Together with my sister we’ve just finished packing our luggage for our trip to Glasgow, Scotland. As I’ve already written before, we’re going there for the annual KDE community meeting called aKademy. I think I’m quite well prepared for the conference. Using KOrganizer I’ve made a detailed plan of all the talks and BoFs and other events that I intend to visit. KOrganizer also has a very nice export function which outputs all the events into a nicely formatted HTML file. So thanks to KOrganizer you can see my detailed aKademy 2007 calendar. Our plane lifts off in less than 12 hours and we also need about 3 hours to get to the airport so I should better get some sleep. I’ll report back, here on my blog, when we get to our destination. Can’t wait to meet all the KDE people in person. Oh, and thanks again to Linux User Group of Slovenia for sponsoring my trip.

Tags: kde, akademy, akademy 2007, community, conference, meeting, desktop, free software, open source, glasgow, scotland

This year will be my first time attending aKademy conference, a meeting of KDE users, developers and contributors. Akademy 2007 will take place in Glasgow, Scotland from 30th June to 7th July 2007.

Air plane tickets for me and my sister have just been booked, thanks to Jure Koren, who helped with his credit card (I don’t have any of my own yet). We’ve already arranged for accommodation in Glasgow Euro Hostel about two weeks ago. So everything is ready for the departure. Well almost, I still need to buy a power socket adapter.

Big thanks also go to LUGOS who will be paying for my plane ticket and the room. Without them this trip wouldn’t be possible, or it would be very hard. Can’t wait to meet you at aKademy 2007!

P.S. If you’re coming don’t forget to add yourself to the list of aKademy 2007 attendees.

Tags: kde, akademy, akademy 2007, conference, meeting, desktop, free software, open source, glasgow, scotland

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

While we are still eagerly awaiting the release of KDE 4 - on which developers, artists and other contributors are working very hard - here comes a new service release with many bug fixes and translation updates. In addition, KDE 3.5.6 brings a couple of new features:

• Fields for entering passwords show bullets instead of asterisks
• Kicker, the main panel, got support for Compiz window manager
• Akregator, the feed reader, got session management support for tabs
• KMail, the email client, now enables you to create templates for messages
• Kontact, the personal information management (PIM) suite got new Summary menus for appointments and To-Dos

KDE 3.5.6 is also the first version that fully supports Euro as the new national currency here in Slovenia. For more details about the new version you can check out KDE 3.5.6 Release Announcement and KDE 3.5.6 Changelog.

Tags: kde, kde4, kde 4, desktop, linux, kicker, compiz, akregator, kmail, kontact, open source, software, slovenia, euro

A few minutes ago I committed a fix for a little cosmetic bug in KMix, that irritated me a bit every time I opened the mixer window. If you had relative volume values enabled and the volume was at 100% then the number 100 in the QLabel was cut of a bit at the end. I first tried with altering the code which used the function boundingRect from QFontMetrics and functions to get width, margin and other properties from QLabel. I didn’t succeed with these so I simply removed the entire QFontMetrics voodoo and used a nice function sizeHint like this:
QLabel *number = new QLabel( "100", this );
number->setMinimumWidth( number->sizeHint().width() );

The function sizeHint, gets just the right size for the widget so that it fits its content and now all looks just fine. In addition to this I also made the frame of the label thinner by one pixel and I think it looks a bit nicer now. You can see the old mixer window on the left and the new one on the right:

Tags: kde, programming, qt, desktop, desktop environment, open source, free software, linux

A new version of the most popular desktop environment for Linux is out. KDE 3.5.4 is here and in addition to a lot of bug fixes and updated translations there are also some small enhancements. Removable devices are handled better, KHTML engine for rendering web pages is much improved and Konsole and Kate are faster now. For all the details about KDE 3.5.4, including the instructions for downloading, check out the release announcement. AMD Turion 64 in my laptop with Gentoo Linux is already compiling the new version. My desktop computer will have to wait a bit longer, until I get the new AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core, which will make compilation a lot faster.

