterly is a paper-based newsletter exclusively available to Trolltech's Qt customers. As a courtesy and convenience, a selection of delayed articles are made available online in HTML format. Some of the more interesting articles are "Designing Qt-Style C++ APIs" by Matthias Ettrich, "Qt 4's New Style of Iterators" and "The QStyle API in Qt 4" both by Jasmin Blanchette. Read More

At the recent European X.Org Developers Meeting KDE developer and Trolltech employee Zack Rusin presented a new acceleration architecture named Exa (eyecandy X architecture) for X.org. Being based on KAA (KDrive acceleration architecture) it's designed to be an alternative to the currently used XAA (XFree86 acceleration architecture) with better acceleration of XRender which is used by composite managers for desktop eyecandy effects. The next X.org release which is expected to contain Exa is planned to be released in September. Read More

Trolltech has released Qt 4.0 both under commercial and GPL licenses for X11, Mac OS X and MS Windows. It is the first time that a MS Windows GPL edition is available. To celebrate the release Trolltech employees have created a song and a music video (Bittorrent download, Ogg Theora version). Read the Qt 4 Overview and the online Qt Reference Documentation for more information. You can download Qt from ftp.trolltech.com or from one of its mirrors. Work on KDE 4 has already started with making a development branch of KDE compile and run with Qt 4. Read More

Two distinct efforts with the goal of making KDE applications run on MS Windows are progressing: The Qt 3/Windows Free Edition project announced a binary release of their native Win32 port of the GPL'ed Qt 3.3.4/X11 sources. And the KDE on Cygwin staff released a first snapshot of KDE 3.4.1 for use with the Cygwin POSIX emulation layer and the Cygwin XFree86 server. Read More

Trolltech has announced the Qt 4 release candidate, the final preview of next generation Qt. The final release of Qt 4.0 is scheduled for late June until which Trolltech will focus on addressing critical stability issues only. This release introduces several new features and capabilities including completely refreshed and re-engineered Qt demos and examples. Commercial offers were restructured into Qt Console for non-GUI development, Qt Desktop Light replacing the Professional and Qt Desktop comparable to Enterprise editions. Download it from ftp.trolltech.com (mirrors) or read the online Qt Reference Documentation for What's New in Qt 4. Read More

LWN.net's Grumpy Editor examined image management applications including digiKam and KimDaBa after some time ago he already evaluated digiKam for accessing his digital camera: "digiKam is a capable and useful tool with a few remaining shortcomings. Given its pace of development, chances are that those issues will be ironed out in short order." Read More

Two security advisories have been issued by the KDE Security Team which both affect KDE 3.2 up to and including KDE 3.4: kdelibs does not properly perform input validation for image files. Kommander executes without user confirmation data files from possibly untrusted locations. These issues will be fixed in KDE 3.4.1, for older KDE versions patches are available. Read More

Trolltech has released the second and final beta version of Qt 4. You can download it from ftp.trolltech.com or from one of its mirrors. The online Qt Reference Documentation has been updated. Qt 4 is currently scheduled for final release in late Q2, 2005, with an intermediate Release Candidate planned for May. Read More

On February 26th 2005, the KDE Project announced the first release candidate of KDE 3.4. Compile the sources (KDE 3.4 requirements list, "Konstruct" build script), download the "Klax" i486 GNU/Linux Live-CD (375 MB) or the first contributed binary packages. More packages may follow later. Please test the new features and report all bugs so that we can identify the show-stoppers to be fixed before the final release planned for 16th March. OSdir.com is the first to have screenshots of KDE 3.4 RC 1 and tuxmachines.org shows how customizable its look is. Read More

In this week's KDE CVS-Digest (all on one page): digiKam adds a film grain plugin. Kexi adds scripting bridge and startup shortcut files. KDE 3.4 is being prepared for release. Read More

The March 2005 Issue of Linux Magazine has a story written by our own Chris Howells about KWifiManager (PDF format). It introduces KWifiManager, tells you how to find and connect to wireless networks and how to use it for monitoring your wireless connection. Read More

"Klax" is an i486 GNU/Linux Live-CD based on Slackware 10.1 with a patched Qt 3.3.4 and a complete KDE 3.4 Beta 2. Additionally it also contains KOffice 1.3.5 and k3b 0.11.20. All this within an ISO image of only 373MB. It can be used to give you an impression of the upcoming KDE 3.4, to verify if bugs still exist or discover new ones and to make screenshots. For more information and the download site visit the "Klax" Homepage. Read More

