KDE.news 

For those following the development of KOffice, one of the first reviews of KOffice 2.0 has appeared at the Tech Radar website. KOffice 2.0 is the platform release for the KOffice 2 series, and as such, is not yet appropriate for all users. From the article: "Free software is often developed with the mantra 'release early, release often'. This is a great idea, because new tools can be tested, trialled and critiqued as they're developed [...] Many of the elements in KOffice 2.0 show great promise and we look forward to testing the suite once more when it's ready."

KDE e.V.'s Annual General Meeting was held today during the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain. The KDE e.V. is the association that provides representation, support and governance to the KDE community. After former board member Klaas Freitag and KDE e.V. president Aaron Seigo stepped down and vice president Adriaan de Groot's term ended, three open positions had to be filled. Adriaan de Groot was re-elected as vice president of KDE e.V. and two new board members have been elected.

The conference auditorium

The Desktop Summit is continuing with talks in the Cross Desktop tracks and the start of the Akademy tracks. Between the talks developers can be spotted huddled in groups discussing everything from problems with their code to building community. The tracks covered metadata, community, infrastructure and multimedia. Read on for some of the talks.

Award Winners David Faure, Celeste Lyn Paul and Peter Penz accepted by Sebastian Trueg

Aaron Seigo, as played by Sebas, one of last year's winners presenting an award

Peter Penz

Peter Penz is the developer of Dolphin and won the award for best application category. Unfortunatly Peter was not at Akademy so his award was accepted by Sebastian Trueg on his behalf.

Free t-shirts were popular

Tonight the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit was opened with a party sponsored by Kubuntu's very own Canonical. Stickers, t-shirts and beer were all given out to contributors and users of KDE, Gnome and any other free software environment. Some converts were made from the local Canary island population who were enthused by the spirit of freedom.

Robert Lefkowitz's Keynote

After the registration closed, a Canonical-sponsored party began. Hundreds of attendants gathered on the large area behind the conference building. The beach is just outside the auditorium, and during the day is full of people enjoying the heat. Many of us have been walking along the beach, enjoying the view, having some food there and even having a swim. At night, we had beer. There was supposed to be free beer from 9 to 11 but we obviously did not drink it fast enough and it lasted until after midnight. Still many were unhappy when the beer stopped flowing - luckily the bar continued to be open.

It is that time of the year again. Akademy 2009 is about to begin in only a few days. Held in the Alfredo Kraus Auditorium close to the beautiful beaches of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, this event is shaping up to be a special conference.

Today, three days before the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit starts, the KDE team released KDE 4.3.0 RC1. RC1 is an early candidate for what will become KDE 4.3.0 at the end of this month. Artwork has now also been merged, and KDE 4.3 will have a new Plasma look, sported by the new, light "Air" Plasma theme. Oxygen, the default in earlier versions of KDE 4 is still available as an option through the "Desktop Settings" dialog. Please give this version some good testing so we can iron out last bugs and make 4.3.0 a smooth release. Note that KDE 4.3.0 RC1 is not suitable for end users.

Today, exactly one month since the release of KOffice 2.0.0, the KOffice team releases the first bugfix release in the 2.0 series. This release contains no new features but lots of bugfixes for almost all of the components in KOffice 2.0. We are planning at least two more bugfix releases of 2.0 before starting the 2.1 series in October this year.

During this weekend (and after almost 24 hours of work), the KDE Community Forums have undergone a complete overhaul, resulting in a much improved look and additional features. The first and most user-visible change is the new forum theme. It is heavily inspired by "Air", the default Plasma theme in the soon to be released KDE 4.3.