Tags: kde, desktop, desktop environment, open source, free software, linux

I couple of days ago my friend Boris told me about a handy little application YaKuake. It’s a terminal emulator for KDE very similar to Konsole. What makes it different is that it is normally hidden from the view, even while running. It doesn’t even clutter the taskbar. When you need the console you simply press F12 key (configurable) and YaKuake console drops down from the top of the screen, much like the console in games like Quake. In addition to other Konsole settings you can set the size and position of YaKuake window and the animation speed of showing and hidding it. YaKuake hides when you press the access key for the second time or when it loses focus. It sure would be great to have something like this by default in KDE 4. To see how YaKuake looks check out this screenshot. If you would like to try it out, go and download YaKuake.

Tags: console, consoles, terminal, terminals, open source, free software, linux, kde

While updating my local copy of source code from KDE SVN repository and reading the latest issue of KDE Commit Digest (I’ve translated the interface into Slovenian language) I noticed that Harish Kukreja has imported Physiks into the repository. The original name for this Google Summer of Code project was KPhysics (you can read a bit more about it in my previous post), but since many new KDE applications have dropped the K prefix KPhysics was renamed to Physiks. Now I have its code on my hard drive and I will keep my eye on the development so that after the SoC is over I can start to help as quickly as possible and help make Physiks a great tool for physics teachers who will use it to show virtual physical experiments to students.

Tags: physics, kphysics, physiks, education, open source, free software, linux, kde, google summer of code, soc

About an hour ago version 3.5.1 of K Desktop Environment (KDE for short) was released. This is mainly a bugfix release and it also has updated translations and localizations. Slovenian translation finally made it past the magic 90% mark. For more information about KDE 3.5.1 read the release announcement and the changelog. Now let’s see how long it takes until it gets unmasked in Gentoo portage

In addition to the new release, a new web page was launched, SpreadKDE.org. A lot of inspiration came from the well known Spread Firefox page. I hope many KDE users gather around it and start promoting KDE more passionately. The world has to know about this excellent desktop.

Tags: kde, desktop, marketing

Introduction to part 2

It looks like the first part of my KDE 3.5 previews was extremely popular. Much more than I could ever anticipated. I even got Slashdotted. Anyway, here is the second part of the look into the KDE’s near future. Enjoy the tour!

More about Konqueror

Let me continue with Konqueror. Search bar (comes with kdeaddons package) now has the possibility to select the desired search engine from a dropdown menu similar to the one in Firefox. To select which engines are available in the menu you simply put a check mark before its name in the Web Shortcuts settings dialog.

During the past two weeks a new del.icio.us bookmarks panel made into KDE 3.5. del.icio.us is a special online social bookmarks managing system and now you can do many of the tasks directly from within Konqueror. If you would like to use it, first make sure you have Navigation Panel open (enable it under Window menu or press F9). Then right click on an empty spot under existing tabs and select the new panel from Add New submenu.

File properties dialog got a new Preview tab, which I don’t find as handy as the preview in the tooltip you get when you hold the mouse over some file.

KSysGuard

KSysGuard is a very nice and quite powerfull system monitoring utility. Process table used to take quite a long time to start up but now loads a lot faster (almost instantly). It also has a new search bar at the top so you can quickly filter out the desired processes. The Kill Process dialog now shows you the PIDs and names of the processes you are about to terminate.

Smooth Blend

While Plastik remains the default a new window decoration theme has been added to kdeartwork package. It’s called Smooth Blend and what I like about it is that you can set the titlebar hight, frame width and button size. This is how it looks by default:

SuperKaramba

Another piece of software that got included into the official KDE package (kdeutils) is SuperKaramba. Those of you who like eyecandy probably know it already. It puts some really nice looking widgets (themes) on the desktop. Widgets can show various information like your local weather, system information and music you are currently playing.

I’ve discovered some problems while using it. It happens frequently that when you download a theme using the integrated Get New Stuff system the theme doesn’t even get installed and doesn’t show in the configuration window. Sometimes you also get several entries. One is named correctly and others are just names of the different languages in which the same theme you just downloaded is available in. This is mostly the problem of theme packaging. But normal users probably don’t know this and will get confused and they will just think SuperKaramba is buggy and not polished enough. So it would be great if developers and theme authors could work together to solve this problem.

