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Programming

KDE Releases Frameworks 5 87

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the new-and-shiny dept.
KDE Community (3396057) writes The KDE Community is proud to announce the release of KDE Frameworks 5.0. Frameworks 5 is the next generation of KDE libraries, modularized and optimized for easy integration in Qt applications. The Frameworks offer a wide variety of commonly needed functionality in mature, peer reviewed and well tested libraries with friendly licensing terms. There are over 50 different Frameworks as part of this release providing solutions including hardware integration, file format support, additional widgets, plotting functions, spell checking and more. Many of the Frameworks are cross platform and have minimal or no extra dependencies making them easy to build and add to any Qt application. Version five of the desktop shell, Plasma, will be released soon, and packages of Plasma-next and KDE Frameworks 5 will trickle into Ubuntu Utopic over the next few days. There's a Live CD of Frameworks 5 / Plasma-next, last updated July 4th.
Handhelds

Improv Project, Vivaldi Tablet Officially Dead 71

Posted by timothy from the sad-news dept.
sfcrazy (1542989) writes "It's a sad day for free software as one of the most ambitious free software projects, Improv, is officially dead. Along with the board also dies the promising Vivaldi tablet [video intro]. The developers have sent out emails to the backers of the project that they are pulling plugs on these. The end of the Improv project also means a disappointing end to the KDE Tablet project, as Aaron Seigo was funding both projects out of his own pocket (almost exactly $200,000 spent)."
KDE

Linux Mint 17 KDE Released 61

Posted by samzenpus from the brand-new dept.
sfcrazy writes The Linux Mint team has announced the release of Linux Mint 17 KDE codenamed Qiana. It's based on KDE Software Compilation 4.13.0. There are notable improvements in Mint Display Manager (MDM). The multi-monitor display has improved and it allows a user to “configure which of the monitors should be used as the primary monitory by MDM.” Users can also define a background color or a background picture no matter what greeter they are using.
KDE

KDE Ships First Beta of Next Generation Plasma Workspace 94

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the wobbly-windows dept.
rohangarg (1966752) writes "KDE announced the beta of its next generation of its plasma workspace today. Built ontop of Qt5 and KDE Frameworks 5, with this transition, all QML-based UIs — which Plasma is built exclusively with — will make use of a new scenegraph and scripting engine, resulting in huge performance wins as well as architectural benefits, such as being able to render using available graphics hardware." There are experimental packages for some distros, and a Live CD (ISO download) available if you want to try it out.
GUI

Lumina: PC-BSD's Own Desktop Environment 148

Posted by timothy from the always-room-for-one-more dept.
jones_supa (887896) writes "The PC-BSD project is developing a new open source (BSD license) desktop environment from scratch. The name of the project is Lumina and it will be based around the Qt toolkit. The ultimate goal is to replace KDE as the default desktop of PC-BSD. Lumina aims to be lightweight, stable, fast-running, and FreeDesktop.org/XDG compliant. Most of the Lumina work is being done by PC-BSD's Ken Moore. Even though Lumina is still in its early stages, it can be built and run successfully, and an alpha version can already be obtained from PC-BSD's ports/package repositories."
KDE

OpenSUSE To Offer Rolling Release KDE Experience 51

Posted by samzenpus from the the-way-you-want-it dept.
sfcrazy (1542989) writes "openSUSE and KDE teams are working on creating four KDE SC repositories for openSUSE which will enable users to get the the kind of experience they want. Users can stick to the default repos that come with openSUSE if they want to use what openSUSE offers. Those users who want to stay updated with the latest KDE SC releases can use the "KDE:Current" repository which will always remain updated. 3rd repo "KDE:Distro:Factory" will offer KDE packages which are being tested and prepared before they are pushed to the 'Current' repo. The fourth repo "KDE:Unstable:SC" will offer early builds as they are being devloped."
KDE

KDE and Canonical Developers Disagree Over Display Server 202

Posted by samzenpus from the no-meeting-of-the-minds dept.
sfcrazy (1542989) writes "Robert Ancell, a Canonical software engineer, wrote a blog titled 'Why the display server doesn't matter', arguing that: 'Display servers are the component in the display stack that seems to hog a lot of the limelight. I think this is a bit of a mistake, as it’s actually probably the least important component, at least to a user.' KDE developers, who do have long experience with Qt (something Canonical is moving towards for its mobile ambitions), have refuted Bob's claims and said that display server does matter."
Data Storage

OpenSUSE 13.2 To Use Btrfs By Default 91

Posted by Soulskill from the changing-horses dept.
An anonymous reader writes "OpenSUSE has shared features coming to their 13.2 release in November. The big feature is using Btrfs by default instead of EXT4. OpenSUSE is committed to Btrfs and, surprisingly, they are the first major Linux distribution to use it by default. But then again, they were also big ReiserFS fans. Other planned OpenSUSE 13.2 features are Wayland 1.4, KDE Frameworks 5, and a new Qt5 front-end to YaST."
KDE

KDE Releases Calligra Suite 2.8 35

Posted by timothy from the consistently-impressive dept.
It's not just graphics app Krita: user KDE Community writes "The Calligra team is proud and pleased to announce the release of version 2.8 of the Calligra Suite, Calligra Active and the Calligra Office Engine. Major new features in this release are comments support in Author and Words, improved Pivot tables in Sheets, improved stability and the ability to open hyperlinks in Kexi. Flow introduces SVG based stencils and as usual there are many new features in Krita including touch screens support and a wraparound painting mode for the creation of textures and tiles." KDE has also just announced the first beta of its Applications and Platform 4.13.
Linux

Ask Slashdot: Linux For Grandma? 287

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the gnu-slash-grandma dept.
First time accepted submitter BlazeMiskulin writes "With XP approaching end-of-life, I find myself in a situation that I'm guessing is common: What to do with Mom's machine (or 'grandma's machine' for the younger of you). Since a change has to be made, this seems like a good time to move to a Linux distro. My mother (82) uses her computer for e-mail and web-browsing only. I know that any distro will be able to handle her needs. I've been using Linux (Ubuntu, CentOS, and Redhat--usually with KDE interface) for about 10 years now, but I know that my preferences are quite different from hers.

