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"The tenth annual LinuxTag proved to be a very successful event for the forty-plus KDE developers who presented their award-winning desktop environment to more than 16,000 enthusiastic visitors at 'Europe's largest OpenSource Event'." So begins Torsten Rahn's excellent report on KDE's presence at LinuxTag 2004. Read More

Franz Schmid, who has been diligently working on the excellent Desktop Publishing application Scribus (screenshots) for over two years, this week announced the first stable release. Available in 17 languages, Scribus is billed as "the first open source DTP application capable of generating professional 'press-ready' results." To mark this milestone release, OSNews has published a review of Scribus 1.0. In addition, Slashdot has a thread on the release. Read More

According to a recent story on IDG.net, "A small German institute has become one of the [German] Interior Ministry's first agencies to implement Linux on the desktop, as the government pushes ahead with its ambitious plans to introduce open-source software in the public sector." The test 50-seat rollout was spear-headed by the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) in conjunction with several small German IT companies. The thin-client setup reportedly includes KOffice as the office suite. Read More

LinuxQuestions.org has just announced the results of its 2002 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Award Winners. KDE took first place in the category Desktop Environment of the Year with 59.14% of the votes. KDE applications also did very well in virtually every other GUI category. Congratulations to the many talented and dedicated developers whose achievements have been recognized. Read More

One of the oft-recurring debates on KDE mailing lists is, how configurable should the KDE desktop be? With recent indications that GNOME seems to be heading in the "less is better" direction, independent KDE developer Mosfet has written an editorial (related article) urging why KDE should not follow suit. Anyone else have an opinion on this? <grin> Read More

In a recent article featured on LinuxPlanet, senior technology consultant Rob Reilly ran KDE 3.1 through its paces using a low-end 133MHz PC with 128 MB RAM. According to the story, despite a number of new features and aesthetic improvements, KDE 3.1 reverses the general desktop trend of increased resource usage:
"Even though KDE took about two and 1/2 minutes to load, most of the programs, menus, icons and animations seemed to appear almost instantly and ran without a hitch. [. . .] For the average office or home user, the combination of an older PC and KDE 3.1 would work perfectly well for their needs." Read More

eWeek's Jason Brooks has tested and reviewed some new features of KDE 3.1, which he calls "Linux's best hope for becoming a viable desktop contender". In the time since the KDE 3.1 release more binary packages have also become available, please check the mirrors. We have also been informed that KDE 3.1 rpms for Linux Mandrake 9.0 are available for Mandrake Club members; others might check Texstar's test packages. For Red Hat Linux, KDE 3.1 rpms are available courtesy of the KDE for RedHat Linux project for RH 7.3 and RH 8.0; alternatively the ASP Linux 7.3 rpms are said also to work for Red Hat 7.3. Read More

The Kopete Project celebrated its first anniversary yesterday by announcing the release of Kopete 0.6. Kopete is KDE's all-purpose, modular and extensible chat client, which currently supports the MSN Messenger, ICQ, AIM OSCAR, Jabber and IRC protocols. A sampling of the great new features includes sophisticated (HTML) text rendering, signing / encrypting chats and sending SMS messages to mobile phones, as well as chat tabs, translucent windows and web presence notification. In addition, the Kopete developers made a number of usability improvements based on usability studies conducted by the KDE Usability Project. Congratulations to all involved! Read More

The KDE Project today announced the release of KDE 3.1, "a major feature upgrade to the third generation of the most advanced and powerful free desktop for Linux and other UNIXes." While you are busy downloading the new packages for this fabulous release, we hope you will enjoy the über-cool (disclaimer: I wrote it) KDE 3.1 Feature Guide, as well as a sortable KDE 3.1 Requirements page, both new for this release. And if that's not enough, you can also check out the detailed ChangeLog. And - ah yes - there are also screenshots. So much to do today . . . . Read More

In kicking off the <a href"http://www.macworldexpo.com/">Macworld Expo keynote, Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled a new Macintosh web browser named Safari. Jobs said the browser was "based on standards", "works with any Web site", has much-improved performance over IE (page-loading speed is "three times faster", JavaScript performs twice as fast and it launches "40% faster" - comparisons to Netscape 7.0 shows similar performance gains on the Macintosh platform). The KDE connection: "[f]or its Web page rendering engine, Safari draws on software from the Konqueror open source project. Weighing in at less than one tenth the size of another open source renderer, Konqueror helps Safari stay lean and responsive." The good news for Konqueror: Apple, which said that it will be "a good open source citizen [and] share[] its enhancements with the Konqueror open source community", has today sent all changes, along with a detailed changelog, to the KHTML developers. Congratulations to the KHTML developers for this recognition of their outstanding efforts. Update @22:34: Dirk Mueller has posted an interesting mail from the Safari engineering manager as well as his response. Hats off to collaboration! Read More

KDE 3.1rc6, which most likely will be the final KDE 3.1 release candidate (where have I heard that before?), is now available for download. It incorporates all of the security fixes from the security audit that delayed the release of KDE 3.1. KDE 3.1 is scheduled for packaging on January 13th, so your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to run this release through its paces to find any show-stoppers. To help compile it you might check out Konstruct, a build system which helps you to install KDE releases - it has been updated today for the rc6 release. While its compiling you might hop over to the draft KDE 3.1 Requirements page and notify me of any omissions or mistakes. Read More

The KDE Project today released a security advisory affecting all versions of KDE 2 and KDE 3. The advisory is the culmination of the security audit which delayed the release of KDE 3.1 until January. The KDE Project strongly encourages all KDE users to upgrade to KDE 3.0.5a, which was also announced today, or to apply the patches provided for KDE 2.2.2. Due to the year-end Holidays, few binary packages are available at this time. Please check the KDE 3.0.5a information page and your vendor's website periodically for available packages. Note that some vendors are expected to incorporate the security improvements into new builds of KDE 3.0.5. Read More

In a very thorough review (1.5MB PDF file) by Linux Format (Issue 35, Christmas 2002, p. 36), KDevelop 2.1 beat out six commercial and Open Source contenders to be crowned the Best Linux C++ IDE. In the concluding remarks in a review including competitors from Kylix Open Edition (Delphi) and Studio Gold (KDE) to Anjuta (GNOME) and Code Forge (Motif), Maurice Kelly notes that the current development branch, Gideon, brings with it another major set of improvements which will make KDevelop shine even brighter: "[T]he project is extremely fast moving and a number of new features are being developed in the upcoming 3.0 version which is currently in alpha testing. These include support for languages other than C/C++, qmake support and C++ auto-completion. It is great that an application which is open source is such an amazing contender and manages to put some of the proprietary commercial offerings to shame." Read More

The NewsFactor Network has been running a series on "alternative" web browsers. The first installment covered Mozilla and the derived Netscape; the second installment covers "A Night at the Opera" and "the Mighty Konqueror". A short, but well-written, story. Read More

The KDE Project today announced the release of KOffice 1.2.1. KOffice 1.2.1 is a stability and enhancement release, with the principal improvements over KOffice 1.2, released last September, occurring in the spreadsheet program (KSpread). A list of changes and notes about the release are available at the KOffice web site. More binary packages should be available tomorrow. Enjoy! Read More

The much-anticipated release of KDE 3.1, originally scheduled for this week, has been delayed, most likely until early next month. On the positive side, the delay could not have been for a better reason. Dirk Mueller, the KDE 3.1 Release Coordinator, explained that the delay was caused by a security audit of the 3.1 CVS tree. The audit was prompted by the identification of a class of vulnerabilities by FozZy from the "Hackademy Audit Project" (thanks to FozZy and all others who help identify security issues in KDE, and a big thanks to Dirk Mueller, Waldo Bastian, George Staikos, Lubos Lunak and the others who are leading or helping in the current security audit). After discussing the issues with the packaging engineers and KDE developers, and in light of the upcoming year-end Holidays, the decision was virtually unanimous to wait until early January for the official 3.1 release. Read More

The KDE Project today issued two security advisories which affect KDE versions 2.1 through KDE 3.0.4 (and also through KDE 3.1 RC3). The first advisory concerns the rlogin:// service and, for affected KDE 2.x systems, the telnet:// service. The second advisory concerns the LISa and resLISa network browsing applications. Binary packages for KDE 3.0.5 should be available by early next week (check the KDE 3.0.5 Info Page); in the interim it is recommended to disable the affected services or upgrade from the source code or patches. Read More

Sirtaj Singh Kang, better known to many of us as "Taj", joined the KDE project as a developer early in its history (read his People interview here). He was recently interviewed by The Sydney Morning Herald Online. Interview topics range from why get involved in Open Source (I work on free software in my free time. Like the car mechanics who work on their own hotrods in their spare time, it is in my professional interest to understand and improve on my available toolset. It makes me a more marketable employee.) to KDE history and development to Linux distributions. Read More

The KDE Project yesterday announced the release of KDE 3.1 RC 1. This release, while important, will have but a short lifespan (RC 2 is scheduled for next Monday), and so binary packages are not planned. A couple of points to consider: First, if you are wed to the hicolor icons, please note that they have been moved to the kdeartwork package; the other packages ship only with the new modern and attractive Crystal-SVG icon theme. Second, Klipper users who experience slowness or possible crashes in Konsole or KMail with this release should try disabling the Klipper syncing options, and then check the KDE 3.1 Info Page about reporting results. Please give this release a thorough testing so KDE 3.1 will be good and ready on schedule! A short but informative preview of the much-improved KDE 3.1 is available on the KDE Promo site. Read More

The Register is running a short tutorial on everyone's favorite obsession: getting fonts to look their best. Included are instructions for re-compiling the FreeType engine to get an optimal look, something distributions often fail to do due to potential licensing problems. Another interesting thing I learned from the article: although MS has removed the web fonts from their servers, apparently the original license permitted unlimited non-commercial redistribution in unaltered form, and hence a SourceForge project has sprung up which provides the fonts and instructions for installing them. All-in-all, a worthwhile read for font aficionados. Read More

Most of you dot readers already know what KDE 3.1 will be about (3.1beta2 story, 3.1beta1 story, 3.1alpha1 story). For the rest of you, you can find a little teaser preview, complete with some screenshots, at promo.kde.org. Enjoy! Update Saturday 19/Oct/2002, @16:17: ZDNet UK has published the story New KDE to arrive with Halloween eye candy based on the preview. Thanks to them for helping get the word out! Read More

Linux Journal has announced the winners of its 2002 (8th Annual) Readers' Choice Awards. According to Linux Journal, [a]lmost 6,000 Linux Journal readers visited the Linux Journal web site and voted on their top choices in 25 categories. KDE took the honors in the Favorite Desktop Environment category, and KMail in the Favorite E-mail Client category. Grab the November 2002 Linux Journal issue (#103) from your nearest newsstand to read more. Read More

