KDE.news

conf.kde.in 2015 - divine

Wednesday, 4 March 2015 | Devaja

Building on the success of conf.kde.in 2014 at Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Community Technology (DA-IICT) in the land of Gujarat, the horizon of the KDE Community is broadening and shifting south. conf.kde.in 2015 takes place on the 17th and 18th of April at Amritapuri in Kerala, India. As in previous years of the conference, conf.kde.in 2015 will promote the spirit of free and open source software (FOSS) and offer ideas to build awareness about FOSS culture at the collegiate level, the time when most technology students have their first interactions with Open Source. There will be particular emphasis on KDE technology, and on Qt, the popular cross-platform application framework.

The Venue

Amritapuri is renowned as a spiritual center, named after the humanitarian and spiritual leader Mata Amritanandamayi. The major university of the town, Amrita University, is known for its efforts in promoting FOSS culture among the students; an ideal place for hosting conf.kde.in 2015. The University has had extensive involvement with FOSS in the past, the latest being DebUtsav (a Debian conference) in October 2014.

Amrita University

About conf.kde.in

conf.kde.in started in 2011 at RVCE in Bangalore as a 5 day event with 300 participants, initiating a series of such KDE events in India. There was a KDE Meetup in 2013 and conf.kde.in 2014 at DA-IICT, which brought in members of the KDE Community from all over the world to attend the event, give talks, and share the spirit of KDE. The 2015 conference will cater to new members of KDE as well as seasoned developers, providing updates about what is going on in the KDE Community and teaching newcomers how to start making meaningful contributions. These events have been successful in attracting a lot of Indian students to mentoring programs such as Google Summer of Code (GSoC), Season of KDE and Google Code-In.

This year, the conf.kde.in 2015 organizers intend to generate even more interest and participation by creating a fertile environment for people to get started with KDE, Qt and FOSS through numerous talks, hands-on sessions and demonstrations.

Kontact Kolab Now

Friday, 27 February 2015 | Kallecarl

Kolab Systems has recently announced substantial improvements to their support for Kolab Groupware, today's release of Kolab 3.4, recently released Kolab Enterprise 14 and the upgrade of the hosted Kolab Now solution for Enterprise 14. Since the start of Kolab in 2002 as a Free Software project sponsored by the German Federal Office for Information Security, KDE people have played a significant role in its development. Kolab is enterprise-level software that includes group email, calendaring, contacts, file sharing, and task management. Its features also appeal to many individuals.

A little history

The initial release of Kolab was called Kroupware (notice the "K", it means something ;^) The Kroupware Client was the result of enhancements to KMail and other KDE PIM (personal information management) software, and later became known as Kontact. About 10 years ago, KDE developers were interviewed about the evolution of the projects and provided details about Kontact, the Personal Information Management Suite from KDE. Currently Kontact is the favored client for Kolab; other popular clients are supported as well. Despite its longevity, KDE PIM continues to evolve.

Email still going strong

Despite the rise of social networks and messaging apps, email continues to be the dominant mode of written electronic communication. Over the next few years, email use will continue to grow in the business world and decrease by less than 4% each year for consumers. The average business worker will have to deal with 140 emails a day by 2018, up from 120 emails a day now. (Thanks to theconversation.com)

Approximately 108 billion business emails are sent each day. Email is critical to communication in organizations.

Security and privacy more important than ever

Kolab was designed with a security centric architecture from the beginning. With the revelations of government spying over the past few years and other dangerous electronic invasions, this aspect of Kolab has grown in importance to many people. It was one of the primary considerations for the Munich city government when Kolab was selected for implementation in February 2014. In addition, the City of Munich has implemented the KDE Desktop as part of LiMux - The IT evolution, migrating the City to free and open source software. Privacy and security are essential requirements to organizations, and highly important to many individuals as well.

Kolab Now

Recent reports of government intrusions—involving organizations such as the U.S. NSA and the U.K. GCHQ—are cause for alarm by some individuals. U.S.-based email providers such as Google and Microsoft have been required to release information to government agencies without notifying the people involved. Encryption and other privacy measures can't be trusted to such arrangements.

