KDE.news 

The KDE Project today released KDE 3.1 RC3 with fixes for several severe bugs in RC2. This RC is likely the last before 3.1 although there remain a few items on the TODO list for KDE 3.1. If you find a showstopper problem in this release candidate not yet listed on bugs.kde.org, please file a report as soon as possible. The download links are up as usual on the KDE 3.1 Info page.

Corey Taylor has written an article for OSNews.com called "KDE 3.1 RC2: I'm Hammering". He has some font and icon issues with Red Hat 8.0, but overall seems happy. It's good to see people actually appreciating the new eyecandy and all the hard work by the artist team and developers. A wider range of opinions can be seen from their readers -- one even provides some nice screenshots of Liquid and Keramik. Sit tight for KDE 3.1, which has been delayed in favour of more RCs.

The KDE Project today issued two security advisories which affect KDE versions 2.1 through KDE 3.0.4 (and also through KDE 3.1 RC3). The first advisory concerns the rlogin:// service and, for affected KDE 2.x systems, the telnet:// service. The second advisory concerns the LISa and resLISa network browsing applications. Binary packages for KDE 3.0.5 should be available by early next week (check the KDE 3.0.5 Info Page); in the interim it is recommended to disable the affected services or upgrade from the source code or patches.

The big German newspaper Süddeutsche (400000+ copies sold every day) has published a 10-part installation report (German) of SuSE Linux 8.1. The author, who has no experience with Linux and KDE whatsoever, is full of praise for KDE and Konqueror. Other projects such as the Gimp and OpenOffice.org are also mentioned positively.

Shawn Gordon of theKompany has found a new and innovative way to support KDE development: a new line of KDE-themed merchandise has been made available and each month a random KDE developer will be awarded with the profits from the sale.

The KDE Project today released KDE 3.1 RC2, probably the last release candidate for KDE 3.1. A good number of showstoppers in RC1 have been fixed, and the new default Crystal-SVG icon set has been polished based on the valuable feedback received. Nevertheless, please give this RC2 another round of thorough testing to make sure all the major wrinkles have been ironed out. Please note that the kdebindings package still suffers from compilation problems in large parts, but this will be fixed by the final release. Thanks to the community for the feedback so far, let's keep it up and make the 3.1 release everything that is expected!

Sirtaj Singh Kang, better known to many of us as "Taj", joined the KDE project as a developer early in its history (read his People interview here). He was recently interviewed by The Sydney Morning Herald Online. Interview topics range from why get involved in Open Source (I work on free software in my free time. Like the car mechanics who work on their own hotrods in their spare time, it is in my professional interest to understand and improve on my available toolset. It makes me a more marketable employee.) to KDE history and development to Linux distributions.

Issue #45 of Kernel Cousin KDE is up. Hopefully from now on I'll be able to release a new one every Monday. Quite a lot of stuff in this one: eric, klogtool, kcmrandr, Kommander, Liquid (home) and much more. Please send me feedback after reading it here.

The KDE Project yesterday announced the release of KDE 3.1 RC 1. This release, while important, will have but a short lifespan (RC 2 is scheduled for next Monday), and so binary packages are not planned. A couple of points to consider: First, if you are wed to the hicolor icons, please note that they have been moved to the kdeartwork package; the other packages ship only with the new modern and attractive Crystal-SVG icon theme. Second, Klipper users who experience slowness or possible crashes in Konsole or KMail with this release should try disabling the Klipper syncing options, and then check the KDE 3.1 Info Page about reporting results. Please give this release a thorough testing so KDE 3.1 will be good and ready on schedule! A short but informative preview of the much-improved KDE 3.1 is available on the KDE Promo site.

Switch wrote us a while ago to inform us of unofficial KDE 3.0.4 packages for Debian PowerPC. Instructions here in Spanish -- English users just have to grab the sources.list line. In related news, Zack Rusin wrote in to inform us of the Debian Desktop project. "The Debian Desktop subproject is a group of volunteers who want to create the best possible operating system for home and corporate workstation use. Our motto is 'Software which Just Works'". Proper integration of KDE into Debian seems to be considered an important part of this project. In fact, one of the school labs here uses Debian with KDE 2.2.2 provided on the workstations. It's done fairly well with few unpleasant surprises. Even better, the major teaching labs here use FreeBSD thin clients with KDE 3.x installed as the desktop. Very cool.