After struggling for three weeks with a series of hardware anomalies (traced after much effort to a bad bit in a memory module) and a taxing OS / software upgrade (as well as with some time-consuming but unrelated issues), APPS.KDE.com, www.KDE.com, LISTS.KDE.com (which among other things provides the dot's mailing lists), PROMO.KDE.org and www.KDELeague.org are finally back online. Service on the KDE.com sites may be spotty in the coming week as some kinks in the OS and various software upgrades are worked out, but the most important things appear to be working smoothly already. Please contribute any recent releases of KDE or Qt software to the Appsy database to ensure it remains comprehensive, and please be patient while application updates proceed in first-in, first-out order. If you find areas of any of the sites that do not yet work as expected, please let me know. Read More

The KDE Project today announced the release of KDE 3.0.4. Besides a number of usability and stability enhancements, it provides two important security corrections. The first corrects the file sharing program KPF, which since KDE 3.0.1 has permitted a remote user to retrieve any file readable by the user running KPF (security advisory). The second corrects the PostScript^® / PDF viewer KGhostView, which since KDE 1.1 permits carefully-crafted PostScript and PDF files to execute arbitrary code (security advisory). If you cannot upgrade to KDE 3.0.4, which is strongly recommended, you should immediately stop using both KPF and KGhostView. Read More

Yesterday the KDE Project announced the release of KDE 3.1beta2, the third (and final) development release of the KDE 3.1 branch. On top of the large number of improvements over KDE 3.0 which have already been announced, this release offers a number of significant improvements, such as a new Exchange 2000^® plugin for KOrganizer and a KVim plugin for KDevelop (screenshot). In addition, release coordinator Dirk Mueller notes that over 1,000 bugreports on bugs.kde.org have been fixed in the last 4 weeks. Please run this release through its paces so that KDE 3.1 will be the best we can make it! Thanks to all for the hard work in getting this release out. Read More

The KDE Project today announced the immediate availability of KOffice 1.2. David Faure, KOffice release coordinator and developer, noted that the release features "an incredible number of improvements". What with a truly great new (English-only) thesaurus, enhanced scriptability of suite components, WYSIWYG on-screen display, bi-di text, KWord mail-merge and footnotes, and KSpread database connectivity, enhanced printing and new sorting functionality, who's to argue? And let's not overlook the constant improvements in the filters, though the HTML import took a step back to take full advantage of KHTML's powerful HTML parsing in the next release. Karbon14, the extremely promising vector-graphics program (with SVG support!), is not officially in this release but many of the packagers have packaged it as well. 'Nuff said, read the announcement or head straight to the servers and check it out yourself. Read More

The KOffice team yesterday announced the release of KOffice 1.2 rc1. It marks the last test release before KOffice 1.2, scheduled for early next month, hits the Net. Highlights since last month's beta2 release include a substantial number of fixes and stability and performance enhancements, including important corrections to the KWord and KPresenter WYSIWYG display, It also features new read-only Konqueror plugins for each KOffice component, a new WordPerfect export filter for KWord, and improvements to the KWord RTF import filter. You can view a more detailed list of changes at the KOffice website, head straight to the download directory, or read the release announcement below. Read More

OSnews is running an interview with the dot's very own Waldo Bastian. Besides his long-running contributions to a large range of the KDE libraries and other desktop infrastructure, Waldo is well known as the KDE 2 "release dude", for helping keep the KDE infrastructure operating, and as an inexhaustible supply of knowledge and tips to other developers on IRC. In his at times serious and at times tongue-in-cheek interview, Waldo talks about the growth of Linux, his employer SuSE, GNOME competition and cooperation, the role of UnitedLinux, and KDE's performance, and also reveals a secret way to get Trolltech to add requested features to Qt: "Catch a live Troll, lock it up and feed it beer till it promises to make whatever you need." Read More

A possible local root exploit affecting all versions of artswrapper (introduced in KDE 2 pre-releases) was posted late Sunday to some of the well-known security websites. The exploit only affects installations which have installed artswrapper setuid "root". A patch (GPG signature) against KDE 3.0.2 was released almost immediately (thanks to George Staikos and Dirk Mueller), and new packages are being built. In the meantime, it is strongly recommended that system administrators unset the setuid bit on artswrapper (e.g., chmod ug-s artswrapper), particularly on multi-user machines. More details, as they arise, will be posted to the KDE 3.0.2 Info Page. Read More

The KDE Project today announced the availability of KDE 3.0.2, the second maintenance release of the KDE 3.0 series. Dirk Mueller, the KDE 3 release coordinator, explained that "a number of stability and useability enhancements have been backported from the active KDE 3.1 branch to the KDE 3.0 codebase and bundled in this update. We recommend that all KDE 3 users update to this newest, stable release." More details are in the announcement, or jump directly to the download directory. Congratulations to the KDE developers on another great release! And stay tuned: the first KDE 3.1 alpha release, this one complete with a slew of cool new features (such as the widely requested tabbed browsing in Konqueror), is due out next week already! Read More

The Fink project, which "wants to bring the full world of Unix Open Source software to Darwin and Mac OS X", has announced the successful port of KDE 3.0.1 to the platform.
The package list for the initial release includes a great part of the KDE core distribution, including Konqueror (screenshot). Importantly, it also includes both KOffice (screenshot) and KDevelop, as well as kio_fish and, you guessed it, the Liquid style. Hopefully they can resolve the linker/libtool issues which are responsible for the rather large size of the binary packages. Nevertheless, a number of Fink project members have reported successfully using KDE on their Mac OS for several weeks. Congratulations to the Fink team! Read More

Following the remarkably successful launch of the KDE 3 series with a very stable KDE 3.0 last month, the KDE Project today announced the immediate availability of KDE 3.0.1. While primarily a translation release, it also squashes some bugs, including some minor security issues with KHTML. Check out the announcement and the fairly complete ChangeLog. Binary packages are available from the stalwart KDE packagers at Compaq Tru64, Conectiva Linux, Mandrake Linux and SuSE Linux. As always, we hope you enjoy the latest and greatest KDE! Read More

The KDE Project today announced the release of KOffice 1.2beta1. While the "final" 1.2 release is not scheduled for another 5 months, this is a great chance to see what the active KOffice developers are up to, and also a great time for new developers / companies to join the KOffice project to accelerate the ascendence of KOffice into the market-leading office suite position <grin>. The highlights of this release are WYSIWYG in KWord, KPresenter and formula objects, much enhanced scriptability via DCOP, and a number of new and enhanced filters, including an XSLT framework for mapping between different XML office formats. Read the announcement for the many details, and feel free to give thanks to those awesome KOffice developers! Read More

In this week's episode of The People Behind KDE, we travel to Osaka, Japan for a beer with Takumi Asaki. Takumi, who loves Renju and prefers Tatami to a bed, is very active in making KDE accessible to the Japanese. Read more about Takumi and his many talents here. Read More

Klaus Stärk informs us that the German KDE website has announced the April 2002 App of the Month: KView. As usual, the useful (German) review includes a screenshot-laden description of KView, as well as a note about, and an interview with, its maintainer, Matthias Kretz. Find out more about your favorite image viewer and the talent behind it. Read More

Today the KDE Project proudly announces the release of KDE 3.0 (fully mirrored below), a release which marks a new era of choice on the desktop. Every advance opens the door to a group of new adopters, and KDE 3 is set to tear the doors asunder. In celebration of the release, the KDE League has posted the text KDE: The Complete Enterprise Desktop Solution, a work-in-progress but already something useful to show those who are considering the migration to freedom. Enough talk, time to download. Read More

Frank Schwanz, the developer of Komba, a popular Samba share browser, today announced a security release. All versions of Komba2 prior to today's release are affected by a flaw which permits other users easily to learn a share password whenever the share is mounted. All Komba users are encouraged to upgrade to version 0.73 and to discontinue use of Komba on multi-user machines in the meantime. Read More

The KDE Project has announced the release of KDE 3.0RC3 (on this, the first day of Spring). The release comes a month after the release of KDE 3.0beta2, with two (semi-public) release candidates, as well as a well-attended 1-week hacking session for fixing problems, appearing in the interim. KDE 3.0rc3 can be downloaded through KDE's load-balancing system (source code, RedHat packages (only partially uploaded at this time), and SuSE packages). Additional packages should become available in the coming days, both on KDE's and some distributions' servers. Other than for show-stopper fixes, this release candidate will be released early next month as KDE 3.0. Personal impression: love at first sight, it simply rocks! Read More

Richard Moore has been working diligently on a rewrite of KWinTV, the KDE TV-card application. The "new" KWinTV (screenshots: Channel Wizard; Channel Wizard - Scanning; Channel Scanner; Device Selection; and Main window) will be based on QtVision, a Qt/Embedded TV application written by George Staikos. He has some really great ideas for future development, such as a panel applet to display a small TV, a TV screensaver, a TV desktop background and teletext/videotex support. Even better, he has asked the community for feedback on where to focus his efforts. Read More

In this week's edition of Kernel Cousin KDE, Aaron J. Seigo covers the KDE 3 RC releases, the controversy about KDE 3 release coordination, progress with KOffice, trouble on the documentation front, and the new Qt C# bindings. Kudos to Aaron who, as usual, has wrapped a week's worth of development news up in a succinct and pleasurable, yet informative, read. Read More

Today marks a special coincidence. First, Adam Treat released the initial version of Qt bindings for C#, which consists of 476 Qt classes converted to C#. The bindings work with the Mono compiler, runtime environment and class libraries, enabling a fully Open Source implementation of C# for Qt. While not yet ready for a real application, Adam has managed to write and execute a Hello World! program (screenshot). KDE bindings are on the drawing board. Shortly thereafter, Phil Thompson, Jim Bublitz and theKompany.com released KDE 2 and KDE 3 bindings for Python. Together with the Java, Objective C and C bindings in the kdebindings module, as well as the Ruby bindings, KDE is providing developers a broad gamut of application development languages. Great work, Adam, Phil and Jim! Read More

Cristian Tibirna has written up a summary of the KDE Three Meeting, held in Nürnberg, Germany from Febuary 25 - March 4, 2002. Through the commitment of a group of active KDE developers (group picture, thumbnails 1, thumbnails 2), a large number of bugs were fixed, promising to make 3.0 KDE's best-tested and most stable .0 release yet. Thanks to all the developers for their great work, and to Cristian for the summary. Read More

LinuxQuestions.org has concluded a vote on the Linux desktop, and KDE has once again had a great showing. It came in first in the Desktop Environment of the Year category with almost 69% of the votes. In addition, KDE standouts Konqueror tied with Mozilla (22%) as Browser of the year; KMail took top honors as Mail Client of the Year (beating Evolution by a large margin); and KOffice earned second place (substantially behind StarOffice) as Office Suite of the Year. Check out the complete results. Read More

Daniel Naber has been busy adding to the KDE.org family. Docs.kde.org is a new KDE documentation site which features KDE user documentation for both the 2.2.2 and HEAD (updated daily) branches. The documentation is both browseable and searchable, and developers of KDE CVS apps can link directly to the appropriate documentation from their application's homepage, saving some work (url format: http://docs.kde.org/<VERSION>/<PACKAGE>/<APPNAME>/, e.g., http://docs.kde.org/HEAD/kdenetwork/kmail/). While only available in English at this juncture, the goal is to eventually add all the translated documentation as well. A very useful new addition to the KDE.org family, thanks, Daniel! Read More