Trolltech has announced the release of Qt 3.3.4 which is a maintenance release including many bug fixes and optimizations. The final Qt 4.0 release is now anticipated for late second quarter of 2005 with two interim beta versions to be released in March and May. Read More

Three security advisories have been issued by the KDE Security Team over the last days for two distinct vulnerabilities that have been found: all KDE releases up to and including KDE 3.3.2 are vunerable to a FTP KIO Slave Command Injection. Another xpdf Buffer Overflow has been found affecting kpdf in all KDE versions and also all KOffice 1.3 versions. Read More

Trolltech has released the first Beta version of the upcoming Qt 4.0. You can download it from ftp.trolltech.com or from one of its mirrors. An updated online Qt Reference Documentation is also available. The final Qt 4.0 is expected to be released in late first quarter of 2005. Read More

Xandros Desktop OS 3 which is heavily based on KDE 3.3 has been announced. *** The installable Live CD Knoppix has been upraded to KDE 3.3.1 in its version 3.7. *** The installable and upgradable Live CD PCLinuxOS Preview 8 includes KDE 3.3.2 and OpenOffice.org/KDE 1.1.3. *** Another installable and upgradable Live CD release is ProMEPIS 2005 Beta 2 with KDE 3.3.1. **** The next Debian release "Sarge" will contain KDE 3.3. *** Rumors say that a KDE Edition of Ubuntu is progressing and isn't too far from being released. Read More

In his column "KDE: From the Source" at O'Reilly's OSDir.com George Staikos details in the current issue what is to be expected from the upcoming 3.4 version of KDE and includes a few screenshots. KDE 3.4 Alpha 1 is planned to be published within the next days. Read More

In its last and upcoming issues Linux Magazine has again published several KDE articles of which are many available online in PDF format: aKregator is a RSS/Atom feed reader and introduced to their readers. KHotKeys allows to add mouse gestures and keyboard shortcuts to your desktop. Another story details how to configure your login environment with KDM and GDM. Finally, don't miss Konqi's horoscope for 2005. Read More

At this year's Linux World Expo & Conference Europe, taking place in Frankfurt, Germany, KDE's mail application KMail received the Linux New Media Award in the "Best Mail Client" category. The prize was awarded to "Kontact/KMail" to honor the groupware integration efforts done by the KMail developers. KMail maintainer Ingo Klöcker was the one to receive the award. The Linux New Media Awards are among the most significant international prizes for Linux- and Open Source products. The jury consisted of 100 Linux- and IT experts, among them Linux kernel hacker Alan Cox and Knoppix inventor Klaus Knopper. Read More

LinuxReviews.org had an interview with Jaroslaw Staniek. Jaroslaw works on making KDE applications running on MS Windows without X11 and CygWin and also contributes to Kexi. Read More

In this editorial published on osViews the author preaches integration as real opportunity for Linux to become a "killer application". As example for his argumentation he mentions KDE 3.3 and its new integration features. Read More

In his bi-weekly column "KDE: From the Source" at O'Reilly's OSDir.com George Staikos talks in the current issue about KDE's fully networked desktop protocol handlers as well his favorite local ones. To quote George: "Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X have a long way to go to catch up with the robust, transparent functionality that KDE has provided since version 2.0." Read More

The "C++ GUI Programming with Qt 3" book written by Trolltech software engineer Jasmin Blanchette and Trolltech's documentation manager Mark Summerfield, already featured by the dot, can now be downloaded in PDF format from the publisher's homepage in the "Downloads" section. Read More

KDE will be present at Berlinux 2004 which takes place on 22nd and 23rd October in Berlin's technical university. Among the talks will be also one about KDE as enterprise desktop (in German). At the booth we will demonstrate KDE 3.3.1 and thanks to SUSE the upcoming SUSE 9.2 KDE desktop which includes among other things OpenOffice.org 1.1.3 with KDE file dialog integration. Of course we will also demonstrate Kiosktool, kNX, Scribus and hopefully Mozilla/Qt and the Gecko kpart. Read More

The eWeek Labs have reviewed the latest releases of both major Free Software desktops. The report focuses on their groupware applications and how the desktops can be locked down. Additionally Kopete gets praised for its improvements and desktop integration. From KDE's executive summary: "KDE 3.3 is another strong release from the prominent KDE project and stands out most for us in the improvements to its Kontact groupware application." Read More

