KDE.news 

Computerworld covers progress in OpenChange, the Microsoft Exchange server and client replacement. He looks at integration work being done in Akonadi and how that will arrive in KDE 4.3. "Speaking at the Linux.conf.au conference in Hobart last week, Canberra-based OpenChange and KDE developer Brad Hards said 'We're working with the Microsoft Exchange protocols and work it mostly does. Mail is easy, the stuff which is hard is the address book, calendar, free-busy lists, and notes. These are a big deal in the enterprise.'" Read More

It is with great pleasure that we publish this interview with Dario Freddi, the developer known as drf in the KDE community. For those who do not know, Dario dedicates his time to many aspects of KDE 4; PowerDevil for example, the power manager that has debuted in KDE 4.2, is the result of his hard work. Other projects which he contributes are Arch Linux and the Chakra Project, DeviceSync and PolicyKit-KDE! You can find much interesting information in his blog and in the various links here and there in this interview which comes from KDE Italia from last December. Read More

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: A new "Crystal Desktop Search" Plasmoid, allowing searching through NEPOMUK indexes (and MediaWiki-based websites). Support for "grep-like behaviour" in the "FileWatcher" Plasma applet, and support for custom server addresses (aka. backend locations) for the "Pastebin" applet. Further developments in the "System Load Viewer" (which moves to kdereview for KDE 4.3) and "Video Player" applets. An option to show Plasma panels during active KWin-Composite window switching effects, and a configuration dialog for changing the animation duration for the "Magic Lamp" effect. Work on Replay Gain support, and "basic playlist sorting" in Amarok 2. Inline image support for HTML messages in KMail. Porting to Akonadi in Mailody. First version of a new KContactManager editor. Various fixes in KPilot. Continued development in KDevelop and KNetworkManager. Support for rectangular and elliptical field of view, and comet magnitudes in KStars, with optional integration with XPlanet for displaying planets. Support for the "Sonic Screwdriver" in the Killbots game. Ability to import Pidgin chat logs into Kopete. A brand new spray brush for Krita. Read the rest of the Digest here. Read More

The Dutch NLnet Foundation, aiming to stimulate open network research and development and more general to promote the exchange of electronic information, has decided to financially support the Lokalize project of KDE. Read More

Hello everyone! I would like to welcome you to the new and improved KDE Dot News. As I am sure many of you know, although the old KDE Dot News has served the KDE community very well, it was beginning to show its age. Because of that a number of people including myself took it upon ourselves to modernise the Dot. Read More

It has been a full year since the beginning of the KDE 4 series and today the KDE community proudly announces the release of KDE 4.2, "The Answer". This third feature release brings a stunning amount of new features and great stability. The KDE community is confident that KDE 4.2 is a compelling choice for the majority of end users, after previous releases targeting enthusiasts. Read More

The program for the first two days at the Camp KDE meeting in Jamaica provided the attendants with a series of talks. In time, these will be available in video from but for now we have these short summaries of the talks. Read on for details. Read More

In preparation for hopefully the final beta version of KOffice 2.0, the bug squad will host a Bug Krush Day next Sunday Jan 25th from approximately 10 am CET. Everybody who has an interest in making KOffice 2.0 usable should try to be present. Especially note that you do not have to have any programming experience to take part of this Krush. The purpose of the exercise is to test the applications and to try to find as many bugs as possible. You can find all relevant information about the day on the Techbase page. Read More

KBasic is a new programming language similar to Visual Basic. It combines the best features of those tools and comes with built-in backward support for those tools as it is 100% syntax compatible to VB and QBasic. It is written with Qt making it entirely cross platform. The Full Version Professional Edition is available to download for KDE now. It follows the old Qt licencing of being GPL licenced for Free Software and commercially sold for proprietary software. Read More

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: More parts of the Oxygen-based "Air" visual identity enters KDE SVN in time for the KDE 4.2 release, including KDM background images. Better integration of the new "NetworkManager" Plasma applet with KWallet. Initial work on a new "Welcome" Plasmoid. Support for more units added to the "Conversion" runner in Plasma, including "pressure", "currency", and "energy". Support for identi.ca (and laconi.ca) added to the "Twitter" Plasma data engine. Much work on choqoK, a standalone KDE Twitter application. Support for using imageshack.us as the backend for the "Pastebin" Plasma applet. More work on a "VideoPlayer" Plasmoid (based on Phonon). The VLC backend for Phonon is imported into KDE SVN. New LilyPond indenter script and RPM Specification syntax highlighting files in Kate. Lots of long-awaited new features in KRuler. Start of a new user interface in Rocs. General improvements to visual rendering of .odt documents in Okular. Lots of fixes in KPilot and printing in KOrganizer. Needed improvements in the LaTeX export feature of KSpread. Various work on Akonadi and Amarok 2, including an early "Bookmark" applet and changes to the way the Plasma canvas is presented in the application. An new equivalent to the old "dcopstart" command. Support for localized backends in KPackageKit, with the ability to configure the application from the system tray icon. A registry patch for registering KDE system settings modules as Control Panel elements for KDE-on-Windows. Updated browser user agents representing modern browsers in Konqueror. A major refactoring to convert all backends (VNC, RDP, NX, test) to plugins in KRDC. Initial release of "Magazynier", a KSokoban remake for KDE 4. Import of a version of Konqueror with thumbnailing support. Initial import of a "Solid Actions" KControl module (to replace the "Media Devices" KCM from KDE 3), and telepathy-accountmanager-kwallet. KFormula is removed from kdelibs, in search of better maintainership and to avoid code duplication with KOffice. Amarok 2.0.1, KOffice Beta 5 (1.9.98.5), Eigen 2.0 Beta 5, KDE 4.1.4, and KDE 4.2 Release Candidate 1 are tagged for release. Read the rest of the Digest here. Read More