KDevelop guru Ralf Nolden has published a brief tutorial entitled "Developing C/C++ Applications with the KDevelop IDE" at LinuxJournal. The tutorial explains how to set up a development environment and how to create a small sample project, using a simple program to edit environment variables as an example (code listing). The step-by-step guide starts with the cool Application Wizard (screenshot), then describes how to use Qt Designer (screenshot), edit code (screenshot) and debug the program (screenshot). Really nice introduction to KDevelop, Ralf! Read More

St. Mary's Catholic School in Rockledge, Florida has demonstrated the obvious: that KDE/GNU/Linux (KGL) is great for kids and schools. Working with volunteers from the Melbourne Linux Users Group (that's Melbourne, Florida), I.D.E.A.L. Technology (press release) and IXC Telecom, the school deployed the K12 Linux Terminal Server Project (press release), a thin client enterprise solution. The school's KGL network consists of one beefy server (dual 1-GHz Intel^®), which services 36 workstations (16 of which are dual-boot). Apparently the school has opted for KDE as the desktop, and can use rdesktop, a Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) client, to access MS Windows-based applications from an MS Windows terminal server. The school's report notes that "the cost per workstation was $50.00 using donated Pentium class computers". Time to talk to the local school board about saving some tax bucks! Read More

Klaus Stärk informs us that the German KDE website has announced the March 2002 App of the Month: Kate (appsy entry). As usual, the useful (German) review includes a screenshot-laden description of Kate, as well as a note by, and an interview with, its maintainer, Christoph Cullmann. Find out more about your favorite editor and the talent behind it. Read More

NewsForge has published what it bills as the "first-ever comprehensive English-language review of Red Flag Linux". Most of you probably know that Red Flag Linux is the "official" Chinese Linux distribution, and receives support - as well as contracts - from the Chinese government. What you may not have known is that, despite being based on Red Hat Linux, Red Flag Linux has opted for KDE as its default desktop. Even more interesting, the description of their "Redflag Linux Desktop" product lists none other than KOffice as the "desktop office solution". Hats off to Red Flag Linux for choosing the right product for the job. I'm not sure if the KDE mailing lists are prepared for a billion more users, but it sure will be nice to see how much KDE development is borne from China's burgeoning info-tech industry! Read More

Those of you following the US antitrust proceedings against Microsoft might be interested to note that the US DoJ Antitrust Division has selected 47 "major" comments from the 30,000+ comments submitted under the Tunney Act. Included amongst those are comments from the KDE League, Inc. (nice PDF version, website) as well as Red Hat, Inc. (website). After a brief review, other comments making significant references to Open Source include John A. Carroll, Steven Waldman, Ralph Nader and James Love, The American Antitrust Institute and the U.S. Senate (mainly Red Hat's testimony), and comments making some reference to Open Source include Consumers for Computing Choice and Open Platform Working Group, Paul Johnson, Dan Kegel, Mason Thomas and SBC Communications Inc.. Hopefully this volume of comments will ensure that the district court will pay adequate attention to the issues confronting Open Source developers in particular when reviewing the proposed settlement. Read More

Klaus Stärk has written in with two stories of interest from Germany. In the first, the German KDE website has announced the February 2002 App of the Month: KOrganizer. As usual, the useful (German) review includes a description of KOrganizer, as well as a note by, and an interview with, its maintainer, Cornelius Schumacher (People of KDE, dot story). In the second story, many of you know that the German BundesTag (parliament) is considering making KDE/GNU/Linux the pricipal OS/Desktop in the parliament. Klaus points to an online petition called BundesTux (english), "where people can subscribe in order to say "Yes, it would be good to have Linux on the servers and desktops in the german Bundestag". So when Linux becomes the desktop OS there, what could be the desktop environment, then?" Even if you do not plan to endorse the petition, I suggest that you head over there anyway, the petition is quite the great read. Read More

Over the last few weeks, I have been busily adding a number of new features and enhancements to appsy. Most of them enable greater customization of site content, such as receiving email notification when a particular application or any application within a particular category is updated. Others provide more information and statistics about the site and the software listed on it. And, not coincidentally, there is a new "news" system where you can post comments on a story as well. You can find out about the details in the site's first story. My apologies to those who visited the site during the brief moments when the reconstruction caused you problems. Read More

Matthias Kalle Dalheimer, who besides being one of the initial KDE developers, author of a famous c't article which helped galvanize KDE early in its life, author of an important series of early KDE articles (1, 2, 3) as well as the author of several books on Qt development published by O'Reilly^®, has recently authored an article entitled Design Patterns in Qt. In it he explores how the concepts from the "Gang of Four" book Design Patterns are used in Qt programming, focusing specifically on Qt's signal-slot architecture. Enjoy! Read More

Hancom Linux recently announced that the Korean government has procured 120,000 copies of HancomLinux Deluxe 2.0, which includes, among other things, KDE 2 and Hancom Office. This means that many more office workers will soon be using KDE for their daily productivity. The government, which will migrate the equivalent of 23% of the annual Microsoft Windows based PC procurement, is quoted as estimating that they will "save 80% of what an equivalent purchase of Microsoft products would have cost." See also the stories at Slashdot and the Register. Way to go, Hancom! Read More

According to a story at ZDNet (earlier story at heise online), SuSE has been enjoined by a German court from distributing its distribution in Germany, apparently because the court decided that the KOffice painting program Krayon violates the anonymous plaintiff's trademark (the article says copyright) in Crayon. Fortunately, boxes already shipped to stores appear not to be affected. One cannot know for sure who is behind this, but the rumour mill is placing bets on CRAYON, a German website which sells CDs with cartoons and other images. This follows not long after another Germany-centered dispute over the KOffice application Kontour (f/k/a KIllustrator), which an Adobe lawyer claimed violated Adobe's trademark in Illustrator. Any German lawyer care to explain why an anonymous plaintiff is permitted to get an injunction, and how trademark law can be violated when it is quite difficult to see any potential for confusion? Update, Wednesday January 09, @10:23AM: A more recent heise online story reveals that the trademark holder is Seidel Softwareservice, which recently spun off the CRAYON website, and while Krayon in fact was not included on the SuSE 7.3 CDs, apparently its menu entry was. It also raises the obvious point about the chilling effect actions like this might have on the desire of Linux distributions to include a large number of software packages on a CD. Update, Thursday January 10, @01:10AM: SuSE has announced that the injunction has been removed (see also the heise online story), apparently without having to pay any license fees to the plaintiff. Read More

KDE.de (KDE's German-only site) has selected KNotes as the Anwendung des Monats for this January, 2002. Along with a screenshot-rich description of KNotes (basically, it's a desktop "sticky-note" taker which has been very nicely integrated into KDE), the honor features a nice interview (Fishy English translation) with KNotes maintainer Michael Brade. Nice work, Michael! Read More

PC World.com is running a story about the technologies to watch for 2002. Besides predicting consolidation in the Linux distros (particularly that RedHat will swallow up another distro), the article opines that "[t]he arrival of Sun Microsystem's StarOffice 6.0 and continued work on the KDE desktop graphical interface could make Linux a more viable alternative on the desktop". Nice to see KDE get the recognition it deserves in the mainstream press. Read More

Many in the KDE community are aware of some rocky history between KDE hacker Mosfet and other KDE developers. Fortunately, it looks like things have taken a great turn for the better: Mosfet wrote in to tell us that "I've decided to donate 20 effects I ported to KDE/Qt for PixiePlus to KDE3". Waldo Bastian promptly added them to CVS. The new effects include normalize, equalize, solarize, threshold, emboss, despeckle, charcoal, rotate, sample, addNoise, blur, edge, implode, oil paint, sharpen, spread, shade, swirl, wave, and contrastHSV. All will be available under a BSD-type license in the KImageEffect class in kdelibs. According to Mosfet, these effects will be useful not only for image viewers and editors, but also for things like style engines. Except for the simple rotate, Mosfet ported the effects from ImageMagick to work directly on QImages and Qt scanlines. Nice job, Mosfet! (For those who have not yet heard the news, PixiePlus is the successor to Pixie; more information is available here.) Read More

Good news for many FreeBSD and Sun Solaris users: you can now get a precompiled KDE 2.2.2 from the normal locations. The FreeBSD packages are said to work only with 4.4 Stable on Intel and compatible platforms. The Sun packages come in two flavors: Sparc packages, which reportedly have been tested only on Solaris 8, and Intel and compatible packages, which presumably is only for Solaris 8. FreeBSD users may also want to check out the new FreeBSD.KDE.org website. The KDE 2.x Systems page has been updated with these latest releases; if you are aware of any omissions, please follow the instructions on the page for notifying the maintainer. Read More

The KDE Project today (OK, yesterday now) announced the release of KDE 3.0Beta1. The announcements contains the typical package locations and summary of changes (visit the developer's website for a more detailed list of planned feature additions for KDE 3.0 and the current progress). Since beta releases always provide an ideal opportunity for newcomers to get involved and make a difference, the release also provides intriguing suggestions to those of you who may in the past have pondered, "I really want to contribute to KDE and help make my favorite desktop even better, but what can I possibly do?". Read More

The KOffice project today announced the release of KOffice 1.1.1. KOffice is a free, Open Source, integrated office suite demonstrating the richness and power of the KDE development environment. The release, out less than three months after the long-anticipated KOffice 1.1 hit the KDE ftp servers, mainly improves performance, printing (particularly in KWord), and stability. The announcement contains links to the source and a number of binary packages, as well as a summary of the changes. A more detailed changelog is available at the KOffice website. The next release will likely be released shortly after KDE 3.0, sometime in the first quarter of 2002. Update Tuesday December 18, @11:42 pm: Timothy Butler wrote in to tell us that Open for Business is running a mini-review of KOffice, and it's readiness for enterprise deployment. Read More

Hong Feng, apparently a former chief editor with O'Reilly & Associates in Beijing, is preparing the first issue of the Free Software Magazine, a periodical intended to be by and for free software hackers. He is looking for some contributors to the inaugural issue (slated for January 2002) who can write on KDE development and/or Qt/Embedded development (hmmm, an article about Konqueror Embedded or KDevelop with its new cross-compiling support sounds like a sweet fit). A number of articles appear to be in the queue already, and a preface by RMS is already online. Guidelines are available here. Noteworthy are that you can base a submission on something previously published, so long as you (or someone submitting with you) retain the copyright, and that the submission should be under some Open Publication license. The deadline for submissions is December 20, so now's the time to get involved. Read More