In its current issue Linux Magazine published an article (PDF) about KickPIM, a panel applet for quick access to your address book. Already published in a previous issue and also online available is a story (PDF) about KRename, a batch file renamer. Finally we were notified by Linux Magazine that a review of Konqueror 3.2 (PDF) has been added to the archive of the June 2004 issue. Read More

As part of its Grumpy Editor series, LWN.net looks at graphical mail clients. KMail is titled the most configurable and flexible graphical email client. Criticism includes missing features which can be already found in KDE 3.3 Beta 1 like HTML composing and better usage of external spam filters. In summary it's found to be one of the best mail clients available. Read More

Trolltech has announced the availability of the first Qt 4 Technical Preview. Qt 4, the next major release of the popular cross-platform C++ application framework which KDE is based on, is scheduled for final release in late Q1, 2005. Read the online documentation or jump to the download page. Read More

theKompany.com has announced the 1.1 release of Aethera, an email/PIM/groupware client that runs on Linux, Windows and starting with this release Mac OS X (Panther and later). The Kolab functionality has been improved and now includes support for "Shared Folders". Aethera is offered for free under GPL in English, German and French while additional plugins for Jabber (including peer to peer file transfer), whiteboarding and voice over IP are offered commercially. Read More

In its current issue Linux Magazine introduces the upcoming paint program of KDE 3.3 KolourPaint (PDF) to its readers. A second story describes the installation and features of the recipes manager KRecipes (PDF, German HTML) which recently moved from kdenonbeta to kdeextragear-3 module. Read More

Chris Dunphy wrote a nice four page KDE 3.2.1 Review in March which we obviously missed and which imo hasn't received the attention it deserves yet. On the other side we were notified by "illogic-al" that he has written a short "What's New, KDE 3.3 Preview" based on KDE 3.3 Alpha. The first KDE 3.3 Beta with more completed features is expected to be released in about one week. Read More

As part of its Grumpy Editor series, LWN.net looks at current terminal emulators. Not surprisingly they also mention KDE's Konsole which seems to win in terms of features. And as a teaser for upcoming KDE 3.3, look at this screenshot of Konsole showing real transparency while running under freedesktop.org's X Server. Read More

NewsForge's editor Joe Barr spent some time with the current development version of Rekall 2.2. Rekall is a dual-licensed GUI database front-end with aspirations of becoming Linux's answer to Microsoft Access (screenshots of tables, forms and debugger). He finds it already very usable today and predicts a bright future. The release of the final Rekall 2.2 version is expected for late April or May. Read More

Dan Allen has written a tutorial on Konstruct, a build utility that eases the process of building KDE releases from source by downloading tarballs and collating the required compilation steps. Read More

Mad Penguin has a review of the latest development version 1.1.6 of the desktop publishing application Scribus. Scribus was, besides K3b and KDevelop 3 recently proclaimed by Newsforge as being one of Free Software's killer applications. If you're curious what the future will bring, read the Roadmap Document for Scribus. Read More

Qt Quarterly is a paper-based newsletter exclusively available to Trolltech's Qt customers. As a courtesy and convenience, a selection of articles are delayed also made available online in HTML format. One of the more interesting articles for KDE developers in this year's first quarter issue is an article by Jasmin Blanchette which gives "A Taste of Qt 4". A Qt 4 technology preview is expected for this summer requesting for feedback and a Qt 4 Beta is planned for the second half of 2004. Read More

NewsForge's Robin Miller tested if Kopete satisfies his instant-messaging and IRC needs and can replace the separate applications GAIM and XChat he used so far. He asserts that Kopete is a fine choice especially if you run it under KDE and enjoy the good KDE integration. Read More

When LWN editor Jonathan Corbet was forced to search for an alternative for his beloved "ical" calendar application he examined Evolution, KOrganizer, plan, gDeskCal and GNOME-PIM and found a clear winner: KOrganizer 3.2. He loves it as the only competitive replacement for ical and praises the top-quality job of its developers to create a highly configurable calendar manager with a minimum of unneeded baggage. Read More

