KDE.news

New KDE Telepathy version features audio and video calls

Monday, 11 June 2012 | Mck182

After four months full of work, the KDE Telepathy team is back with another release. Version 0.4 of the Instant Messaging suite for KDE Workspaces now supports making audio and video calls right from the desktop. It also adds the ability to browse chat logs. We focused strongly on stability and performance, so most of the improvements are "under the hood". In addition, work was started to have a Kopete log importer in the next release. Read More

KDE Commit-Digest for 20th May 2012

Sunday, 10 June 2012 | Mrybczyn

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest:

         <ul><li>Basic drag and drop support enabled for the Places Panel and bookmark synchronization in <a href="http://dolphin.kde.org/">Dolphin</a></li>
Read More

KDE Ships June Updates to Plasma Workspaces, Applications and Platform

Friday, 8 June 2012 | Sebas

Today KDE released updates for its Workspaces, Applications, and Development Platform. These updates are the fourth in a series of monthly stabilization updates to the 4.8 series. 4.8.4 updates bring many bugfixes and translation updates on top of the latest edition in the 4.8 series and are recommended updates for everyone running 4.8.3 or earlier versions. As the release only contains bugfixes and translation updates, it will be a safe and pleasant update for everyone. KDE’s software is already translated into more than 55 languages, with more to come.

Significant bugfixes include improvements to the Kontact Suite, bugfixes in Dolphin and many more corrections and performance improvements all over the place. The changelog and Bugzilla list more, but not all improvements since 4.8.3. Read More

Registration opens for Akademy BoFs and Workshops

Tuesday, 5 June 2012 | Kallecarl

The schedule for Akademy Workshops and Birds of a Feather sessions (BoFs) is available for registration. Organized in the Unconference style, people attending Akademy can select the preferred times and locations for topics they will lead. These sessions are a vital part of Akademy. New projects are proposed; existing ones get intensely focused attention. People are encouraged to attend Akademy to take part in these sessions that play such a critical role within KDE.

The KDE Community prizes innovation and creativity. Akademy Workshops and BoFs offer space for possibility that is hard to find anywhere else. Akademy 2012 Tallinn is the place to be if you want to make a difference working with enthusiastic, supportive people.

KDE Announces 4.9 Beta1 and Testing Initiative

Monday, 4 June 2012 | Sebas

Today KDE released the first beta for its renewed Workspaces, Applications, and Development Platform. With API, dependency and feature freezes in place, the KDE team's focus is now on fixing bugs and further polishing new and old functionality. Highlights of 4.9 include: Read More

KDE Response to the UK Open Standards Consultation

Monday, 4 June 2012 | Mirko

KDE e.V. has responded to the United Kingdom Open Standards Consultation on behalf of KDE, one of the largest and most influential Free Software communities world-wide with thousands of volunteer contributors and countless users. Open Standards align with the goals of the KDE Community, especially with regards to digital freedom and contributions to the common good, while patent mania and malicious licensing terms threaten KDE and other Free Software projects. Read More

Akademy 2012 Call for Volunteers

Saturday, 2 June 2012 | Kallecarl

Are you attending Akademy 2012 in Tallinn? Are you interested in making the conference rock for attendees? Helping the Akademy Team organize everything? Do you want an exclusive free Akademy 2012 Team t-shirt? Then please sign up as a volunteer. We need a lot of motivated people and a variety of skills for all kinds of tasks.

More details and sign up instructions are available at the Akademy 2012 site on the Call for Volunteers Page.

KDE Commit-Digest for 13th May 2012

Saturday, 2 June 2012 | Mrybczyn

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest:

On startup, KPhotoAlbum can search for videos without thumbnails
Dolphin allows remembering view properties for the search mode
Screen edge bindings for scripts and scripted effects implemented in KDE Workspace
New assert methods and Get Hot New Stuff support are available for KWin scripts
Abstract calendar and printing of the highlighted part of an email in KDE-PIM
In Calligra, author information gets configurable on a settings level, floating message class added
GSoC work in cantor and bibliography database in Calligra
Bugfixes in Amarok, KDE-PIM and the KDE base packages.
Statistics are back...and they are impressive.

Read the rest of the Digest here.

Meet Blue Systems—Akademy 2012 Platinum Sponsor

Thursday, 31 May 2012 | Tcanabrava

This year we have Blue Systems as a Platinum sponsor of Akademy 2012 Tallinn. Recently, they made news by offering continous support for Jonathan Riddell, lead developer of Kubuntu, the KDE distribution that they would like to become one of the best on DistroWatch. Read More

Beta Testing Program

Wednesday, 30 May 2012 | Unknow

Thorough and Rigorous Beta Testing

The KDE Community is committed to improving quality substantially with a new program that starts with the 4.9 releases. The 4.9 beta releases of Plasma Workspaces, KDE Applications, and KDE Platform are the first phase of a testing process that involves volunteers called “Beta Testers”. They will receive training, test the two beta releases and report issues through KDE Bugzilla.

The Beta Testing Team

The Beta Testing Team is a group of people who will do a 'Testapalooza' on the beta releases, catching as many bugs as possible. This is organized in a structured process so that developers know clearly what to fix before the final release. Anyone can help, even people without programming skills.

How It Works

There are two groups of beta testers:

informal testers install the beta from their distribution and use it as they normally would. They focus on familiar applications and functions, and report any bugs they can reproduce reliably.
selected functional testing involves a list of applets, new programs and applications that require full testing. Volunteers will choose from the list and test according to established beta testing guidelines.

Testing is coordinated to make sure that people's testing time and effort are used as effectively as possible. Coordination gets the most value out of the overall testing program.

Get Involved

This is an excellent way for anyone to make a difference for KDE. Continuous quality improvement sets KDE apart. Assisting developers by identifying legitimate bugs leverages their time and skills. This means higher quality software, more features, happier developers. The Beta Testing Program is structured so that any KDE user can give back to KDE, regardless of their skill level.

If you want to be part of this quality improvement program, please contact the Team on the IRC channel #kde-quality on freenode.net. The Team Leaders want to need to know ahead of time who is involved in order to coordinate all of the testing activities. They are also committed to having this project be fun and rewarding.