KCalc

KDE calculator has improved display showing current angle mode and base. I guess the statusbar where the same information is duplicated can now be removed or used for some other info. A few new constants were added and some corrected. Arbitrary precision using GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic Library is under development.

End of part 2

This concludes the second part of KDE 3.5 previews. More words and pictures will come again in about two weeks. Until then you can also take a look at Artwork for KDE 3.5 forum at KDE-Artists.org where people from all around the world contribute to the looks of the next KDE version. The main theme is going to be a wave. And don’t forget about aKademy 2005 in Málaga, Spain.

Translations and derivative works

Hebrew by Uri Sharf
Slovenian by Jure Repinc

Tags: kde, desktop, konqueror, superkaramba, linux

Part 2 >

Introduction

Every year, during the summer holidays, I regularly download the source code of the new version of KDE desktop that is in the works and compile and test it. If any bugs are found I report them and from time to time I also make some feature suggestions. When the feature and message freeze comes into effect I also start helping with translation into Slovenian language. This year is no exception, in most parts. One of the differences is that now I’m testing on two computers: 32-bit Athlon 1200 MHz (with Mandriva Linux 2006 beta installed and GCC 4.0.1) and a much faster 64-bit Athlon 64 3000+ (Gentoo Linux and GCC 3.4.4). It is always good to have things tested on as many platforms as possible. Another change is that this year I’ve decided to post previews of and experiences with development version of KDE on this blog. I’ll try to put up as many screenshots as possible so that everyone can see what is coming in the future.

General

Stability of this prebeta version is very good. I rarely encountered crashes or freezes. Speed is also about the same as with current stable version 3.4.1. The default font sizes have been reduced to 10 points, which makes a little bit more room on the screen. This is how the default desktop looks like:

As you can see there is not much change since the previous versions. Even the version on the wallpaper is still the old one. You can expect to see more innovations in KDE 4. But there are some more or less hidden differences and some of them I’ll show you next.

Kicker

The first thing I noticed was that the new tooltips, first introduced in KDE 3.4 (only for buttons), are now also used for minipager, taskbar buttons and clock. I think it would be a good idea to also use them for system tray icons.

There are now three different appearances for Kicker that you can choose from: Elegant (the default), Classic and For Transparency.

Minipager has received many improvements. It can show icons of applications, background can now show desktop wallpaper or it can be transparent. You can even drag and drop windows from one desktop to another.

Another improvement for kicker is Add Applet dialog. The inspiration probably came from GNOME desktop and it replaces the current context menu based method. It makes it quite a bit easier to find the right applet.

Storage Media Notification

Next new feature in 3.5 is storage media notification. This is something users of the current Windows desktop already have and some Linux distributions, like Mandriva, implemented their own version, mostly just as simple autorun. KDE will now also show a special dialog of possible actions when some media is inserted. I hope authors of KDE applications will soon start to add actions for their program. On the other hand it is simple to add, edit or remove actions yourself.

home:/

KIOSlaves are a special feature of KDE that make it simple to work with files and folders over different protocols. You probably know some of them very well, like file, http or ftp. A new one has recently been added: home. When you open location home:/ in Konqueror you can now see all home folders of the users belonging to the same group as you do.

Konqueror

One of the main complaints about Konqueror was that there were some menu options that just don’t make sense in file managing mode and should only be shown in web browsing mode (and vice versa). The work is being done to correct this.

Konqueror now supports AdBlock content filtering. You can add simple filters by, for example, right clicking on an image and selecting to block it.

There are a lot of other behind the scenes improvements to various parts of Konqueror. And now that Apple provided access to their improvements to KHTML and KJS, KDE developers can and did backport them into Konqueror.

End of Part 1

Well, this is it for the first part. I hope you like it. I’ll take a look at other applications and new developments in following articles. Expect the next one in an about two weeks. Comments and suggestions are welcome.

Translations and derivative works

Hebrew by Uri Sharf
Slovenian by Jure Repinc

Part 2 >

Tags: kde, desktop, konqueror, kicker, linux