LinuxPlanet's Kurt Wall reviews the KDE 3.2 series. Before he was concerned that KDE's size and complexity would result in a desktop that was virtually unusable but is pleased and surprised to find that KDE 3.2 is significantly faster, easier to use, more consistently implemented, and easier on the eyes than any previous version and calls it a terrific product which shows that Linux is increasingly competitive on the desktop. Read More

Martyn Honeyford from IBM's UK Labs introduces KDE's desktop communication protocol (DCOP) on the IBM developerWorks site. He describes how to utilize it with the graphical kdcop and the command line dcop utilities with several examples such as instantly messaging a contact in Kopete when he comes online and also how to create a simple DCOP-aware application. Read More

LWN.net has reviewed KMail 1.6 as part of a comparison of different mail clients. The reviewer also glances at Kontact with some nice words but then concentrates on its mail component and the address book. He finds it to be a modern and full-featured mail client with few deficits in IMAP and search support which will likely be addressed in the pending KDE PIM 3.3 release. Read More

Trolltech has released Qt 3.3.1 with many bugfixes. A Qt Developer Conference for Northeast USA has been announced to be held in Boston on May 10th with Trolltech in attendance. ICS announced a new table widget QicsTable with several advantages over QTable which is dual-licensed under GPL and a commercial license like Qt. The Independent Qt Tutorial has been enlarged and now features a new chapter introducing Qt Widgets for Technical Applications which gives support for advanced plotting and offers a range of new technical widgets. Read More

Ars Technica features an article "Deep inside the K Desktop Environment 3.2" written by Datschge and Henrique Pinto. After introducing KDE and the project's structure the authors present some new applications of KDE 3.2. After that they explain the key KDE technologies KParts, DCOP, KIO, Kiosk and KXMLGUI and give examples for code reusage and an overview of efforts to integrate non-KDE applications. For developers Umbrello, Cervisia and Valgrind with KCachegrind are introduced and of course KDevelop 3.0. An examination of licenses is preceding the positive conclusion. Read More

Perhaps the recent KDE and Qt releases made you want to contribute to KDE or to start your own Qt/KDE application? Then you may be interested in the new "C++ GUI Programming with Qt 3" book, the first official Trolltech guide to Qt 3.2 programming. It's written by Trolltech software engineer Jasmin Blanchette and Trolltech's documentation manager Mark Summerfield, with a foreword by Matthias Ettrich, Trolltech lead developer and founder of the KDE project. Read More

FedoraNEWS.org features a Quick Introduction to KDE 3.2 Installation and a positive Review of KDE 3.2: "My first impression is 'wow'." The author confesses that he hadn't the time to review every improvement and new application of KDE 3.2 yet but concludes "To sum it up, with so many enhancements, an upgrade is worth your time." Besides news, HowTos, reviews and tips FedoraNEWS.ORG also offers tutorials like this nice Flash tutorial how to use K3b to burn CDs and DVDs. Read More

Today the KDE Project released KDE 3.2. It is the result of a combined year-long effort by hundreds of individuals and corporations from around the globe. For packages, please visit the KDE 3.2 info page. At the moment binary packages for Conectiva Linux, Slackware (9.0, 9.1) and SUSE Linux (8.2, 9.0) are listed. Or compile the source either manually or with the help of Konstruct after reading the KDE 3.2 Requirements list. All changes can be found in the detailed KDE 3.2 change log or continue to read about the highlights. Read More

Three reviews recently joined the list of KDE 3.2 reviews with most having an emphasis on the applications being new in KDE 3.2: Francesc tried it on Gentoo and states in this blog "This release is the best KDE I've ever tried". Pycs writes about his first impressions and likes it too. Finally, gooeylinux.org published a rather controversial article about the good and bad sides of KDE 3.2 Beta 2. Read More

The USA Linux Users Group features an interview with George Staikos, restless KDE core developer and promoter. They are interested in what to expect in the upcoming release 3.2 of "the industry's leading Window Manager". Further topics include the default look and settings of KDE, what makes KDE successful, how it appeals to new users and of course the all time favorite question as to whether Linux and KDE are ready for end-users. Read More

In other news, some until now unpublished submissions: The team of the strategy game Boson has released two movie files showing their development progress. The Kicker alternative Slicker gets redesigned and its team started a logo contest. The KDE on Cygwin project announced that both KDevelop 3.0 Alpha 7 and Quanta 3.2 Alpha 2 packages for KDE 3.1.1 on Cygwin are now available for download. The pim.kde.org site gained a page describing the command line program KonsoleKalendar. Finally, the KDE-Forum.org recently passed the 1500 users and 5000 posts milestones. Read More

