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The KDE community has made available two new releases of the KDE desktop and applications today. KDE 4.1.4 is the latest update for the KDE 4.1 series. It contains many bugfixes, mainly in the e-mail and PIM suite Kontact and the document viewer Okular. KDE 4.2 RC is the release candidate of KDE 4.2, also bringing new features and thousands of bug fixes to the KDE desktop and applications. KDE 4.1.4 is the last planned update to the KDE 4.1 series and stabilises the 4.1 platform further. It is a recommended update for everyone running KDE 4.1.3 or earlier. Read More

Two days later than initially scheduled due to yours truly preparing for coming year's desktop summit on Gran Canaria, KDE's release team has made availabe KDE 4.1.85, a.k.a. KDE 4.2-Beta2 to testers and reviewers, codenamed "Canaria". KDE 4.1.85 is not suitable for production use but meant to invite feedback and bugreports from the community. The KDE community is in massive bugfixing mode, showing a focus on stability and feature-completeness in the KDE 4.2 series. But behold, 4.1.85 is not a boring release. It brings many visible improvements to KDE 4.1, and will ultimately follow up the KDE 4.1 series as a stable release this coming January. So get your testing gear ready and help us squash those bugs for a 4.2.0 that makes Redmond see flying chairs all over. There's a changelog over at TechBase, and the brave and bored can go for the more detailed feature plan. As 4.1.85 is the last release before Christmas, we strongly recommend using Wade's Christmas wallpapers and the KWin compositing snow plugin while testing. Read More

The inaugural Desktop Summit, uniting the flagship conferences of the GNOME and KDE communities, GUADEC and Akademy, will be held in Gran Canaria, Canary Islands, Spain the week of July 3-11, 2009. The conference will be hosted by Cabildo, the local government of Gran Canaria. The GNOME and KDE communities will use this co-located event to intensify momentum and increase collaboration between the projects. It gives a unique opportunity for key figures to collaborate and improve the free and open source desktop for all. Read More

Linux.com covers Kraft, an administration software package for small and medium businesses (SMB), covering activities such as customer management, document workflow, material management, calculations for positions and templates for most of these. Linux.com concludes "Kraft takes some of the drudgery out of tracking work offers and invoicing. If you are a KDE user, being able to use a single contact manager for issuing your invoices will cut down on your mail merging worries. But Kraft's handling of VAT/GST could be improved." We will have to add to that, that you do not need to be a "KDE user" already to use Kraft. As with all KDE applications, it runs just fine on other Free desktops too. The KDE e.V. uses craft for membership management, and gets first-hand support by Kraft's main developer, our very own Klaas Freitag. Read More

The SQO-OSS project aims at developing a software quality assessment platform to Free Software developers. SQO-OSS is a project funded through the European Commission's Framework Programme 6 and consists of a number of European organisations with knowledge relevant to build such a platform, among which KDE e.V.. After more than one and a half years of research, design and development the SQO-OSS developer now have made available a first demo showing some capabilities of the Alitheia system. Alitheia stands for the ultimate and business-like truth. Read on for more details. Read More

The KDE Community is happy to announce the immediate availability of the second release candidate for KDE 4.0. This release candidate marks the last mile on the road to KDE 4.0. This release sees increasing participation from distributions, you can download packages for Debian, Kubuntu, Mandriva, openSUSE & Fedora or grab the live CDs from Kubuntu & openSUSE. Read More

The KDE Release Team has decided to release KDE 4.0 this coming January. The release was originally planned for mid-December. The KDE developers want to solve a couple of essential issues before releasing. Having solved some of those issues, among which were glitches in the visual appearance, and in Konqueror, the KDE community hopes to have a KDE 4.0 that will live up to the high expectations for it. Read on for more details. Read More

The KDE Community is happy to announce the immediate availability of the first release candidate for KDE 4.0. This release candidate marks that the majority of the components of KDE 4.0 are now approaching release quality. Read More

KOffice, the office suite built on KDE technology and in the KDE Communtiy has recently gotten a lot of press, but is still often underrepresented. In this interview, some key KOffice developers tell us about the recent progress of KDE's Office suite, about Open Standards and how KOffice plays an active role in bringing Freedom to users. We have talked to Boudewijn Rempt, developer of Krita, core KOffice contributor and KOffice release manager, as well as to David Faure who has been taking part in the OASIS, the organization that is responsible for advancing the OpenDocument (ODF) standard. Read More

The KDE community today released KDE 3.5.8. While the developers' main focus lies on finishing KDE 4.0, the stable 3.5 series remains the desktop of choice for the time being. It is proven, stable and well supported. The 3.5.8 release with its literally hundreds of bugfixes has again improved the users' experience. The 3.5.8 info page lists how to get the sources and distribution packages. Read More

