When KDE 3.5 was under development in the year of 2005 I’ve written two very popular preview articles about it. Currently the development of an even more exciting version KDE 4 is in full swing. But for now I don’t plan to write any article about it (if I don’t count this one). The reason for this is that there is no need to. Several people have already done the job and written a lot of great material describing new features, new technologies and the process in which they are being developed. In this article I will try to collect and chronologically list all these articles. I will also do my best to keep it updated. If you know about an article that is missing, tell us about it in a comment and I’ll add it to the list.

• [2007-08-28] Touring the KDE 4 Beta
• [2007-06-21] KDE’s Plasma is heating up
• [2007-06-19] The Road to KDE 4: KDE PIM Libraries and Related Technologies
• [2007-06-19] More about Nepomuk-KDE: Soprano and KDE integration
• [2007-05-31] Semantic Desktop and KDE 4 - State and Plans of Nepomuk-KDE
• [2007-05-30] The Road to KDE 4: KWin Composite Brings Bling to KDE
• [2007-05-23] The Road to KDE 4: Konsole Gets an Overhaul
• [2007-05-11] Why Dolphin is a Good Choice for KDE4
• [2007-05-05] KDE Games Taking Shape for KDE 4.0
• [2007-04-23] The Road to KDE 4: Solid Brings Hardware Configuration and Control to KDE
• [2007-04-11] The Road to KDE 4: Strigi and File Information Extraction
• [2007-04-05] A first look at Dolphin, the KDE 4 file manager
• [2007-03-27] KDE 4 gets more Hot New Stuff
• [2007-03-21] The Road to KDE 4: Updates and Addenda
• [2007-03-07] The Road to KDE 4: Oxygen Artwork and Icons
• [2007-02-28] The Road to KDE 4: Dolphin and Konqueror
• [2007-02-27] Faces of KDE4
• [2007-02-26] New KDE 4 preview shows progress
• [2007-02-21] The Road to KDE 4: CMake, a New Build System for KDE
• [2007-02-16] The Pillars of KDE 4: Decibel Definitions and Benefits
• [2007-02-14] The Road to KDE 4: Okular and Ligature Document Viewers
• [2007-02-07] KDE 4’s Sonnet will turbocharge language processing
• [2007-02-07] The Pillars of KDE 4: Decibel
• [2007-02-06] The Road to KDE 4: Phonon Makes Multimedia Easier
• [2007-01-31] The Open Source Hook: Porting KDE to Mac and Windows
• [2007-01-30] From KDE 3 to KDE 4: what we will leave behind
• [2007-01-29] The Road to KDE 4: Kalzium and KmPlot
• [2007-01-23] The Road to KDE 4: Job Progress Reimagined
• [2007-01-15] The Road to KDE 4: Full Mac OS X Support
• [2007-01-08] The Road to KDE 4: New KOffice Technologies
• [2007-01-05] A sneak preview of the expected features in KDE 4.0
• [2007-01-01] The Road to KDE 4: SVG Rendering in Applications
• [2006-12-15] KDE 4: the ultimate business desktop?
• [2006-06-21] Why the KDE project switched to CMake - and how
• [2006-02-15] KDE 4 developers look toward new desktop possibilities
• [2006-01-12] Previewing KDE 4
• [2005-09-26] KDE 4 promises radical changes to the free desktop
• [2005-08-11] KDE4 - understanding the buzz

Another web site worth keeping an eye on if you are interested in development of KDE is KDE Commit Digest. You can find weekly reports about important changes to KDE source code there.

By the way, you can subscribe to comments to this post (where I will also post new links I add) by using this RSS feed.

Tags: kde, kde4, kde 4, desktop, linux, mac os, mac, windows, open source, free software, software, operating systems

Today I just replaced the old graphics card Leadtek WinFast A400 TDH (nVidia GeForce 6800 chip, NV40) with the new one, Club 3D 7600GS (nVidia GeForce 7600 chip, G73). The main reason (or excuse :)) was that the the fan on the old graphics card was extremely noisy and irritating. And it doesn’t hurt to have a more powerful graphics card so that Beryl, also known as the Windows Vista Aero killer, runs faster and smoother.

When looking for a new video card I decided it should not be too expensive, I expected it to fall into the range of 100€ to 150€. Another limitation was that I needed an AGP card, and not PCI Express, since AGP is what the motherboard supports. So in the end I was comparing nVidia 7600 GS cards to ATI/AMD Radeon X1650 Pro cards. After looking at some comparisons (here, here and here) I could see that they are very close, but on average nVidia 7600 GS has a slight advantage and nVidia was also cheaper. Another reason I liked nVidia 7600 GS more is that I’m quite disappointed with current ATI/AMD drivers for Linux. Never had any problems with nVidia drivers, which I can’t say for ATI/AMD drivers. So nVidia 7600 GS it was. More specifically, a Club 3D 7600GS.

The Club 3D 7600GS card, which costed 130€ (including shipping), came in a very nice black box. In the box you can find video converter cable, a quick installation guide and a CD with manuals and drivers. No Linux or BSD drivers are included. Come on, Club 3D, there is plenty of space left on the CD to include them. The card itself is a lot lighter than the heavy Leadtek WinFast A400 (which has a huge heat sink). Installation was easy. I just had to pull out the old card, insert the new one and it was all working just fine, since the nVidia Linux drivers (1.0-8774) were already installed on Mandriva Linux 2007.

I’m happy so far. The installation was very easy, the card works and the computer is quiet again. Now I’ll upgrade the drivers, do some more testing and maybe write something more about that later. As for the old card, which is still fast enough, I’ll try to replace the fan on it and put it back into good use. My cousin has an even older and slower graphics card (ATI Radeon 9000) and he is looking for an upgrade.

Tags: hardware, graphics, video, graphics card, video card, nvidia, geforce, ati, amd, radeon, linux

The new year has barely started and good news for Linux and free/open source software just don’t stop coming in. This time story goes something like this. A headmaster of a school in Russia got accused of software piracy. Now Russian schools are so afraid that authorities would find unlicensed software on their computers, that they have started to look at alternative options to overpriced Windows and software for it. And Linux operating system and free and open source software is the perfect choice. Not only will they be able to stop worrying about freely copying the software around, they will also save a lot of money, get safer and more stable platform, which in addition has higher educational values. The philosophy of free access to source code, collaboration and sharing that is behind free and open source software is just a perfect fit for schools. And it is a great way to finally put an end to software piracy. Way to go Russia! More about this on CNews. And to learn more about the use of open source software in education visit K12 Open Source wiki.

Tags: linux, windows, russia, free software, open source, floss, foss, education, school, schools, k12, k-12

Linus Torvalds has just released a new version of the Linux kernel. Version 2.6.20 features new virtualisation options: KVM (which uses hardware capabilities of AMD and Intel processors) and a paravirtualisation implementation (which can be used by hypervisors like Xen and VMware). The new kernel also sports an official support for PlayStation 3 which has been contributed by Sony. It’s still not complete, but it’s a good start. Developers have also added support for UDF-Lite protocol, which brings advantages for transport of multimedia over networks. Support for compilation optimisations for Intel Core 2 was added. There are also many other new features and new drivers in this version. For easy to read information check out Linux 2.6.20 @ Kernel Newbies. For complete list of changes see the Linux 2.6.20 ChangeLog. After reading all this don’t forget to download the full Linux 2.6.20 source code.

Tags: linux, kernel, operating systems, os, virtualisation, playstation, ps3, sony