Linux Journal announced today the winners of the Ninth Annual Readers' Choice Awards. Although no real surprise, KDE continued its strong series since 1999 and won once again in the category "Favorite Desktop Environment". Thanks to all our users for using and voting for KDE. Read More

In its November 2003 issue, Linux Magazine publishes several KDE related articles of which two are also available online in PDF format. The first, titled "There's an aim called 3.2" looks back on the KDE Contributor Conference and asks again several developers what they really accomplished during the hack fest. In "Boost your efficiency" Scott Wheeler describes how you can easily write scripts which use DCOP to control your KDE desktop and help you save much work. Read More

Jeroen Wijnhout, the current maintainer of the TeX/LaTeX editor and GnuPlot frontend Kile was interviewed for kde.de's monthly series "Application of the Month". The interview was conducted in English by Andreas C. Diekmann who kindly provided us with this English transcript. Read on for Jeroen's personal background, how he got involved and the upcoming features of Kile 1.6. Read More

On September 25th 2003, the KDE Project released the fourth beta version of KOffice 1.3. This release sports tons of bugfixes made during the KDE developers' conference in Nové Hrady, Czech Republic (see KOffice Developers' Meeting Report). It is the last beta in the 1.3 series according to the revised KOffice 1.3 release schedule which plans the final release now for November 12, 2003. Read more in the KOffice 1.3 Beta 4 release notes and in the KOffice 1.3 Beta 4 changelog. For now you can only grab the source. Binaries, if any will be provided, will appear one directory above. Read More

eWEEK's senior analyst Jason Brooks installed the first KDE 3.2 alpha release from source to review its current state. Although he obviously missed the KDE requirements and ended with a build without Xft2 support, he was impressed: "KDE 3.2 impressed us with improvements to its Konqueror Web browser and file manager and with the addition of a handful of new applications, including Kopete, a multiprotocol instant messaging client." He also had a look at Kontact, new wireless networking tools, the improved remote desktop connection and the accessiblity tools. Some crashes he encountered may be already solved in the second alpha expected to be released this week. Read More

Open for Business announced the winners of the "Open Choice Awards 2003". KDE 3.1 won in the "Best Desktop Environment" category and Konqueror 3.1 succeeded in the "Best Web Browser" category. The editors liked KDE for being the most polished desktop environment and best replacement for Windows and MacOS users and honored the time spent for making KDE applications' look and feel unified and integrated into the desktop. Konqueror scored with integration too besides responsiveness and better rendering of pages intended for Internet Explorer. Read More

The KDE Project announced KDE 3.1.4 today. It's the fourth maintenance release of the successful KDE 3.1.x series and ships with many bugfixes and improved translations. KDE 3.1.4 also contains two fixes for security issues in KDM. Users of KDE 3.x are advised to upgrade to KDE 3.1.4. Read the incomplete change log or jump directly to the download links on the KDE 3.1.4 Info Page. The Konstruct build toolset was updated accordingly. Read More

KDE Traffic #63 was released this week with news about cookie problems, discussion about Cut and Copy entries in the context menu of Konqueror, usability of the Kicker window list, the proposed move of kpdf from kdenonbeta to kdegraphics and more. Read the full report at the KDE Traffic site. Read More

On Saturday, the KDE Contributors' Conference 2003 was officially opened. Two days full with talks in two tracks followed only being interrupted by meals, group photo and the obligatory social event on Saturday evening. On Monday there was a PGP keysigning, a press conference was held and in workshops further work was discussed. Read More

On Saturday evening Matthias Ettrich, director of Qt development, gave within a talk at the KDE Developers' Conference 2003 in Nové Hrady -- besides a presentation of the company, the KDE/FreeQt Foundation and the past and present of the Qt development toolkit -- an outlook on Qt 4. Qt 4 is expected to be released in 2004 and promises to deliver increased performance, both at startup and runtime, more flexibility and productivity and changes to ease the learning process. Read more excerpts from the slides shown with the help of Matthias' home-brewn presentation program. Read More