Earthweb takes a look at KDE 4 Beta saying that "Few major pieces of free software are more eagerly awaited than KDE 4". The article Touring the KDE 4 Beta covers most of the important changes in KDE 4 and concludes "[...] despite the complexity, to judge from the beta, KDE has a high chance of realising all the ambitions wrapped up in KDE 4." Read More

The KDE Release Team has revised the release schedule for KDE 4.0. The first visible bits of KDE 4.0 will be the KDE Development Platform release on October, 30. This Development Platform release consists of bits and pieces needed to develop KDE applications. It includes kdesupport, kdelibs, kdepimlibs and kdebase/runtime. The purpose of the KDE Development Platform release is to make it easier for third party developers to port their applications to KDE4 technology and to start developing new applications. The final and long awaited release of the KDE Desktop 4.0 is planned for December, 11th 2007, well in time to be a Christmas present for everyone who has been longing for KDE 4.0. Read More

Gartner Webdev has published an interview with KDE's very own marketing renegade Wade Olson. Wade talks about KDE 4, what makes it special and what KDE's role in the software market is. He sheds some light on the user's point of view and discusses his vision about the way the computer and software industry is moving. Read the interview for yourself. Read More

The Oxygen team has announced a wallpaper contest. Send in your wallpaper and it might become part of the default set of wallpapers for KDE 4.0. The Oxygen team is solliciting contributions from the community. The jury is nobody less than Icon GodFather David Vignoni, The Mad Scientist Nuno Pinheiro, The Loud American Ken Wimer and Oxygen Swiss Army Knife Riccardo Iaconelli. Read More

The KDE Community is happy to announce the first Beta release for KDE 4.0 is available now. This release marks the beginning of the integration process which will bring the powerful new technologies included in the now frozen KDE 4 libraries to the applications. Simultaneously KOffice have released the second Alpha of KOffice version 2. Highlights are improved text rendering and layout and the new Flake library. Read on for more details. Read More

The KDE Community is happy to announce the immediate availability of the second alpha release of the K Desktop Environment. This release comes straight out of Glasgow, the largest city in Scotland where aKademy is currently taking place. Hundreds of KDE hackers are working like crazy to hunt down bugs, complete features for KDE 4.0 and sit together developing and finishing new and exciting applications for the new major version of the leading Free Desktop. Read More

The KDE e.V. and KDAB are happy to announce continued collaboration on the Free Desktop, with KDAB becoming the latest new Patron of KDE. KDAB is known for its high-quality software services. Read on for more details. Read More

The KDE project today announced the immediate availability of KDE 3.5.7, a maintenance release for the latest generation of the most advanced and powerful free desktop for GNU/Linux and other UNIXes. This release brings a renewed focus to KDE-PIM applications. KAddressBook, KOrganizer and KAlarm received attention with bugfixes, while KMail additionally witnessed the addition of new features and improvements with both interface work and IMAP handling: it can manage IMAP quotas, and copy and move all folders. Read on for more details. Read More

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

As we reported last week, KDE will be taking part in Google's Summer of Code again. The deadline for student applications is approaching now, so be quick sending in your ideas before March 26th. If you are a student and would like to spend the summer on a cool Free Software project, do apply for one of the scholarships. For more information, please refer to the following pages: how to participate with KDE, KDE SOC ideas page, Google Summer of Code page. Read More

The KDE Community and the release team have put together a release plan for the long anticipated version 4.0, which is planned to be released in October 2007. KDE 4.0 will be a major milestone for the Free Desktop, as it offers a new foundation and set of frameworks that will shape the desktop user experience for years to come. Users will benefit from improved speed through Qt 4, integration of hardware through Solid, multimedia performance via Phonon, usability enhancements by close collaboration with OpenUsability, new real-time communication options with Decibel, spell-checking with Sonnet, comprehensive desktop search through Strigi and Nepomuk, a new desktop metaphor through Plasma and, last but not least, a completely new artwork experience called Oxygen. Read More

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

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

This weekend, the Free and Open Source Developers European Meeting will be held at the Université Libre in Brussels, Belgium. FOSDEM, being one of the biggest European Free Software events usually attracts several thousand people each year. The schedule for the KDE devroom is now published. Highlights this year include talks about the semantic desktop, a workshop on educational software and naturally an overview of the status of KDE 4. For the first time we are running a series of cross desktop talks together with Gnome where you can hear how desktop search engine Strigi works. KDE and friends also make appearances in the Lightening Talks track with topics including CMake, OpenWengo and Amarok. If you are planning to visit FOSDEM, add your name to the FOSDEM 2007 Wiki Page. Read More

The Season of Usability, run by the OpenUsability project has kicked off with two KDE applications in the focus: BasKet Note Pads and the KDE 4 universal document viewer Okular. Usability, as one of the important focus points of the upcoming fourth major version of KDE, is also an active part of the KDE project. The Season of Usability manifests KDE's close involvement with OpenUsability. Read More