Oliver Strutynski has a mission. Frustrated by the fact that some online banks discriminate against Konqueror, he has announced a website for promoting Konqueror to banks. According to the site, "It is the purpose of this page to collect a list of online banking sites that work with recent versions of Konqueror or to present work-arounds for using online banking sites that fail to load correctly on first try". If you do engage in advocacy with your bank, please keep in mind the Linux Advocacy Guidelines (non-Linux'ers, filter the page through sed -e s'@Linux@MYOS@g', and it will address you too). Most countries heavily regulate their banks and thus banks have additional legal obligations and liabilities in terms of security. This means that providing support for a particular browser may not necessarily be as simple as it would be for a different category of website; however, if enough customers request it . . . . Read More

Aaron J. Seigo and Juergen Appel have published the 27th issue of KC KDE, and this is a good one. Topics cover certain problems with using Qt-2.3.2, eliminating desktop icons, preventing dialogs from stealing focus, the new aRts Linux kernel module, the new KDE Printing website (dot story), and more. Thanks for another great summary of KDE development activities, Aaron and Juergen! Read More

CRN today published an article destined to give KDE/Linux naysayers food for thought regarding the viability of KDE as enterprise desktop software. In this well-researched article by Frank J. Ohlhorst, the CRN Test Center built a Linux network consisting of a server and five workstations, with the goal of creating a reliable network that could be used in a typical small-business environment. The Test Center's insightful conclusion: "Linux and associated Linux applications can accomplish many of the same tasks as the Wintel standard at a much lower initial cost, in this case, for 93 percent less than the software cost of a similar Windows-based network, and without many of the licensing hassles presented by traditional software platforms".
As to choosing between the two major Linux desktop environments, the article reports that "Test Center engineers found KDE the friendliest and were impressed with the array of KDE-compatible software . . . KDE is the most actively developed Linux desktop and has the most tools. Solution providers seeking KDE desktop open-source development tools should go to www.apps.kde.com, which has ratings on each product, including feedback from the user community". Good to see such a well-researched article, and more importantly that the non-Linux media is starting to realize the capabilities of our very own KDE <grin>. Read More

KDevelop's programmer extraordinaire Ralf Nolden has added cross-compilation support to KDevelop. As his initial motivation was to support development for the Zaurus (as we reported earlier this month, Trolltech and Sharp have collaborated on this Linux palmtop), KDevelop can now be used for developing applications for ARM processors (both the Zaurus and Compaq's iPaq are based on the StrongARM). Screenshots of the new KDevelop features are available here, and information about using this new feature to prevail in TrollTech's and Sharp's developers' contest for the Zaurus, as well as the KDevelop announcement, are below. Read More

David Sweet wrote in to tell us that the updated, German version of the excellent (and free) KDE 2 development book, KDE 2.0 Development, is now available online at Andamooka. David extends his thanks to Petra Alm and Dirk Louis (translation), Karl Heinz Zimmer and Carsten Pfeiffer (tech editing) and Boris Karnikowski (Andamooka version). For those of you who missed it, a dead tree version of the book can also be purchased (Amazon.de, Markt+Technik). This might be an opportune time to point out that the KDE website features a nice listing of available KDE books. Read More

The KDE Project has announced the release of KDE 2.2.2, a service and security release. A fairly complete list of changes from KDE 2.2.1, released two months ago, is available here. If you are using KDE in a multi-user environment, you are strongly encouraged to upgrade for the security enhancements incorporated into the release. If not, you are still encouraged to enjoy the many improvements. This may well be the last release of the KDE 2 series, given that the first stable KDE 3 release is scheduled in about 3 months. Happy Thanksgiving! Read More

Rob Kaper has graciously fulfilled the oft-heard request for screenshots of the upcoming KDE 3.0 release. Take a trip to KDE.org and have a look at the screenshots featuring (1) the cool dotNet style (my personal favorite after Liquid) (large SS), (2) KOnCD, now a part of the KDE base distribution (large SS), (3) a desktop shot with the really cool iKons icon set (large SS), and (4) the Media Peach color theme and Quartz window decorations (large SS). This might be a good time to remind everyone: for more information on the amazing themes and icons available for KDE, check out KDE-Look.org, the Themes section at APPS.KDE.com, and the newly redesigned KDE section at Themes.org (while a spiffy design, this new site is still <cough>somewhat bare bones</cough>, visit the "classic" pages for some actual content). P.S. Themes.org is running a "favorite desktop" poll on their frontpage, let your voice be heard! Read More

The Annual (ex-Atlanta) Linux Showcase and XFree86 Conference took place last Thursday through Saturday in Oakland, California. Representing KDE at the event were Ralf Nolden, Ellis Whitehead, Roland Krause, Paul Campbell, and Charles Samuels. Ralf and Charles, who took photos, have made them available in a picture gallery (made especially interesting by Charles' colorful commentary). Ralf provided a well-attended presentation on KDevelop, and Ellis provided one on KDE's "hidden features". Charles had a CVS edition of KDE 3 running on KDE 2.2 using Xnest. A large number of the attendees visited the KDE booth, and, according to Charles, the most common questions were "What's new in KDE3" (which, as we have reported, mainly has to do with the new features of Qt 3), and when the initial stable KDE 3 release is planned (February 2002). Charles further reports, "An Afterstep developer approached and asked about implementing a DCOP interface to his project. We wowed a few visitors with Noatun and Arts Builder. Several company representatives also expressed interest in moving their office to KDE (and appeared to be sold on the prospect when they left)." Way to go, guys, thanks for representing KDE at the ALS! Read More

Trolltech and Sharp have announced a really spiffy-looking Linux palmtop, named "Zaurus". The device itself features a sliding (retractable) keyboard, a color display, a CF expansion slot (for memory or peripherals), an SD expansion slot (for secure memory storage or other peripherals), an IR port, a USB connector and a headset port. On the software side, the Zaurus uses Lineo's Embedix Linux; Trolltech's Qt/Embedded, Qt/Palmtop and Qt AWT GUI technologies; Insignia Solution's Jeode PDA Edition; and Opera Software's embedded web browser. Sharp is accepting pre-orders from the developer community for the SL-5000D developer unit (register here). With the continuing additions to kdenox, this might just be a great platform for KOffice/embedded. Read More

The KDE Project today revealed its plans for the LinuxWorldConference and Expo, a European B2B summit for the Open Source community. Last year, in the conference's debut, over 11,000 trade visitors and 100 exhibitors attended. The conference will take place from October 30 - November 1, 2001, at the Frankfurt Fairgrounds, Frankfurt, Germany. We invite everybody to meet KDE developers, KDE enthusiasts and, of course, our mascot Konqi, at the KDE booth. Some details about the planned events, demonstrations and presentations, courtesy of Kurt Pfeifle and Torsten "Tackat" Rahn, follow. Read More

Richard Dale recently pleasantly surprised me (and probably others) by announcing that he has committed C bindings for the KDE3/Qt3 libraries to KDE's CVS. Richard generated the C bindings automatically using a hacked kdoc, with relatively little manual intervention. According to him, "The bindings wrap about 800 classes [and] 13,000 methods, with 200k [lines of code] of C/C++ generated." The same hacked kdoc can also generate Objective C and Java bindings, and Richard hopes to be able to consolidate generation of these various KDE bindings (Java/Objective C/C) with this one tool. Currently the C bindings for KDE 3 and Qt 3 are in KDE's CVS, with bindings for KDE 2.2.x/Qt 2.3.x awaiting resolution of a dynamic linking/PIC problem which affects the Objective C bindings (please contact Richard if you are knowledgeable in this area).

After a two month hiatus, I am happy to report that Aaron J. Seigo is back with another issue of his fabulous Kernel Cousin KDE. This issue, which covers the week of October 8-14, touches on wide-ranging topics such as KDE3, some new KIO Slaves, a new KDE XML editor, the new KDE PIM site, the new KDE address book, and many other exciting developments. You can read Aaron's well-written synopsis here. (And thanks to Aaron's suggestion I have created a new category for KIO Slaves.) Read More

Stefan Westerfeld has posted a summary of a IRC discussion held by the KDE Multimedia team last month. Essentially a KDE 3 roadmap for the multimedia team, the discussion covers topics ranging from MCOP and OSS compatability to recording and video embedding. A slightly edited version of his post follows. Read More

LinuxJournal has published the results of their 2001 Readers' Choice Awards, based on ballots gathered from six weeks of on-line voting. KDE itself won in the "Favorite Desktop Environment" category, with the LJ editors explaining: "This was one of the most popular categories, and KDE is the clear winner, receiving 40% of all votes. GNOME came in second with 24.5%, and the favorite write-in was XFce." In addition, individual KDE packages/applications fared extremely well: KOffice placed in the "Favorite Office Suite" category; KMail placed in the "Favorite Email Client" category; KWord showed in the "Favorite Word Processor" category; KDevelop showed in the "Favorite Development Tool" category; and Konqueror showed in the "Favorite Web Browser" category.
In a separate review, UnixReview gave favorable marks to Quanta Plus, an HTML editor designed for quick web development. Quanta features PHP support and will be part of the HancomOffice package under the name WebBuilder. Read More

The KDE Project has just announced the release of KDE 3.0Alpha1, the inaugural release of the KDE 3 series. This release is targeted at developers, though experimental users might want to check it out (be sure to read the instructions for installing KDE 3 alongside your KDE 2 desktop). The principal changes from the recently-released KDE 2.2.1 stem from the switch to Qt 3. However, that switch does bring with it an impressive array of feature enhancements, including new database classes, new data-aware widgets, improved RAD development with a much-enhanced Qt Designer, a new powerful regular expression class (with full Unicode support), improved internationalization support (including the ability to mix different character sets in the same text), bi-directional language support (for languages such as Arabic and Hebrew), multi-monitor (Xinerama and multi-screen) support, better integration of pure Qt applications into KDE, and hardware-accelerated alpha blending. With the Qt port out of the way, the KDE developers can now focus on the planned KDE improvements. Read the full announcement here, or go straight to the source (alternative link). Read More

DCOP is KDE's interprocess communication (IPC)/remote procedure call (RPC) technology. DCOP provides a simple protocol with authentication over TCP/IP or Unix domain sockets. Two new complementary tutorials on DCOP have just been made available at the KDE developer site. The first one, written by Richard Moore and entitled Creating a DCOP Interface, explains how to add a DCOP interface to a simple KDE application, and illustrates how it can be used. According to Richard, "Adding the interface is easy. The example defines a number of methods of different types, and as you'll see all these methods can be quickly used via DCOP." The second one, written by Olaf Zanger and entitled Automation of KDE2, introduces DCOP as an automation interface (e.g., using scripts to access another application's DCOP interface). According to Olaf, the tutorial is useful to "learn how to access features you used to tackle with your mouse or key-combinations with your favourite scripting environment." Read More

Jono Bacon, perhaps best known for his work on Kafka and the KDE Usability Study, has announced the launch of his most recent endeavor: KDE::Enterprise. Since KDE is probably best suited for deployment in enterprises and educational institutions at this juncture, it is at once wonderful and very exciting to see this useful initiative come to light shortly after the KDE Edutainment project, announced a few days ago. The press release follows. Read More