Tomorrow is the first day of the KDE Developers' Conference 2003 (nicknamed "Kastle"), preceded today by the KDE e.V. membership meeting and followed by a week long hackfest until Sunday 31st. The Kastle event is hosted by KDE e.V., the Academic and University Center Nové Hrady and the Polytechnic University of Upper Austria in Hagenberg. Amongst the sponsors are Hewlett Packard, Trolltech, Klarälvdalens Datakonsult AB, SuSE and Stadrin. Press coverage of the conference is by Linux Magazine and also in a small series on the Dot starting today. Read More

On August 14th 2003, the KDE Project released the third beta version of KOffice 1.3. It brings a lot of bugfixes and a couple of new features compared to KOffice 1.3 Beta 2. This release is the last beta in the 1.3 series. There will be only one more release candidate and the final version is expected to be released in September after the KDE Contributor Conference during which hopefully many of the remaining bugs will be fixed. Read more in the KOffice 1.3 Beta 3 release notes and in the detailed KOffice 1.3 Beta 3 changelog. Binary packages are expected to be available soon, for now you can only grab the source. Read More

For its September 2003 issue, Linux Magazine has interviewed several KDE developers, resulting in two feature stories. Both are available online in PDF format. The first, titled "Sneak Preview" deals with the KDE Contributor Conference 2003 ("Kastle") and summarizes the developers' personal plans for the conference and what they expect as an outcome of the hacking festival. In "Hidden but sooo useful" several KDE tips and tricks are revealed by the developers. Read More

The KDE on Cygwin project, which produces ports of Qt and KDE to Windows using Cygwin and Cygwin/XFree86, announced that the native Win32 port of the Qt3 GPL library has been started, mainly driven by Richard Lärkäng at the moment. The plan is to provide a base for a future native KDE port. Several screenshots of the ongoing port are available. Richard is seeking developers, who don't have access to the original Qt Windows sources, to help him. Read More

Unix Review features a comparative review of multiple protocol instant messaging clients including Gaim, EveryBuddy spin-offs and Kopete. Even though the author recognizes that Kopete isn't quite finished, he finds it very appealing in terms of look and KDE integration. He even tried the current CVS version soon to be released as Kopete 0.7. And speaking of integration, there are now plans to implement one of the most-wanted features: Integration of Kopete with KAddressbook. Read More

On June 18th 2003, the KDE Project released the second beta version of KOffice 1.3. It comes with a lot of bugfixes and a couple of new features such as a PDF import filter, new OpenOffice.org filters and more stencils for Kivio. Kexi isn't part of this version nor will it be in the final KOffice 1.3 but it's slated for a stand-alone release later this year and will re-integrated into KOffice in the next major version. Read more in the KOffice 1.3 Beta 2 release notes and in the detailed KOffice 1.3 Beta 2 changelog. Binary packages are expected to be available soon, for now you can only grab the source. Next step is a release candidate planned for 8th August. Read More

Stephan Kulow (KDE 3.2 release coordinator) and Ralf Nolden announced a preliminary KDE 3.2 release schedule and asked everyone to check with the personal schedule. Every planned feature should be entered into the KDE 3.2 feature plan before September 1st, 2003 and has to be implemented before September 29th, 2003. An Alpha 1 release is expected for release after the KDE developer conference 2003 in Nove Hrady on September 1st, 2003. Provided that only one Beta release on October 6th, 2003 is necessary, the final KDE 3.2 release is planned on December 8th, 2003. Read More

Trolltech announced today that they will release a GPL version of Qt/Mac on June 23rd at the Apple's World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) 2003 in San Francisco taking their successful dual licensing strategy for Qt/X11 to the Mac. Also the upcoming Qt Script for Applications (QSA), Trolltech's scripting toolkit for Qt-based applications, will be available under a dual license on Mac OS X. Sam Magnuson from Trolltech already got much of KDE building on Qt/Mac a while ago (screenshots showing Konqueror, Kontact, Games and KOffice). The new license now offered allows to distribute binary builds of KDE for Qt/Mac soon. Read More

The KDE Project has released KDE 3.1.2, the second maintenance release of the KDE 3.1 release series. It features more and much improved translations and many problem corrections. Read the Changelog or jump directly to the download links. Those of you who wish to compile from source can use Konstruct for near automatic compilation. Read More

linmagau.org features an interview with George Staikos (print version) about Qt and the future of KDE and Linux/Unix desktops in general. George contributes to KMail, Konqueror (SSL, Netscape plugins, web sidebar), Xinerama support and KWinTV. Other interview topics include usability, hardware driver support, the feature set of KDE 3.2 including better laptop support and a new wallet system planned by George, and KDE's hardware requirements. In short, worth a read. Read More

