KDE.news 

LinuxPlanet is running a review of KSpread. The article is nicely written, warmly positive, but also points out some of the more serious missing features of KSpread, such as a lack of spreadsheet functions. "As far as the interface goes, everything was simple and clean. There is a function drop-down menu if you want it, or you can use a Formula Editor to build your functions. Using the Formula Editor gave you the distinct advantage of receiving an explanation of what each function was and also brought up ways to further modify the function at hand." I'm far from an office person myself (hence don't have any real KSpread test cases), but I could not reproduce the claim that opening modest-sized KSpread files was slow, on my old Celery running Mandrake 8.1 GE. Read More

I have just added another interview to KDE::Enterprise, this time with popular Latin America Linux distributor Conectiva. The interview has some nice insights, covering their use of KDE, what their customers want, and their wide-range success in deploying KDE. "Our employees range from Linux gurus to people who have very little computer experience like lawyers, accountants and personal secretaries. They all use Linux here and almost all use KDE by default, since we believe it is the best desktop for people to learn how to use. I really believe that our employees are the evidence that Linux is really not hard to use." Read More

Our friend Raphael Bauduin has interviewed KDE bindings guru, Richard Dale, on FOSDEM.Org. "The bindings are regenerated for each KDE release. I take a patch of the manual edits that were needed for the previous release. Then run the new headers through kalyptus, and apply the patch of manual edits. Recently, it took about a week and a half to regenerate the bindings for C/Objective-C/Java, after about two months worth of KDE C++ header changes from the previous release." Richard has done an excellent job, almost single-handedly paving the way for new and exciting KDE bindings. If C++ is not your forte, be sure to investigate his work and check the KDE bindings page for other sparse details. Read More

Aaron J. Seigo delivers again with Kernel Cousin KDE #30. This week the summaries of the development mailing-lists include talk about KDE 3.1 features, Debian package maintainance, KDE artwork, GCC3 and the new KDE::Enterprise Forum. Enjoy! Read More

Over the last few weeks, I have been busily adding a number of new features and enhancements to appsy. Most of them enable greater customization of site content, such as receiving email notification when a particular application or any application within a particular category is updated. Others provide more information and statistics about the site and the software listed on it. And, not coincidentally, there is a new "news" system where you can post comments on a story as well. You can find out about the details in the site's first story. My apologies to those who visited the site during the brief moments when the reconstruction caused you problems. Read More

Matthias Kalle Dalheimer, who besides being one of the initial KDE developers, author of a famous c't article which helped galvanize KDE early in its life, author of an important series of early KDE articles (1, 2, 3) as well as the author of several books on Qt development published by O'Reilly^®, has recently authored an article entitled Design Patterns in Qt. In it he explores how the concepts from the "Gang of Four" book Design Patterns are used in Qt programming, focusing specifically on Qt's signal-slot architecture. Enjoy! Read More

All aRts and KDE developers (or would-be developers) are invited to an IRC meeting in order to draft a short- and long-term roadmap for the future of video in aRts and KDE. Why? aRts is a solid base, and it would be a shame not to build a good video system on top of that, taking the best from the already existing video projects. Read More

Hancom Linux recently announced that the Korean government has procured 120,000 copies of HancomLinux Deluxe 2.0, which includes, among other things, KDE 2 and Hancom Office. This means that many more office workers will soon be using KDE for their daily productivity. The government, which will migrate the equivalent of 23% of the annual Microsoft Windows based PC procurement, is quoted as estimating that they will "save 80% of what an equivalent purchase of Microsoft products would have cost." See also the stories at Slashdot and the Register. Way to go, Hancom! Read More

Many KDE developers know that Lubos Lunak is a serious developer with a strong grasp of C++ and a penchant for posting helpful hints on the development mailing lists. KDE users will be happy to find out that Lubos is the developer behind the popular KHotKeys, a tool that has received high marks since its first appearance in KDE 1 and that is now a gem in Kicker's menu editor (in KDE 2/3). Lubos is Tink's interlocutor for this week's The People Behind KDE interview. Read More

Thanks to the efforts of Christopher Molnar, KDE mailing lists are now accessible read-only through NNTP at news.uslinuxtraining.com (news, web). In other words, KDE Mailing Lists are now neatly accessible through your favourite newsreader (KNode, tin). The lists are also available through anonymous IMAP at the same server. See the official mailing list page for more details. In related news, Jono Bacon wrote in to point us to the new KDE::Enterprise Forum over at KDE::Enterprise. The forum provides a place for discussions regarding the use of KDE within businesses, education, charities, and so on. Enjoy. Read More