Peter-Paul Koch, maintainer of a JavaScript/DOM/CSS testing site, recently updated his browser section. In it he reviews Konqueror, together with the other Version 5 browsers, Mozilla and IE. He concludes, "In short, the few remaining bugs in Konqueror are details that no doubt will be solved soon. The development team has succeeded in building an excellent, standards compliant browser from scratch. Therefore I expect Konqueror to become a real competitor for Netscape 6 on Linux: it has made an excellent start and can only become better." Read More

Benjamin Reed wrote in to tell us that he has helped out RedHat's KDE users and put together KDE 2.2.1 RPMs for RedHat 7.0 and 7.1. "Since I got such a great response for my "unofficial" RPMs last time, I thought I'd do it again. After what seems like years of building, I've got everything together." The packages are available via http or ftp. If you can mirror these packages, please let him know. (He adds: "Coming soon: RedHat 6.2 packages -- who needs a life? =)." Read More

The KDE Edutainment team today announced the official launch of the KDE Edutainment Project. The project's goal is to create educational software based around KDE, and not just for children. I have been watching this project grow momentum over the past two months and the team has achieved great enthusiasm, organization and, hence, promise. The press release follows; and there is of course a lot more information available on the project's web site, including information on how to join and help this worthy project. Read More

The KDE Project has just released KDE 2.2.1. Though a week and a few days late, I am happy to report that the delay made this (perhaps the last stable release of the KDE 2 series) better. Read the announcement or go straight to the source. Please note that some of the packages -- RedHat and Yellow Dog spring to mind -- were uploaded late and may take some time to sync to the mirrors. Also, there were some problems identified with some i18n packages late yesterday; these problems are being corrected, so if the i18n package you want is missing or broken, please check back in a few days. Update, Wednesday September 19, @08:22PM: Mandrake has advised its users to (i) update to "cooker", the development version of Mandrake 8.1, which has KDE-2.2.1 packages here; (ii) update to the release candidate of Mandrake 8.1 (please visit here for more info); or (iii) wait for the official packages, which should be available next week. Also, for those who have not read the announcement, I should highlight that TurboLinux has announced that they have made KDE the default desktop in the next TurboLinux Workstation release. Read More

Rob Valliere has written a success story in which he (partially) converted a small office (25 computers) from a Windows-only environment to a mixed Windows-Linux/KDE environment. The review includes useful tables listing commonly-used Windows 2000 applications and their Linux counterparts; hardware requirements for both types of systems; a cost savings analysis; a software comparison guide (including the good, the bad and the ugly); and a migration guide. The analysis shows that even if a small business needs to retain some Windows boxes because of the lack of comparable Linux software, significant cost savings can be achieved (in this case $5,000 for the mixed network versus $15,000 for a Windows-only network). Now if I could only find the time to write up what I learned during my visit to the City of Largo (which, as we reported a few weeks ago, switched a much larger network to KDE 2). Read More

Klaus Stärk has submitted an interview he recently conducted with Charles Samuels about Noatun. Noatun is KDE's powerful multimedia (video/audio) player. Klaus tells us that Noatun will be the "Application of the Month October 2001" on the German KDE-webpage, so the interview will be translated into German at that time. Read More

Frank was the first of many to write in to tell us that IBM developerWorks has announced the winners of the KDE theme contest. The top prize (along with a $3,000 donation) goes to Matthias Fenner of Germany for the Winning theme (download), second prize (along with a $2,000 donation) goes to Gregory Brubaker of the United States for the Happy People theme (download), and third prize (along with a $1,000 donation) goes to Vadim Plessky of Russia for the Egypt Office theme (download). Each winner now needs to choose a non-profit, Open Source organization to which developerWorks will make a donation on his behalf. Congratulations to the winners, and thanks to IBM developerWorks for their sponsorship of this rewarding project! Read More

ZDNet has published a review of KOffice^TM. Titled "KOffice falls short of Microsoft Office standard: Updated Linux alternative to Office not ready for corporate big leagues", the lengthy review takes a close and, perhaps surprisingly, fair look at the strengths and weaknesses of KOffice. While generally lauding KOffice, its design, stablity and capabilities, the review identifies four factors which, in the reviewers' opinion, makes KOffice currently unsuitable for corporate use: (1) shortcomings of the MS Office^® import filters; (2) lack of MS Office export filters; (3) the lack of some KWord features, such as a thesaurus, automatic spell-checking and (uggghh) grammar checking; and (4) some missing features in KSpread, some easy to fix (such as case sensitivity) and some not so easy to fix (such as the ability to import VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) scripts). All in all, surprisingly similar to my own review. Read More

Waldo Bastian, the KDE 2.x release coordinator, has announced that KDE 2.2.1 was packaged as a tarball yesterday and will be officially released on September 17, 2001. Those of you expecting the release this Monday will be happy to know that the extra week was used to squash bugs. At about the same time, Dirk Mueller, the new KDE 3.x release coordinator (thanks, Dirk!), posted the projected KDE 3.0 release schedule. The short and sweet: first beta on December 3, 2001, first release candidate on January 7, 2002, and KDE 3.0 on February 25, 2002. Unlike the KDE 1 to KDE 2 change, this one should be much smoother: Qt has changed far less, and very few (if any) core applications will be completely rewritten, as many were for KDE 2. Read More

Rob Kaper and myself have collaborated on a summary of the happenings at last week's LinuxWorld Expo. We tell you what really took place at the most fabulous booth at the show <grin>. And don't forget to check out Rob's extended and hilarious picture gallery of the event! Read More

If you did not heed our warning from six months ago and are still using KMail < 1.0.29.1 (from KDE 1.x), you are advised to please upgrade to KDE 2.2 (or KDE 2.1.x) immediately. In about a week the bizarre KMail 1,000,000,000th second bug will strike, which can cause corruption of your mail folders. Details about the bug are available here. Read More

During the first day of the LinuxWorld Expo, Hancom Linux and theKompany.com became the talk of the show with the news that they are merging their product lines and releasing a complete Linux/KDE office suite this coming November. Dubbed "HancomOffice 2.0", the suite will combine 4 Hancom products (Word, a word processor, Sheet, a spreadsheet, Presenter, a presentation program, and Painter, a bitmap drawing program) with 4 theKompany.com products (EasyDB, a personal database management system familiar to us as reKall, Envision, a diagram and flowchart drawing tool familiar to us as the KOffice component Kivio, WebBuilder, an HTML/PHP editing tool familiar to us as Quanta+, and QuickSilver, a personal information manager familiar to us as Aethera). The Word/Sheet/Presenter applications are advertised as outstanding at both importing and exporting the corresponding MS Office formats. Because it uses Qt 3.0 the same boxed set will run on Linux, Mac OS X, Windows and -- yes -- even embedded devices (some planned devices were announced). Although the products are pure Qt, with 3.0's new features they should integrate nicely into the KDE desktop.
Suggested retail price: $99. Ready or not, KDE is coming to Main Street! Read More

Moments ago, at LinuxWorld Expo being hosted in San Francisco, CA, the KDE Project was honored as the winner in the "Best Open Source Project" category. On hand to accept the Open Source Product Excellence Award on behalf of the KDE development community were KDE developers Charles Samuels and Rob Kaper, as well as yours truly. Congratulations to the KDE developers, and thanks to IDG for recognizing the excellence of the KDE desktop! Update, Thursday August 30, @1:15AM: Rob Kaper has posted pictures of the award. Read More

During a panel discussion at LinuxWorld Expo here in San Francisco, CA, Linus Torvalds said that the biggest development in Linux this past year has been the desktop, as reported in this story. "Within the last year, it's progressed past the eye-candy stage," he said during a panel discussion at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo, praising the KDE user interface and higher-level applications such as KOffice. Another happy KDE user :-). Read More

After a series of three betas and one release candidate, the KDE Project used the occasion of the first day of the Linux World Expo in San Francisco, CA to announce (alternate with fixed table) the much-anticipated stable release of KOffice 1.1. KOffice is a free, Open Source, integrated office suite demonstrating the richness and power of the KDE development environment. The announcement contains links to the source and binary packages as well as a good deal of information about the current features of the KOffice packages. A candid assessment by yours truly follows. Read More

Aaron J. Seigo is back with another issue of Kernel Cousin KDE, Issue #20 for Aug. 10. Due to Zack's vacation, the issue is temporarily being hosted here. Check it out for stories on continuing efforts to improve Konqueror's support for EMCAScript (JavaScript), security issues when using webform completion, efforts to create SCP and SFTP KIOSlaves, and much more. Read More

After some delay caused by a severe hardware failure on KDE's ftp server, the KDE Project has announced the official release of KDE 2.2. This release brings a lot of goodies, including: faster startup times (using the experimental objprelink method) and performance; numerous improvements to HTML rendering and JavaScript support; the addition of IMAP support (including SSL and TLS) to KMail; a new plugin-based print architecture with integrated filter and page layout capabilities; a number of new plugins for Konqueror (including a Babelfish translator, an image gallery generator, an HTML validator and a web archiver); native iCalendar support in KOrganizer; and a new personalization wizard. Compaq has also announced the addition of KDE to Tru64. Time to tell the boss to forget XP, and use KDE (hmmmm, back in my college days that would have made a nice chant: 'Forget XP, use KDE', . . .). Read More

Waldo Bastian, the KDE 2.2 release coordinator, has tagged KDE 2.2 for final release. Though KDE 2.2.0 was scheduled for release today, it has been slightly delayed to increase stability and speed. The current schedule is to release KDE 2.2.0 next Monday, August 13. Future plans include a KDE 2.2.1 bugfix/translation release, scheduled for September 2001. But the main development activity will occur in the KDE 3.0 branch, which will be based on Qt 3.x and is scheduled for release early next year. Congratulations to all KDE developers for reaching yet another important milestone. Waldo's announcement follows. Read More

The two venerable KDE mailing lists, kde and kde-user, both hosted at lists.netcentral.net, are being phased out in favor of two new mailing lists, kde and kde-linux, hosted at the KDE.org domain. Current subscribers to the existing mailing lists will need to subscribe to the new mailing lists. Administration of the old mailing lists will cease August 15 and they will be shut down altogether on August 31. A big shout-out to NetCentral for providing excellent hosting services to KDE users for many years! Update: 08/02 5:25 AM by N: By popular demand, a kde-nonlinux list has been created as well. Read More

KOffice RC1 has descended onto the well-known KDE ftp servers. Your best bet is to use it with KDE 2.2beta1 and Qt 2.3.1, but KDE 2.1.1 and Qt 2.2.4 will work (though not as well). The next release, scheduled for mid-August, will be 1.1 final, so this is your last chance to give KOffice a whirl and help find any remaining bugs before we are stuck with them until the 1.2 release <grin>. SuSE gets the binary-build over-achievement award. You can read the press release, complete with an incremental ChangeLog and other interesting stuff, if you Read More. Read More