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

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

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

Today, KDE releases a first developer snapshot of the upcoming KDE4 release. This snapshot is meant as a reference for developers who want to play with parts of the new technology KDE4 will provide, those who want to start porting their applications to the new KDE4 platform and for those that want to start to develop applications based on KDE4. This snapshot is not for end users, there is no guarantee that it will be stable, the interfaces are subject to changes at any time. The changes that have gone into the development version this snapshot is based on have all happened under the hood, little is visible yet. Now it is up to application developers to use the new possibilities. While this snapshot will probably not be what kdelibs will finally look like, it should give a fair idea of what to expect. Read More

The KDE Project today announced the immediate availability of KDE 3.5.4, a maintenance release for the latest generation of the most advanced and powerful free desktop for GNU/Linux and other UNIXes. Even while KDE 4 is being prepared, improvements to KDE 3.5 have been made and this release makes them available. The new features were subject to rigorous quality testing so that KDE 3.5.4 is as stable as the maintenance releases that precede it. Read More

The KDE e.V.'s first Quarterly Report for 2006 has been published. Those reports are used by the KDE e.V. to report its activities to the public. The highlights in this report include updates from the Working Groups, a report from the last KDE e.V. board meeting and a couple of other updates. The Technical Working Group for example announced a planned technical preview of KDE 4, the Human-Computer Interaction Working Group informs about progress in developing plans for usability, accessibility and artwork for KDE 4. The Marketing Working Group gives updates about the status of the promotional community around KDE 4 and different other aspects regarding marketing-related efforts. Read More

The position of the OpenDocument Format (ODF) was today strengthened by the K Desktop Environment (KDE) joining the ODF Alliance. KDE joins other partners such as Oracle, SUN Microsystems, Mandriva, IBM and Junta de Andalucia in promoting the OpenDocument Format as a market leader in document exchange and storage. Read More

At LinuxTag on Saturday, a meeting of Kubuntu and KDE contributors was held in order to improve the collaboration of both projects. The aim was to to talk about the common future of both projects. Jonathan Riddell and Mark Shuttleworth from Canonical attended the meeting. Later in his keynote speech to the conference, Mark publicly committed to Kubuntu as an essential product for Canonical and showed his commitment by wearing a KDE t-shirt. Read More

Today, the KDE Project announces the release of the K Desktop Environment 3.5.2. This second update release in the KDE 3.5 series brings an improved user experience and stability by focusing exclusively on translations and bug fixes. See the Changelog for the major changes while the info page lists the ways to download with packages currently available for Arch Linux, Kubuntu, Pardus, Red Hat and SuSE. Kubuntu have made a live CD featuring KDE 3.5.2. Read More

The first Technical Working Group for KDE has been elected. It will consist of seven long-time contributors to KDE and become operational in the few next days. The group has been elected by the members of KDE e.V.. This initial Working Group is elected for a period of six months. After this period an evaluation of the Working Group will take place. If it proves successful, elections will take place once every year. The group will help the hundreds of KDE developers in reaching technical decisions. Read on to learn about the members of the first Technical Working Group. Read More

KDE 3.5.1 was released today, featuring fixes to over 150 reported bugs and many other small improvements making this the most stable and feature-rich Unix desktop ever. Konqueror, KMail, KPDF, Juk, Kopete, Kalzium and Quanta in particular saw a large number of improvements in stability and performance. Users are encouraged to upgrade when their distributor releases packages. There are updated packages available for Arch Linux, Gentoo, Kubuntu, Red Hat and Slackware or you can compile it yourself with Konstruct. See the 3.5.1 Release Announcement for full details and the Changelog for a full list of updates. Read More

The KDE marketing group is pleased to announce the release of SpreadKDE.org, the new home for KDE's promotional activities. Such a hub for marketing activities has been sorely lacking in KDE until now, and we consider this site a to be a key milestone in establishing a solid foundation in growing KDE's promotional activity. Read More

The first Technical Working Group for KDE is now being formed, with elections due over the next few weeks. The Group will help the hundreds of KDE contributors come to technical decisions and smooth processes such as major releases. It will also provide technical guidance to KDE contributors. Seven members of the KDE e.V. will be elected for an initial six months. After this period the Group will be evaluated, and if it proves successful elections will take place once every year. All members of the KDE e.V. are invited to take part in the election. If you are a contributor to KDE and you would like to take part in the decision making process, you are welcome to apply for membership. Further details can be found in the Technical Working Group's charter. Read on for a little more background. Read More

FOSDEM, the sixth Free and Open source Software Developers' European Meeting will be held on 25 and 26 February 2006 in Brussels. KDE will be present there to socialise, hack and take part in the wider Free Software community. KDE has reserved a devroom to serve as a central meeting point for the KDE crowd. We will be holding our own talks which so far include Raphael Langerhorst on KOffice 1.5 and Jonathan Riddell on Kubuntu. Read More