KDE.news 

KDE developer Benjamin Meyer explains the concept of a Type Manager as a new form of specialist file manager application. "In the past few years many of us have been introduced to a new type of application, the Type Manager. There are many Type Managers out there such as digiKam and amaroK that are gaining market share and a rabid fan base of users . Type Managers seem to have that magic combinations of features that makes users love them. I have been taking a closer look at the Type Manager, what makes them so useful, what they really provide for the user and came to some surprising results." He concludes that Type Managers are part of the future of the desktop. Read More

David Vignoni, Kenneth Wimer and Nuno Pinheiro, 3 of KDE's finest artists, are very proud to present the Oxygen website, explaining what Oxygen is and the direction it is going in. Oxygen is the new icon theme being created for KDE4. Everything started in March 2005 when a bunch of KDE contributors met in Berlin to form the Appeal Project with the goal to promote KDE related projects and to push the open source desktop to another level. Oxygen aims to bring a modern, cool and very usable and consistent icon theme, in SVG format. In addition to high quality design, Oxygen also promotes technological innovation and increased usability by proposing new file interaction methods, animated effects and the intelligent use of SVGs. Read More

In some good news for KDE, Mark Shuttleworth, the famous African entrepreneur, announced at the Ubuntu Below Zero conference that he is now using the Kubuntu distribution (screenshots) on his own desktop machine and affirmed his commitment to the KDE-based distribution.
As per the website, "Kubuntu is a user friendly operating system based on KDE, the K Desktop Environment. With a predictable 6 month release cycle part of the Ubuntu project, Kubuntu is the GNU/Linux distribution for everyone." Kubuntu has apparently been prominent throughout the conference with a large number of Kubuntu users having shown up. As a first class Ubuntu citizen, CD copies of Kubuntu will be freely available to users. Congratulations to the Kubuntu team for their dedication and hard work in bringing the KDE desktop to Ubuntu! Read More

KDE 3.5 is almost finished, so we have prepared a first release candidate. We want to have it tested as much as possible, so please give it a show. You can download the sources from download.kde.org. To compile them you can use the Konstruct build script . In the short time frame since tarball creation only binary packages for SUSE Linux got finished, Kubuntu are uploading theirs. Thanks for your help in reporting bugs and giving feedback so far. Update: There is now also a Klax Live-CD for this release available. Read More

At first glance, a shop is not a place where you would expect to find KDE in the workplace. Yet the Dutch Free Record Shop is deploying it on a large scale as the operating system for their point of sale systems. According to the supplier Novell, it is one of the application areas where simple and restricted functionality is required, leading to a breakthrough for GNU/Linux on the PC. An article from Automatiseringsgids magazine is translated below. Read More

The OpenSync and KDE teams have joined forces to create a unified library to synchronize data from mobile devices with the data on the desktop. OpenSync, the successor to the MultiSync project, provides a modular desktop-independent synchronization platform. It can be extended by plugins to support additional devices and data types. Plugins for the most commonly used devices and applications such as Kontact, Palm, Windows CE, mobile phones and more are already available or under development. KDE has now adopted OpenSync as the base for its future synchronization tools. Read More

The KDE Marketing Working Group has formed, after being proposed by the KDE community at aKademy 2005, with the aim of improving KDE's marketing and promotion efforts. Martijn Klingens, Sebastian Kügler and Wade Olson will be taking the lead in coordinating and implementing new practices, such as promoting releases more widely and running more exciting events booths. An initial charter has been created and approved by KDE e.V with the long-term goal of "coherent and strategic messaging around KDE". The group is currently focused on establishing infrastructure and prioritizing tasks. Read More

A new inititive by the Brazillian government will see low cost KDE based computers on sale throughout the country from next week. The Computers for All scheme will bring "cheap and accessible" computers following a recent law cutting taxes and encouraging affordable financing for low income buyers of computers preinstalled with Free Software operating systems. Several companies are involved in the scheme with most using KDE desktops. The Ministry of Science hopes for half a million machines to be sold in the next 4 to 6 months. Read More

The second annual Trolltech Developer Days took place last month in San Jose, USA and on last week in Munich, Germany. They featured keynotes and presentations from Eirik Chambe-Eng, Trolltech's co-founder and President; Matthias Ettrich, founder of KDE and Trolltech's Vice President Software Development; Aaron Seigo, KDE Core Contributor and many others. Read on for a summary of some of the keynotes and presentations given in Munich. Read More