Dave Richards, Systems Administrator for the City of Largo, Florida, has just announced that the City of Largo has switched to KDE 2.1.1 as their production system. According to Dave, "The City of Largo is a thin client/X shop [which supports] 400 thin client devices that support X, 800 total users, and run about 230 concurrently during the heaviest part of the day." Dave shares his experiences and problems in getting the system working below, and happily concludes that "the cutover has gone really well". Update: 07/25 8:25 PM by N: Dave answers your questions in this article. You can also check out his old presentation at SCO Forum 99. Read More

While we anxiously await the release of KDE 2.2 in two weeks, Waldo Bastian, the current KDE release coordinator, has posted the proposed schedule for the release of KDE 3. The upshot: KDE 2.2.1 is scheduled for September 2001 and KDE 3.0 for January 2002. The full schedule is available below. Read More

After some debate last week over whether KDE 2.2 HEAD BRANCH was ready for a stable release, Waldo Bastian, the KDE 2.2 release coordinator, has posted a revised release schedule (also available if you Read More). The release has been delayed two weeks from Monday, July 16 to August 6. Though KDE excels at sticking to published release schedules, it seems to me that stability and security are the developers' primary concerns. And That's A Good Thing^TM. Read More

The weekly Apps Roundup column has turned out to be not-so-weekly this far, but in the second installment I go much further in-depth and take a closer look at Bibletime, a scripture-study program for those of the Judaeo-Christian faiths. Because I went crazy with the screenshots, the review is available here. Enjoy! Read More

George Russell today released Speaker, a first salvo at making Konqueror (the KDE web browser) synthesize text to speech and hence making Konqueror useable by people with visual impairments and by people who are otherwise unable to view a screen. Speaker is a plugin for Konqueror which provides text-to-speech-synthesis using the Festival Speech Synthesis System engine developed at Edinburgh University. Currently text has to be selected with the mouse and the Speak menu entry selected, but hopefully the interface will be improved so visually impaired users can surf the web with Konqueror. More information is on the homepage and at apps.kde.com. Note that this is a testing release and requires a KDE CVS tree. Read More

One of the most frequently asked questions on the KDE developer lists is, "How can I start contributing to KDE?" -- NewsForge.com may just have the answer. In an article entitled Joining the Round Table: How to get started developing for the Linux desktop, Tina Gasperson gives some helpful tips and links on how to get your feet wet with KDE or other Open Source coding. Read More

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. Read More

Konqueror has received another huge shot in the arm, this time by gaining the ability to embed MSIE ActiveX controls such as the popular Shockwave Player. KDE developers Nikolas Zimmermann and Malte Starostik today announced the initial release of reaktivate. While not perfect yet, work is ongoing to support other controls for which no native Linux/Unix solutions exist, such as Apple's QuickTime. Credit goes to the WINE developers for providing the ActiveX support. So now that Konqueror can embed MSIE ActiveX controls, Netscape Communicator plugins (for Linux), any X window (through X window parenting), Java applets and any KParts components, and does an excellent job at handling HTML, CSS and JavaScript natively, it seems to me Konqueror is fast becoming the best browser on any platform. Sweet. Read more for the full press release. Read More

It's finally official: KDE 2.2beta has been announced. "With this release, KDE is in a great position to deliver a very strong KDE 2.2 release," said Waldo Bastian, the KDE 2.2 release coordinator. "With support for IMAP, the totally new printing framework and improved proxy support, KDE 2.2 will be an excellent foundation for the desktop needs of many businesses." Some other goodies: KMail now can send mails without blocking. Konqueror enhancements include stopping animated GIFs (thank you, thank you!!), "Send File" and "Send Link" options, new file previews and lots of new plugins. Noatun boasts an improved plugin architecture and some new visualization plugins. KWin has Xinerama support. A number of new applications are part of the package, such as KPersonalizer (desktop configuration) and Kooka (scanning). For a longer list, read the announcement (also attached below), and for a really long list of improvements, read the ChangeLog. As always, enjoy, and thanks to the KDE "we never sleep" Team! Read More

Yesterday I started putting together a list of operating systems/distributions and architectures on which KDE 2.x compiles and runs. It is far from complete but already lists three BSDs, eight Linuxes and four other Unices, as well as nine architectures. If you know of a system that is not listed, please help us complete the list. Instructions for contributing are here. Read More

Trolltech, creators of the excellent cross-platform GUI library Qt on which KDE is based, announced today a new license for Qt/Windows. Called the Qt Non Commercial license version 1.0, it permits developers of non-commerical software to develop with and distribute the Windows version of Qt for free. The Qt Non Commercial Edition for Microsoft Windows is a binary-only distribution and requires Microsoft Visual Studio version 6 (download, FAQ). Excellent news, but when will we see kdelibs and Konqueror for Windows? Read More

LinuxTag 2001 is the largest Linux and Open Source exhibition in Europe. Last year over 17,000 visitors and 100 exhibitors attended the event. This year's event will be hosted in Stuttgart, Germany from July 5 through July 8. The KDE Team will have a large presence there, including several presentations and workshops, a large number of KDE developers, and of course the KDE mascot Konqi. Read the press release below. Update: 06/30 12:43 PM by N: Ralf has assembled some updated information. Read More

Some time ago I decided to start a weekly column, Apps Roundup, to summarize some of the interesting things happening with KDE applications. This inaugural issue features status updates for Kate, Kivio, LISa and the KDE Installer Project. As I plan to make this a regular column, please email me if you know of an app that should be featured here. Read More

I was browsing SourceForge today and stumbled across the KDE on Cygwin project. Apparently, they have ported Qt 2.3.0 for X11, Qt 1.45 and KDE 1.1.2 to use the CygWin tools and CygWin/XFree86, respectively ports of the popular GNU platform and XFree86 to Windows. Although this is a big step towards making KDE applications useable on Windows machines, it might be interesting to get rid of the X server requirements as Simon Haussman has done with Konqueror/Embedded. It seems to me that a free desktop infrastructure of KDE's caliber that runs on both Windows and UNIX, and perhaps even embedded devices runing Qt/Embedded, would increase the number and quality of KDE programs, and open the door to KDE for many more users. What do you think? Read More

After missing a week due to other commitments, Aaron J. Seigo is back in full swing with KC KDE # 9. Highlights include a new project to build KDE system configuration tools, improvement of the KDE printing framework to direct output to arbitrary devices (including faxes), and access control lists for KDE CVS. Read more here. Read More

Sure to put an end to countless discussions on the ever-lively kde-look mailing list, and to cut off a stream of "wishlist" bug requests, KDE CVS (look for it in the upcoming KDE 2.2-beta1 release) now features task-grouping in Kicker, the KDE panel. As is shown in this screenshot, task grouping optionally groups all windows opened by the same application in the same task-bar button. Here, 17 Gimp windows can be seen grouped in the same taskbar button, and the same can be seen for Konqueror and Konsole windows. With no more overflowing task bars, I am a happy camper :-). Read More

Our recent poll (courtesy KDE.com) on the upcoming KDE 2.2 suggests that the area of greatest concern for KDE users is speed -- at this time, out of 3,463 votes, over 24% consider speed as most important for developers to address. Waldo Bastian, who developed the kdeinit speed hack among other things, has written a paper entitled "Making C++ ready for the desktop", in which he analyzes the various startup phases of a C++ program. Noting that one component of linking -- namely, library relocations -- is currently slow, he offers some suggestions for optimizations. An interesting read. Read More

As we announced last week, the KDE Project has released kdelibs-2.1.2 to address a security issue and fix some bugs. Besides fixing the KDEsu security exploit, particularly joyful to many of you who use Konqueror will be the fix of the "protocol for http://x.y.z died unexpectedly" bug. "Read more" for the full text of the announcement, including a list of changes. Read More

Matthias Elter has written a tutorial (print version; example source tarballs) on developing panel applets for Kicker, the KDE 2 panel. Kicker is a complete rewrite from the KDE 1 panel; this was done mainly to increase the panel's extensibility. KDE 2.0 introduced the panel applet API and KDE 2.1 added the panel extension API. The tutorial teaches you how to implement a simple panel applet using the panel applet API. From the tutorial: "Both the applet and extension APIs are simple. This qualifies writing a panel applet as a suitable task for an introduction to KDE programming." Read More

The KDE Project today announced the highly-anticipated release of KOffice 1.1beta1. KOffice is an integrated office suite for KDE which utilizes open standards for component communication and component embedding. The primary goals of the the release are to provide a preview of KOffice 1.1 and to involve users who wish to request missing features or report problems. Code development is currently focused on stabilizing KOffice 1.1, scheduled for final release this summer. The complete press release is below. Read More

The KDE Project is planning to release kdelibs-2.1.2 early next week. The unscheduled release was prompted by the release today of KOffice 1.1beta1, which has problems with the kdelibs from KDE 2.1.1, as well as a security fix for kdesu, resulting from a security bug reported this week. However, the release will include a number of other bugfixes as well. Stay tuned. Read More

In this week's Kernel Cousin KDE, Aaron J. Seigo covers PGP support in the kdenetwork libraries, message scoring in KMail, some KControl restructuring views, comparisons of QSocket and KSocket, extending the KDE address book, Rik Hemsley's KDE widget styles tutorial, using Mozilla's Gecko as the rendering engine for Konqueror, and which version of Qt to use for compiling from CVS. Read More

This week's installment of Tink's People Behind KDE features Stefan Westerfeld, the creator of KDE's multimedia architecture based on aRts. Besides delving into the usual background, Stefan shares his favorite saying: "Software is like sex, it's better when it's free". Amen. Read More

Last week, we posted a story on a theme tutorial sponsored by IBM developerWorks. The tutorial was targeted at non-programmers who wish to theme window decorations, icons, sounds, colors, etc. However, at the widget level, KDE/Qt also offers a more powerful type of "theming" referred to as widget styles, which must be programmed. Rik Hemsley recently authored a tutorial for programming KDE styles (download the tutorial and sample code here). The tutorial also points to the ability to create theme-based styles; these basically allow you to modify a coded style using pixmaps. More information on theme-based coded styles is available here from mosfet.org. Read More

For those of you who like the cutting edge or want to help the KDE developers continue their phenomenal development pace, but aren't yet ready to compile from CVS, the KDE Project has just released KDE 2.2alpha1. A list of some of the significant additions and improvements versus the recent 2.1 release is below (please add any unlisted significant changes in the comments section), as well as a list of currently available pre-compiled binaries (please read the KDE Binary Packages Policy). Please bear in mind that this is an alpha release and those enjoying a stable desktop should use KDE 2.1.1. Read More

ZDNet has published a review by Jason Brooks of eWeek Labs comparing the Linux desktops. He writes: "eWeek Labs found that KDE (K Desktop Environment) comes much closer to delivering the sort of smooth interface that users have come to expect from the Macintosh and Windows operating systems than does GNOME (GNU Network Object Model Environment). In tests, KDE delivered snappier and more polished performance than did GNOME on the same hardware." However, he continues, "neither desktop interface has yet reached parity with the established players-pervasive support for features such as cut and paste across the interface can still be unpredictable." Strange to have picked out cut-and-paste, as that should be much improved in Qt-3.0. Read More