Linux Journal features an interview with Matthias Ettrich, the founder of the KDE desktop environment. Aleksey Dolya interviews Matthias about the process of creating KDE and what he's up to these days. Asked about current popularity of KDE, Matthias answers: "Beyond all expectations, really. We see more and more contributors, more languages, more applications. And we see KDE code move onto other platforms. Recently Apple came up with their new browser for the Macintosh, which they built on top of KHTML and KJS, two of the more important pieces of KDE technology." Matthias is also appearing together with Lars Knoll (and Konqui) in the "Qt3: Signals and Slots" video of Trolltech's video section. Read More

The KDE on Cygwin project, the project to port Qt and KDE to MS Windows, has announced the first beta release of KDE 3.1.1 for Cygwin and Cygwin/XFree86. Currently, both kdelibs and kdebase are ported (screenshot), but of further interest is this in combination with the Cygwin/XFree86 Test Series. The latter combination allows better integration into a Windows desktop with either the rootless (no root window, KWin as window manager, no taskbar entries) or multi-window (no root window, MS Windows as window manager, taskbar entries) modes. Read More

On April 23rd 2002, the KDE Project released the first beta version of KOffice 1.3. It comes with many new features and improvements, new filters, hyphenation and the new database client Kexi (screenshots). Read more in the KOffice 1.3 Beta 1 announcement and in the full KOffice 1.3 Beta 1 changelog. First binary packages are available, or grab the sources or use the newest version of Konstruct (cd apps/koffice-unstable;make install). The second beta and feature freeze is planned for June 24th. Read More

The "Linux in the Workplace" book by SSC, publisher of Linux Journal, introduces Linux users to the desktop capabilities of Linux with the KDE 3 desktop. It includes information on how to use email and surf the Internet, perform general office-related tasks, work with the command line and much more. While being available for purchase in traditional printed version, all 400 pages have been released under the GNU Free Documentation License and the full text of the book is available online in HTML and PDF versions. Editor's note: the HTML version is rather less than ideal, but the PDF version is pretty much identical to the printed book. Read More

Lukáš Tinkl, the new KOffice release coordinator, has posted the first version of the KOffice 1.3 release schedule and asked for feedback. According to it the release cycle begins with Beta 1 in April and ends with the final release in early September 2003. Among the many targeted features are hyphenation support for KWord and Presenter, over 100 new formulas for KSpread and much improved filters (development status). Karbon14 will finally replace Kontour. Kexi, a database frontend and administration tool, will join. Kugar and Kugar Designer are redesigned for the KOffice architecture. And last but not least, both KFormula and Kivio have found new maintainers. Read More

tinyminds.org is featuring an interview with Shamyl Zakariya on the development of SlicKer, an alternative to KDE's Kicker panel. "SlicKer intends to provide similar functionality [as Kicker], but in a more modular, task based kind of approach; one "card" per logical function. There will be a kmenu card, a taskbar card, a system tray etc card, and so on." Conceptual drawings and a first actual screenshot are available. "I can honestly say that I'll be releasing an alpha for CardDesk in a month or two. When I say alpha, I mean feature complete, but not necessarily API stable or for that matter, stable (as in, not crashing)". Read More

Newsforge is featuring a side-by-side comparison of the free GPL Quanta+ and the commercial Quanta Gold from theKompany HTML editors. Both projects were born from the same code-base but have gradually diverged in presentation and features over time. This review, which gives a nice overview praising features and listing shortcomings, concludes with "If you use Quanta Plus or Quanta Gold you can't help but be pleased" as verdict. Read More

The KDE on Cygwin project, the project to port Qt and KDE to Windows, has announced the first beta release of KDE 2.2.2 for Cygwin and Cygwin/XFree86. At the moment they offer kdelibs and kdebase for download but it seems we can expect other packages like kdegames, kdepim and kdevelop in near future too. Read More

kde.de reports that a mailing-list for German-speaking KDE users called "kde-de" has been created, inviting both users and developers to subscribe. As usual, there is an archive and NNTP access available. This mailing-list completes the support with the de.comp.os.unix.apps.kde newsgroup (archive) and #kde.de on irc.openprojects.net for German speakers. Read More