KDE.news 

We're pleased to note that KDE-Forum.org is now back online after a rocky start. A big thanks goes out to Pierre-Emmanuel Muller and Cyberbrain who are now hosting this site, and of course to zenok, fan of KDE and creator of KDE-Forum.org for web-based KDE-related discussions. Please note that Cyberbrain is also the host of KDE Dot News as well as several other less obvious KDE services and has been single-handedly responsible for virtually trouble free operation and peace of mind since June 2002. Other KDE-related web forums available are: KDE-Forum.de for German speakers and the KDE-France forums for French speakers. In other good news, Frank reports that the terrific and invaluable KDE-Look.org site has found new sponsorship from Lindows.com -- a big thanks goes out to Kevin Carmony, President and CEO of Lindows.com, as well as to everyone else who offered to help the site. The KDE community should feel proud to have so many friends and willing sponsors. Read More

eWeek's Jason Brooks has tested and reviewed some new features of KDE 3.1, which he calls "Linux's best hope for becoming a viable desktop contender". In the time since the KDE 3.1 release more binary packages have also become available, please check the mirrors. We have also been informed that KDE 3.1 rpms for Linux Mandrake 9.0 are available for Mandrake Club members; others might check Texstar's test packages. For Red Hat Linux, KDE 3.1 rpms are available courtesy of the KDE for RedHat Linux project for RH 7.3 and RH 8.0; alternatively the ASP Linux 7.3 rpms are said also to work for Red Hat 7.3. Read More

The Kopete Project celebrated its first anniversary yesterday by announcing the release of Kopete 0.6. Kopete is KDE's all-purpose, modular and extensible chat client, which currently supports the MSN Messenger, ICQ, AIM OSCAR, Jabber and IRC protocols. A sampling of the great new features includes sophisticated (HTML) text rendering, signing / encrypting chats and sending SMS messages to mobile phones, as well as chat tabs, translucent windows and web presence notification. In addition, the Kopete developers made a number of usability improvements based on usability studies conducted by the KDE Usability Project. Congratulations to all involved! Read More

This week in the latest KDE-CVS-Digest: Read about the improvement in filters to interoperate with other applications and formats such as Outlook Express, OOImpress, MSWrite, RTF and ApplixGraphics. Plus, work continues on the KDE PIM project, KOffice Konqueror, Kopete and many others. Read More

Desktop Sharing is a KDE service that allows you to share your desktop using the RFB protocol, better known as VNC. This new feature of KDE 3.1 allows a friend or administrator to fix problems on your computer, or you can use it to show your desktop to somebody else at a remote location. It is compatible with all regular VNC / RFB clients. Read More

An informal group called LIGLUG (LinuxIran Gnu/Linux User Group) yesterday finished its work on a customized live CD based on KNOPPIX. GNU/Linux and KDE being widely unknown in Iran, this live CD, which is called "Shabdix", will be used to promote GNU/Linux and FarsiKDE in Iran. It will be released to the public as Shabdix 0.7. Read More

As recently announced, an effort has been started for closer cooperation between the KDE and GNOME usability teams. The effort was announced in a message sent to the open-hci@freedesktop.org mailinglist that was created for this purpose. Read More

KDE-France will be holding a booth at Solutions Linux, a Linux Show in Paris open from the 4th to the 6th of February. David Faure will give a conference Wednesday afternoon about KDE for the end user. The KDE-France team will demonstrate KDE 3.1, sell KDE Goodies and a brand new KDE Demo CD based on Knoppix. We will also try to enlist everybody in our KDE-France association. French developers will also demonstrate on the booth their Qt / KDE applications. Read More

A feature article on KDE that appeared in the November edition of Linux Magazine is now available online. The article concentrates on deploying KDE in business environments and showcases a few of KDE3's newer features. It outlines how to lock down and configure a KDE3 installation using the KDE kiosk framework and how to set up KDE to use centralized resources for configuration and data. Read More