Kolab Now provides enterprise-class Kolab capabilities and support for individuals and smaller groups. The secure email and collaboration services are based in Switzerland. Individual data is "protected by a unique combination of terms of service, laws, operational principles and technology. Kolab Now will never put you under surveillance to sell your data or profile and there will be no advertisements. Enjoy the convenience of the Cloud without compromising freedom and openness." (from the Kolab Now website)

Calligra 2.9 Brings Biggest Krita Release and New Kexi Partnership

Thursday, 26 February 2015 | Jriddell

We are happy to announce the release of final version 2.9 of the Calligra Suite, Calligra Active and the Calligra Office Engine. This version is the result of thousands of changes which provide new features, polishing of the user experience and bug fixes. Read More

Plasma 5.2 Bugfix Update

Tuesday, 24 February 2015 | Jriddell

Tuesday, 24 February 2015. Today KDE releases a bugfix update to Plasma 5, versioned 5.2.1. Plasma 5.2 was released in January with many feature refinements and new modules to complete the desktop experience.

We love the projects around us!

Saturday, 14 February 2015 | Nightrose

Today the Free Software Foundation Europe reminds us to thank and celebrate all those in Free Software we love and whose work we enjoy and built upon. In KDE, we stand on the shoulders of giants. Everything we do in some way depends on Free Software written by many other people - the huge ecosystem around us. Here are just a few of the thousands of them: Read More

Meet KDE at FOSDEM this Weekend

Wednesday, 28 January 2015 | Jriddell

KDE will be at Europe's largest gathering of free software developering this weekend, taking over the city of Brussels for FOSDEM. We start with the traditional beer event on the Friday, sampling 100 flavours of beer while we mingle with old friends and new. On Saturday we will have a stall showing off Plasma 5.2, our beautiful desktop launched only yesterday. We will also show off upcoming ideas like KDE software on Android. There will be t-shirts to buy for those who wants to show their support for the original and best free software desktop community. Saturday evening sees the Kubuntu 10th anniversary party in Grand Place to which all KDE friends are welcome (but remember to book on first). On Sunday we'll be running the Desktop devroom with our friends from other projects. Bruno Coudoin will be talking about his port to Qt of GCompris. Hope to see you there!

Plasma 5.2 Is Beautiful and Featureful

Tuesday, 27 January 2015 | Jriddell

Today KDE releases Plasma 5.2. This release adds a number of new components, many new features and many more bugfixes.

New Components

KScreen dual monitor setup

This release of Plasma comes with some new components to make your desktop even more complete:

Akademy 2015 - A Coruña, Spain - 25-31 July

Tuesday, 20 January 2015 | Chavaone

For more than 1800 years, the Tower of Hercules has guided ships sailing near A Coruña. Soon it will beckon KDE users and contributors, when Akademy—the annual KDE community meeting—is held in A Coruña (Galicia, Spain) 25–31 July. The conference is expected to draw hundreds of attendees from the global KDE Community to discuss and plan the future of the Community and its technology. Many participants from the broad free and open source software community, local organizations and software companies will also attend.

KDE Commit-Digest for 16th November 2014

Monday, 19 January 2015 | Mrybczyn

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest:

Gwenview gains "Recent Files" option
Cantor sees multiple backends (R, Lua, KAlgebra/analitza, Maxima, Qalculate) and KLetters ported to Qt5/KF5
Refactoring in of the custom defines and includes plugins in KDevelop: the compiler provider is a library now
Skrooge adds new advice detecting scheduled operations having date not aligned with the last inserted operation
Heavy development including introducting a base class Resource; also bugfixes.

Read the rest of the Digest here.

Google Summer of Code 2014 Student Projects

Sunday, 18 January 2015 | Devaja

Google Summer of Code and KDE have been going hand in hand since quite a while now. The community has been responsible for initiating young students to the world of FOSS and giving them a first-hand experience of real world programming, while they hack the summers away on projects that they love under the guidance of mentors who add to the newbie’s skills and understanding of coding and give it an entire new definition. So; three months of summer turn out to be the most productive ones for students, the mentors, the KDE Developer community as well as each and every KDE user who gets to experience the first hand awesomeness of all the hard work and efforts put in by the newest additions to the KDE community. Read More