Deusy writes "Footnotes is running an update article on gDesklets, Gnome's answer to KDE's Karamba. I've heard a lot of noise with regards to Karamba (and Super Karamba) and a lot of moans from Gnome users about the lack of a Gnome equivalent. Hopefully this should fill that void and more, as one of the developers comments that gDesklets is the product of "months of planning" and describes Karamba as an "ugly hack"."

AstroDrabb writes "Linux, once viewed as an operating system that only computer geeks could appreciate, is today a much more user-friendly software that companies, public administrations and consumers can master almost as easily as Microsoft Corp.'s Windows XP."

MmmmJoel writes "After months of delays, and on the heels of OpenGroupware.org, version 1.0 of Kolab has finally been released. Commisioned by the German government to develop a Free Software groupware solution, Kolab is the server piece of Kroupware, which will be integrated into the KDE 3.2 desktop. The Kolab KDE Client was released concurrently at 1.0. This release has been announced on Slashdot before, with an initial planned release for December, 2002."

hpj writes "Trolltech today released QSA. An ECMA based scripting extension to Qt (On which KDE is based) which allows easily adding scripting support to Qt (And in extension KDE applications). It is licensed like Qt under GPL as well as commercial licenses for Windows, Mac and X11 for those GPL is not suitable."

steman writes "On the 10th of July 2003 LinuxTag begins, the largest Linux event in Europe. It will be held in Karlsruhe, Germany. Four days will be packed with up to 20,000 visitors, over 120 exhibitors (including more than 30 Free Software orientated projects such as FFII, BSD, KDE and Debian), coding marathon and many conferences (including specialist business and government conferences). Best of all, in the spirit of the Free Software Movement, it will be largely free (entrance, and many conferences are free)."

prostoalex writes "The low-cost Linux PC market so far dominated by Lindows got a new entrant. According to News.com, Linare plans to sell a $199 no-monitor model with 1GHz VIA CPU, 128MB RAM, 20GB HDD, KDE, OpenOffice. An extra $50 would get the user upgraded to a 2GHz Athlon. Company is located in beautiful Bellevue, WA, which, as News.com noted, is quite close to another Seattle suburb - Redmond, WA."

Programmers and others interested in the GNOME desktop environment gather annually for an event called GU4DEC, the GNOME Users and Developers European Conference. This year, there's extensive live coverage of GU4DEC (currently in progress, at Trinity College, Dublin) on the web, including a growing online photo album, audio recordings and video streams, and presentation materials. (The schedule is handy if you want to follow along.) I hope there's a similar sort of integrated documenation / dissemination from the upcoming KDE developers' conference at the Czech Republic's Nove Hrady.

michae1m writes "Trolltech today announced that Qt/Mac will be released under the GPL (GNU General Public License) at Apple's World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) 2003 in San Francisco on June 23rd (http://www.trolltech.com/newsroom/announcements/0 0000129.html). For some screenshots check out dot.kde.org/1055852609. This means many X11 Qt apps will be easily rebuilt for OS X without requiring X11, very cool."

Bruha writes "Lewt over at Warcry News Network has written his review for Ximian Desktop 2 targeted at the home users that are looking for a good desktop solution. He mentions this is a good product that could be bundled with Redhat or Mandrake to provide a one stop solution for the desktop user where they dont have to install any extra software to fully surf the web. Which you do with KDE/Gnome installs of most distro's."

Mohammed Al-Sahaf writes "If you use FreeNode, be sure to check out #commits, where they have a bot watching the CVS/Subversion repositories of a number of major Open Source projects (including GNOME, KDE and Python). Its fascinating to be able to watch development as it occurs all over the Open Source world. If you have a project of your own that uses CVS, you can add yourself to the bot. Also, the stats page makes interesting viewing!"

Richard Moore writes "As you can see from dot.kde.org, issue #53 of Kernel-Cousin KDE has been released, covering only a single topic. The plan for releasing KDE 3.2 is discussed at length, or maybe that should be KDE 4.0 - who knows..."

drunkentiger writes "Ripped right off their homepage: In a recent Slashdot article, someone asked if it were possible to create a fully-featured bootable Linux LiveCD for the Macintosh. We thought this was a great idea. So today, we are releasing two full-featured LiveCDs for the PowerPC: one with KDE 3, and another with GNOME 2. Take a look at the KDE LiveCD running MacOS X in a window via Mac on Linux. LiveCDs can be downloaded here or from these mirrors."

Slashback tonight with a passel of updates, corrections and tangents related to recent Slashdot postings, including GNU/Linux vs. Windows in Munich, Bunnie Huang's book on Xbox hacking, Mozilla's 5-line crash-test, and (sigh) yet another SCO note, but at least it's one to smile at. Read on for the details.

An anonymous reader sent us linkage to an overview of the new Mandrake 9.1. Many screenshots, as well as compliments for the latest KDE revision. Worth a glance if you're not already running Debian.

Kurt Pfeifle writes "Steve Ballmer's recent trip to Munich to offer up to 90% rebates for the Microsoft Software Assurance and Licenses was in vain. The ruling party of Germans biggest city and self-proclaimed 'technology capital' now decided to migrate 14.000 workstations to Linux and an OSS office suite. A study comparing the alternatives had assigned 6218 (out of 10.000) points to Linux/OSS, while the MS Windows platform only scored 5293. Babelfish translation of the latest newsticker story."

An anonymous reader asks: "My iBook is the strongest of my laptops, but it's not running my favorite OS. Knoppix and the various other live ISOs are nice for x86 machines, but (though OS X is nice, and I'm not disparaging it) it would be nice to have all the apps that come with KDE and GNOME, and to have them all available through a nice fluxbox or windowmaker desktop). I've seen smart people nearly cry trying to install Debian on their Macs, but then I've seen smart people nearly cry trying to install Debian in the first place. Knoppix has certainly made it easier to put Debian on x86 machines, but does such a thing exist for Macs? Mac OS X is a very pretty thing, and Apple has supported some great free software projects through it, it's just that on an older iBook (and older iMacs, even more so), a low-key GNU/Linux desktop moves more responsively, and has everything I need. If I could easily run a nice GNU system on them, old iMacs would be worth a lot more to me.".

JohnKFisher writes "For anyone who has ever put together a .deb package, but didn't want to bother with the hassle of setting up their own repository, or trying to get your package added to the official one, the Public Package Repository is up and running. I wonder if this means someone can finally add a version of KDE not dating from late in the Carter administration."

BSD Forums writes "The GNOME Development Series Snapshot 2.3.1 "Daddy Walrus", is now available. FreeBSD's Joe Marcus Clarke has ported this release (2.3) on FreeBSD and is looking for your testing help. Also, the KDE Project announced the immediate availability of KDE 3.1.2, a maintenance release for the third generation of this UNIX desktop."

e8johan writes "The toolkit that KDE is based upon, Trolltech's Qt , has been released in a new version. Version 3.2 has better database support, better support for porting Motif applications, and more. The original announcement can be found in the Trolltech newsroom , and the download is in Trolltech's download area ."

Arandir writes "Is UNIX ready for the desktop? Display Works Inc. thinks it is! They adopted KDE as their official desktop environment over a year ago, and KDE::Enterprise is running an interview with IT manager Tim Brodie over their experiences. This is a very good interview that covers why KDE was chosen, user migration, and wish lists for KDE. Quote: "I now see KDE taking the lead in polish and professionalism on the desktop"."