Yesterday we posted a story about the IBM developerWorks' KDE Theme Contest. It quickly became apparent that the contest had a few shortcomings, which were noted in another update and in the comments from our readership. It turns out that the people working on the contest were new to the Open Source community and KDE and did not realize the mistakes that were made. I drew IBM's attention to these problems and when the Open Source leadership at IBM noted them they immediately recognized and corrected them. An explanation from Shailendra follows. Kudos to IBM for being so receptive and responsive to our community! (Also check out the NewsForge story on this.) Read More

theKompany.com has announced a technology preview release of Rekall, a personal, programmable DBMS for KDE. Rekall will simplify building database applications with forms and reports. According to CEO Shawn Gordon, Rekall will have a full complement of widgets so that applications built with Rekall will be able to have the look and feel of any other application. He adds that Rekall applications can be extended in their functionality arbitrarily via embedded Python as a scripting language (this capability is not included in the first release). This is a very positive development for KDE, as programmable databases such as dBase, Paradox and MS Access, available on other platforms, have enabled users to focus on the data model and to leverage their business knowledge into working applications. Rekall even promises some advantages over the aforementioned products, as it does not rely on a native database and instead can be used with a database of the user's choice, such as MySQL, PostgreSQL or Oracle, and uses a default database format that is meant to be light weight, easy to use and require no RDBMS experience. theKompany is working with the KOffice developers to include portions of this technology in KOffice. More information (including screenshots) is available at Rekall's homepage. Read More

According to internal email correspondence, TrollTech, makers of the Qt widget set on which KDE is based, has decided to use JavaScript and Mozilla technology as core components in the next versions of their products. The KDE core team appears quite enthusiastic about this novel development. In one of the emails, Matthias Ettrich, KDE founder, explained: "Now we're pushing the envelope, making KDE more flexible and themable than ever before. By replacing C++ with JavaScript and HTML/XML where possible, KDE will become easier to program and to theme, sometimes with the simple editing of a stylesheet!". Most KDE developers agreed. A draft press release is included below. Read More

Waldo Bastian, the release manager for KDE 2.2, has posted a revised schedule for the next major release of the KDE core applications (KOffice is on a separate release cycle). The schedule has slipped somewhat to provide time to add some major new features to the next release, including such popular wish-list items as (1) a better printing framework; (2) IMAP support in KMail; and (3) improved database support with KDE-DB. The schedule now contemplates an alpha release on April 16, beta releases on May 14 and June 18, and the final release on July 16 (109 days, but who's counting?). Read More

Daniel Naber, KDE developer and webmaster for the KMail website, announced that a bug has been discovered in KMail version < 1.0.29.1 which, after September 9, 2001, can cause corruption of your mail folders. Versions 1.0.29.1 and 1.0.29.2 will not corrupt the Mail folders but will display dates incorrectly. This all due to "the passage of one billion seconds since the beginning of the Unix epoch at 00:00 on 1 January 1970." [Ed: Hmmmmm, ...what?] Full details are here. The upshot: upgrade to KDE 2.1, already. And the release later today of KDE 2.1.1 should make it even more compelling. Read More

Kugar is a business-quality report generator and includes a standalone report viewer and a KPart report viewer. Any KDE application which supports KParts (including the browser Konqueror) thus can embed the report viewing functionality. This is a great addition to the budding KOffice suite. Hats off to theKompany (and Mutiney Bay Software, which started the Kugar project) for donating this great code to the KDE project! Read more about Kugar below. Read More

Stefan Westerfeld recently posted a detailed summary of the KDE 2.2 Multimedia Meeting, held on IRC on March 6. The meeting focused on aRts, the linchpin of the KDE 2 multimedia architecture. Topics covered include threading the aRts server; improved error handling when distributed objects fail; increasing aRts user-friendliness (e.g., useful error messages); compatability with GNOME (e.g., providing a C/CSL interface); improving KMedia2 (noatun, etc.) by removing gaps between files, allowing for streamed input and embedding video inside noatun; making aRts effect GUIs (e.g., Synth_FREEVERB) toolkit-independent; and adding a mixer to aRts (aRts does not currently work with KMix). For the full report, read below. Read More

LinuxPlanet recently published an article which contains a tutorial on how to set up anti-aliased fonts on your KDE 2 box. This article complements the tutorial posted some time ago by Lars Knoll. Read More

Many KDE Developers will converge the week of March 22-28 in Hannover, Germany for CeBIT (English). CeBIT is Europe's largest computer trade show with over 8,000 companies representing 60 countries in attendance. Torsten Rahn wrote in with details of what's going on there with KDE: "The KDE Project will be presenting a snapshot of the upcoming KDE 2.2 release at CeBIT 2001 in Hannover, Germany. There will be a permanent demo point at the SuSE booth (Hall 3/E45) and live presentations on the SuSE video wall. On Saturday, KDevelop developer Ralf Nolden will have a talk about KDevelop 1.4 at the SuSE booth. In addition, Ralf Nolden and Martin Konold will give separate KDE-related talks on Saturday at the Rheinland-Pfalz-Stand (Hall 16/B43). On Sunday, KDE developer Chris Schläger will give a presentation about the upcoming KDE 2.2 release at the SuSE booth. Other developers will be present as well." Update: 03/22 22:35 AM by N: A schedule for the KDE presentations is available. Read More

Last week, Michael Matz contributed some code to the audiocd:/ IO slave in KDE CVS to make ripping audio CDs child's play. When you browse an audio CD with this new code (using, for example, 'audiocd:/' in Konqueror), you will find two subdirectories: MP3 and Ogg Vorbis. Each subdirectory will list all the tracks on the audio CD with the appropriate extension (.mp3 and .ogg). Each track can then be dragged to any KDE drop location and be converted automatically into the MP3 or OGG compressed formats. In addition, if the track has a CDDB entry, the file is automatically named for you and the .MP3/.OGG tags are set appropriately. The obligatory screenies are linked in the text above. Expect rollout for KDE 2.2, currently scheduled for beta release on April 2. How's that for simplicity? A more complete explanation from Michael is available below. Read More

Aaron J. Seigo has started a KDE version of the Kernel Cousin series at Kernel Traffic. Given the number of Cousins already active, he asked, "Why not for KDE?". The result is one of the first projects to flow from the recently-announced kde-promo mailing list. Read the first edition of KC KDE for all of 11 topics covering the new KDE printing system, Caldera's work on Samba and kio_smb, AA, KWrite, KDE on HPUX and Solaris, and more. Our congratulations and thanks go to Aaron for this initiative that will greatly benefit the KDE community! For more details and to learn how to get involved, read below. Read More

KDE developer Michael Goffioul today announced that he is actively addressing an area in KDE that warrants improvement: printing. He has committed source code to KDE CVS for a new KDE printing system to replace the limited Qt printing framework. Support for LPR, CUPS and PDQ printing systems is already there. Special emphasis is put on CUPS (Common Unix Printing System). The API is identical to the Qt API to enable developers to make use of it easily, but is significantly more flexible and configurable. For example, developers can easily add additional configuration pages to the print dialog to configure application-specific printing options, and can add filters to the printing structure to process the output. It also aims to provide a friendly user interface, including a print dialog, a KControl configuration module, a job viewer applet for the panel and a preview feature. People interested in supporting other systems should contact Michael and get involved now. His announcement is included below. Read More

KDE 2.1 is officially out! This is a solid release with major improvements to Konqueror and KMail, the addition of the excellent IDE KDevelop, as well as the modular new multimedia player noatun. It has a whole slew of improvements over 2.0; you can find the change log here. The full press release is attached. Enjoy -- I already installed it and it rules! Read More

Just a few weeks ago we announced the launch of the KDE Promo mailing list. Today we are launching a website, promo.kde.org, to go along with it. The site is dedicated to the promotion of KDE, and is for anyone who wishes to contribute to KDE other than coding (for which we have developer.kde.org) or translating (for which we have i18n.kde.org). A suggestion for an easy way to contribute today follows. Read More

All-around KDE guru David Faure (website) recently attended the Linux Expo in Paris and subsequently the OSDEM developer meeting in Brussels. Below he gives us his very interesting impressions of the events, especially how they relate to our favorite desktop. Read More

A new mailing list has been launched for KDE'rs interested in KDE advocacy and promotion. Possible discussion/action items range from writing articles about KDE for the dot, to handing out CDs in computer science centers at universities, to writing stories or reviews. This forum is for brain-storming ideas and bringing them to fruition. Those interested in helping to "get the word out" about KDE can subscribe online or by mail. Update: 02/09 10:55 AM by N: The mailing list and current subscribers have been moved, subscribe online here or by mail here. Read More

Coinciding with the start of the LinuxWorld Expo here in New York, the KDE Team has announced today that KDE 2.1-beta2 is ready for your enjoyment. The attached press release goes into the details (and I can't help but throw in this cool screenshot of the new Konqueror splash page), and lists a number of pre-compiled packages. This all in prelude to the scheduled release of KDE 2.1 in mid-February. So what are you waiting for -- startcha 'loadin'. Update: 02/02 10:39 AM by N: Link to Debian packages now included. Read More

In the last week several KDE developers delivered short reports about the status of their projects. The first was Wynn Wilkes, who gave a report on the status of Java support in Konqueror. The short version: all applets which can be run the jdk appletviewer should now work, the security manager (sandbox) is in place, and applet loading via proxy and over SSL is now working (for SSL you need the JSSE (Java Secure Sockets Extension)). Next came Lars Knoll, who reported on his progress on better font handling into the Qt PostScript^® driver. The improvements concern X displays which have a resolution different from 75dpi, and support for embedded TrueType and Type 1 fonts. Finally, Wynn Wilkes (again) reported that the integration of smblib into the SMB KIO-slave was progressing well. Read More

KDE.com has announced it will provide a convenient service to all KDE developers who, for whatever reason, have not been able to compile KDE documentation properly or who do not want to go through the hassle of installing all of the necessary packages to compile KDE .dockbook files. Simply visit the KDE.com DocBook Documentation Generator, create an account (if you don't already have one for KDE.com or APPS.KDE.com), upload your index.docbook file (requires a browser such as Konqueror supporting the 'file' input method) and in a few minutes the generated HTML will be available for download. Enjoy! Read More

David Faure, the KDE release coordinator, has posted the KDE 2.1 release schedule. The summary: KDE 2.1beta2 is scheduled for release on January 29, and KDE 2.1 is scheduled for release on February 12, 2001. Read the post below. Read More

Effective 12:00 p.m. EST January 5, 2001 the IP address of KDE Dot News is scheduled to change from 216.186.210.168 to 64.22.20.150. Although we expect the transition to be a smooth one, you may experience difficulties accessing the site by the regular hostnames (dot.kde.org, news.kde.org, www.kdenews.org, etc...) around that time; using the new IP address in lieu of the domain name may help. Update: 01/05 7:31 PM by D: The ISP experienced technical difficulties in making the change and hence the transfer has been postponed until mid next week. We'll keep you posted. Read More

