KDE.news 

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Akademy 2007 draws to a close. Dolphin embedded as the file management view in Konqueror. Plasma continues to mature, with new data engines for Tasks and Bluetooth, and EBN and Task Manager Plasmoids making an introduction. Further progress in Javascript bindings through QtScript; import of Kimono (C#) classes. More basic functionality added to Kollagame, a game development IDE. Initial work in the KWin/Xinerama and 2d Projection for Marble Summer of Code projects, with continued progress in the Icon Cache, KOrganizer Theming, KRDC and Music Notation projects. KListView gets support for keyboard navigation, and a new, more descriptive name: KCategorizedView. KIconCache renamed to KPixmapCache to reflect its wider benefits to graphics across KDE. Paint mixing improvements and general speed optimisations in Krita. KMail and Mailody now share account identities. Support for more digital camera models in Digikam libraries, with the porting of many image plugins to KDE 4. More interface and collection management work towards Amarok 2. More effects for kwin_composite. Decibel is moved to playground/pim. system:/ and home:/ KIOSlaves removed, with preparations to remove media:/ in the near future. Read More

The final talk on Saturday at aKademy 2007 was from Patrick Harvie, a Member of the Scottish Parliament for the Green Party. While not a technical wizard like most of the other talks of the day, Patrick was able to describe to us the attitudes to free software from the Government he is elected to keep an eye on, and how the work of KDE developers applies to more than just software. Read on for a summary of his talk. Read More

The long-anticipated Education Day at aKademy 2007 opened at 9 am on Monday, 3rd July with an introduction by Anne-Marie Mahfouf, maintainer of the KDE-Edu suite of educational applications. The main aim of the day was to unite the many different diverse consumers of the award-winning assortment of software, such as teachers, system integrators, and students, and to share ideas, success stories and best practice. With such a concentration of interested parties, the organisers were strongly optimistic that the event could provide a useful discussion venue for the coming year of educational developments. Read on for a report of the day. Read More

On Tuesday, the Summer of Code BoF was held at aKademy 2007. I conducted an interview with Emanuele Tamponi about the session and his first experiences of aKademy. Please read on for the article. Read More

aKademy 2007 is continuing. Tuesday featured the Education Day and many smaller BoF sessions. In the meantime, hackers worked around-the-clock on various projects, both in the 'quiet' area and in the discussion area. Read on for the aKademy 2007 Tuesday Hack-a-thon report. Read More

Intel and Novell have both become corporate Patrons of KDE. Their exceptional financial commitment to the KDE e.V. helps the project with community events, infrastructure and developer meetings. Read on for more information. Read More

aKademy 2007 goes on. Monday was filled mostly with the KDE e.V. meeting, and finished with a social event at the city chambers. Read on for the aKademy 2007 e.V. meeting report. Read More

At the second day of aKademy 2007, the contributors conference closed with the aKademy Awards Ceremony. Two of last years winners, Boudewijn Rempt and Laurent Montel awarded no less than four awards to Sebastian Trueg, Mathias Kretz, Danny Allen and Kenny Duffus. 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