Shawn Gordon wrote in with the good news that theKompany.com has contributed the source code for Kamera (previously featured on the Dot), a gPhoto2-based KIO slave for digital cameras, to the KDE CVS. He also has some updates on Kamera developments. Read below to find out more. Read More

In a recent story at Kuro5hin.org, the author considers the implications of some recent developments announced on the dot -- namely, XParts and QGtkWidget. These projects permit non-KDE programs -- particularly Gtk applications -- to be used within KDE applications. The author opines that these projects will end up hurting KDE development. In particular, the author wonders why a Linux developer would now develop for KDE when they can write for Gtk and have the application work both under KDE and GNOME. What do you think, will these projects encourage Gtk development at the expense of KDE/Qt development? Even if so, does it nevertheless make KDE stronger as a competitor against proprietary desktops? Is it important for KDE developers to create projects that would make KDE apps work inside GNOME apps (such as a KParts container that works with Bonobo) or with Gtk widgets (essentially a GtkQtWidget)? Read More

Bernhard Rosenkraenzer today announced the initial (experimental) release of QGtkWidget and QGtkApplication, "a class that makes it possible to embed Gtk widgets in Qt applications (in the same process space, sharing the same event loop)." Bernhard hopes that "this will be useful (primarily) in making KDE and GNOME more interoperable (think of embedding GNOME applets in KDE...)" but warns that this is not particularly efficient -- either from a memory or CPU perspective. Thanks anyway, Bernhard, we'll take it! A more full description is below. Read More

Torsten Rahn is ebullient about a KDE program for scanning using SANE called Kooka. "This is a real nice productivity-app proving that it's easy to create extremely useful apps for KDE 2 with relatively little work." Details below. Read More

theKompany.com has just released a patch to the well known digital camera application gPhoto2, which allows it to integrate seemlessly with KDE 2. This means you can now access the wide range of supported cameras (over 100 models) from any KDE 2 application. Now I may finally be ready to buy a digital camera! Update: 12/14 10:46 AM. TheKompany.com has posted a screenshot of the KControl module and of Konqueror browsing pictures. Read More

Anonymous wrote in with the news that Malte has implemented thumbnail previews of HTML documents in Konqueror. Some screenshots: one and two. And, yes, folks, it looks to be configurable! Read More

KDevelop 1.3 is out. From the press release: "The KDevelop Team today announced the release ofKDevelop 1.3, a powerful, easy to use, Integrated Development Environment for the C and C++ Programming Language based on KDE. KDevelop 1.3 is a major update release that follows the successful versions 1.1 and 1.2 to enable developers for rapid application development for the new KDE 2.0 Desktop.". The full release is below. Read More

It's time for a bag of quickies focusing on application news. Shawn Gordon informs us that theKompany.com has moved Kivio to KDE CVS as part of the KOffice package. This is a great addition to the KOffice suite. theKompany also recently released version 2 of KDEStudio, an integrated development environment for KDE. Hans Dijkema tells us that KMailCvt is now part of the kdenetwork package. Finally, Kaim 0.50 has been released, the first stable release of the Instant Messenger client. Read More

Kurt Granroth has taken the plunge and compiled KDE and X with a number of the cutting-edge extensions which Keith Packard has been working on. The result of hours of compiling and following a few simple instructions: a fully anti-aliased KDE session, with a screenshot to show how it looks. It's not production-quality yet, but it's darn close! His report follows. Read More

Our friend Simon Hausmann wrote in with some exciting news about KDE's excellent browser Konqueror: it's been ported to Qt/Embedded. He says: "I just uploaded a first version of a port of the Konqueror webbrowser to Qt/Embedded, Konqueror/Embedded. The project aims to build a feature complete version of the webbrowsing component of Konqueror for Qt/Embedded, including support for SSL, Cookies, Javascript, non-blocking IO, HTML4/CSS, etc." Way to go, Simon! Simon has only been able to test this port on a virtual framebuffer -- if you can donate a Qt/Embedded-enabled palmtop device for Simon to perfect his work, please contact him! Read More

The KDE Team has just announced the release of KDE 2.0.1. While the release is primarily for updated translations and documentation and for the addition of Japanese as a supported language, it also fixes many of the very annoying bugs in 2.0. A summary of the fixes and a KDE 2.0.1 Info Page are also available. As always, enjoy! Read More

Icon alpha-blending has taken some big steps forward today. First, Antonio Larrosa introduced alpha blending to the HEAD branch in CVS. Here's a screenshot showing one icon blended into another. A few hours later, Carsten Pfeiffer shot back with this tasty screenshot of Konqueror previewing text files with the mimetype icon blended in. Oh, I can't wait for 2.1 -- time to hit CVS! (screenshots below) Read More

The KDE Release Dude has posted updated release schedules for KDE 2.0.1, a bug-fix and translation release due out next week, and KDE 2.1, which will provide new functionality and improvements in many areas of KDE. The first beta of KDE 2.1 is due out in three weeks. Niels Træholt Frnack wrote in to tell us that KAlliance has released Milestone 1 of Magellan, a very promising PIM client (the website seems to be a bit broken); some mouth-watering (but large) screenshots are available here. Rik Hemsley has put up an article explaining how one can use multithreading in a KDE or Qt program and why the KDE libs don't use threading. Daniel Molkentin wrote in that KDE-EDU mailing list, which aims to help people that want to bring KDE into schools or to develop educational software, has been reopened. Finally, BSD Today has publishd a quite favorable review of our favorite browser, Konqueror. Read More

David Faure, the new KDE release coordinator, has set forth the release schedule for KDE 2.0.1, a bugfix and translation release, and KDE 2.1. KDE 2.0.1 should be available on December 4, and the first KDE 2.1 beta two weeks later on December 18 (in time to test it out over the Holidays!). Jaldhar told us about a new Debian mailing list for Debian KDE users and package maintainers; subscribe at debian-kde-request@lists.debian.org with the word "subscribe" in the body of the message. David Huff points to a new section at CafePress.com where you can buy KDE shirts, mugs and mousepads, with all profits promised to the KDE project. Caveat emptor. Read More

Chris Schlaeger, one of the two core KDE developers most active in the formation of the KDE League, has written a tome explaining the motivation behind creating the League and why it was done in secret. What it all boils down to: have fun and spread the code! Read More

John Califf wrote in to tell us that, "Krayon (also known as Kimageshop) is alive and well and under active development now." Read below about the status of this important KOffice component. Has anyone used it lately? What features are most important to add/get working before Krayon is distributed with KOffice? Read More

The KDE Team today announced its collaboration with industry leaders to form the KDE League. The League will focus on facilitating the promotion, distribution and development of KDE, with the goal of establishing KDE as a desktop standard for PCs, workstations and mobile devices. The League will not be involved in KDE development. The League will be holding a press conference at 2:00 pm Las Vegas (PST) time on Wednesday, November 15, 2000, in Room B in the media tent in the silver lot of the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC). This is great news for KDE -- finally the marketing support that will help people learn about the technical excellence of KDE, without any changes in the KDE development model! The full press release follows. Read More

Matthias Elter wrote to the KDE core devel mailing list about his progress in getting KDE to play nice with Window Maker and Afterstep "applets", and included some eyecandy to boot. His message follows below. Read More

Based on feedback we've received in the last week we have made some changes to APPS.KDE.com. Most significantly, we have introduced internal frames to replace framesets. This approach works great with Konqueror and IE, but works optimally only with JavaScript enabled; Netscape 4.x does not support internal frames. We have also added the ability to browse categories and conduct searches based on KDE version without having to visit the "Configure" tab. If you have any more suggestions for improving the site, please let us know! Read More

This week, in The People Behind KDE, Tink interviews Rik Hemsley, who is actively working on Empath, a groupware project much like Outlook for the KDE PIM project. In fact, his claim to fame is that "people seem to know me as the Empath man, but it's not even released yet." Read More

The LinuxJournal has announced the winners of its 2000 Reader's Choice Awards. Not surprisingly <grin> KDE won as the "Favorite Desktop Environment" (1, 2, 3). Congratulations to the KDE Team! I know they appreciate user awards the most. Also, the German on-line magazine Heise has written a glowing review of KDE 2.0. It's in German, so you may need to consult the fish. Read More

Several of you have written in to note that Red Hat 6.2 rpms for KDE 2 are now available here. A full list of KDE 2.0 binaries for the various distributions/versions is below -- if you know of any more please add a comment. Remember, folks, these rpms are not built by the KDE Team. Update: 11/06 10:16 PM. It appears the mirrors have still not picked up the rpms -- here is a direct link to the KDE ftp site. Read More

Hallelujah! The KDE site has quite a new look! It's been completely redesigned and I like it, thank you very much! But judge for yourself... Is the new layout better? Is the new art better? Are things easier to find? We want to know what you think! I asked Kurt Granroth, the KDE core developer behind the changes, a few questions you might have as well. Read what he had to say below. Read More

It seems many users have not been overly thrilled with the way the task bars are arranged in the KDE 2 desktop. As is typical, the KDE developers have quickly responded. Matthias Elter wrote in to tell us he has made some nice modifications. Details -- and screenshots -- below. Read More

It's official! KDE 2.0 has been released! Run, don't walk, to your nearest mirror or go directly to the source.
The full press release is below. Read More

RC2, the (hopefully) final release candidate before the scheduled release of KDE 2.0 on October 23, is out, with binary packages available for Mandrake, RedHat (6.2 and 7.0) and SuSE (6.4 and 7.0). The full announcement is below. As the code will be frozen on October 16 for the KDE 2.0 release, here is your last chance to find show-stoppers, or you'll have to live with them for a while <grin>. Read More

Matthias Elter, the KDE 2.0 release coordinator, has officially announced that KDE has been tagged for the 2.0 release in CVS! Things are moving on schedule for an Oct. 16 release date. Matthias noted that the KDE 2.0 release will be based on the forthcoming Qt^TM-2.2.1. Got my compiler all ready and rearin' to go! Read More

The German Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, BMB+F) recently sponsored a meeting of 16 KOffice developers in Erlangen, Germany by paying their travel and lodging costs. The meeting was held from September 23 - 25 in connection with the Linux-Kongreß, a technically oriented Linux congress that is jointly organized by German Unix Users Group (GUUG) and LiVe (Linux-Verband, a non-profit organisation that fosters commercial use of Linux in Central Europe). Many of the developers attended and two filed reports on the successful event. And what do hackers do at a hacker conference, you might ask? Read more below to find out . . . . Read More

Eric Bischoff today filed a detailed report on the successful conclusion of "the first meeting of the KDE translation and documentation teams". Some excerpts from the report are included below. Read More

Last week we reported on the launch of the KDE Games Center. The site designers continue to build the site and it looks to want to satisfy both gamers and developers. Yesterday they added a news section and today launched a "Top 10 KDE Games" section. Bravo, Martin and Andreas! If you're interested in games (and who isn't), maybe you can help out -- a nice "Help Wanted" list can be found here. Read More