I have my own ideas, but I'm curious what others think: What combination of distro and UI would you recommend for an old, basic-level user who is accustomed to the XP interface and adverse to change?" My Grandmother seems happy running KDE on Debian.
Ubuntu

Why Do You Need License From Canonical To Create Derivatives? 118

Posted by Soulskill from the because-they-said-so dept.
sfcrazy writes "Canonical's requirement of a license for those creating Ubuntu derivatives is back in the news. Yesterday the Community Council published a statement about Canonical's licensing policies, but it's vague and it provides no resolution to the issue. It tells creators of derivative distros to avoid the press and instead talk to the Community Council (when they're not quick about responding). Now Jonathan Riddell of Kubuntu has come forth to say no one needs any license to create any derivative distro. So, the question remains: If Red Hat doesn't force a license on Oracle or CentOS, why does Canonical insist upon one?"
GNU is Not Unix

GNU Hurd Gets Improvements: User-Space Driver Support and More 163

Posted by samzenpus from the now-even-better dept.
jones_supa writes "At FOSDEM 2014 some recent developments of GNU Hurd were discussed (PDF slides). In the name of freedom, GNU Hurd has now the ability to run device drivers from user-space via the project's DDE layer. Among the mentioned use-cases for the GNU Hurd DDE are allowing VPN traffic to just one application, mounting one's own files, redirecting a user's audio, and more flexible hardware support. You can also run Linux kernel drivers in Hurd's user-space. Hurd developers also have working IDE support, X.Org / graphics support, an AHCI driver for Serial ATA, and a Xen PV DomU. Besides the 64-bit support not being in a usable state, USB and sound support is still missing. As some other good news for GNU Hurd, around 79% of the Debian archive is now building for GNU Hurd, including the Xfce desktop (GNOME and KDE soon) and Firefox web browser."
GUI

Ask Slashdot: Are Linux Desktop Users More Pragmatic Now Or Is It Inertia? 503

Posted by Soulskill from the beards-give-a-+50%-modifier-to-inertia dept.
David W. White writes "Years ago ago those of us who used any *nix desktop ('every morning when you wake up, the house is a little different') were seen as willing to embrace change and spend hours tinkering and configuring until we got new desktop versions to work the way we wanted, while there was an opposite perception of desktop users over in the Mac world ('it just works') and the Windows world ('it's a familiar interface'). However, a recent article in Datamation concludes that 'for better or worse, [Linux desktop users] know what they want — a classic desktop — and the figures consistently show that is what they are choosing in far greater numbers than GNOME, KDE, or any other single graphical interface.' Has the profile of the Linux desktop user changed to a more pragmatic one? Or is it just the psychology of user inertia at work, when one considers the revolt against changes in the KDE, GNOME, UNITY and Windows 8 interfaces in recent times?"
KDE

KDE Releases Frameworks 5 Tech Preview 51

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the when-kde-and-qt-become-one dept.
KDE Community writes "The KDE Community is proud to announce a Tech Preview of KDE Frameworks 5. Frameworks 5 is the result of almost three years of work to plan, modularize, review and port the set of libraries previously known as KDElibs or KDE Platform 4 into a set of Qt Addons with well-defined dependencies and abilities, ready for Qt 5. This gives the Qt ecosystem a powerful set of drop-in libraries providing additional functionality for a wide variety of tasks and platforms, based on over 15 years of KDE experience in building applications. Today, all the Frameworks are available in Tech Preview mode; a final release is planned for the first half of 2014. Some Tech Preview addons (notably KArchive and Threadweaver) are more mature than others at this time." Check out that dependency graph.
GUI

Hawaii Desktop Stable Released, Powered By Qt 5.2 & Wayland 137

Posted by timothy from the take-a-vacation dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Maui OS Project has made their first stable release of the Hawaii Desktop. Hawaii is still catching up with GNOME, Xfce, and KDE in terms of features, but it's written from scratch atop next-generation open-source technologies. In particular, Hawaii 0.2.0 is powered by the brand new Qt 5.2 tool-kit and runs natively on Wayland's Weston 1.3 compositor. Hawaii 0.2.0 carries all standard Linux desktop features but more advanced desktop functionality is planned while focusing around a Wayland design and eventually their own Green Island Compositor."
KDE

Kdenlive Developer Jean-Baptiste Mardelle Has Been Found 85

Posted by timothy from the just-in-time-for-the-solstice dept.
jones_supa writes "A month ago there was worry about Kdenlive main developer being missing. Good news guys, Jean-Baptiste Mardelle has been finally reached and is doing fine. In a new mailing list post by Vincent Pinon, he says he managed to find Mardelle's phone number and contacted the longtime KDE developer. It was found out that Mardelle took a break over the summer but then lost motivation in Kdenlive under the burden of the ongoing refactoring of the code. Pinon agreed that there are 'so many things to redo almost from scratch just to get the 'old' functionalities'. The full story can be read from the kdenlive-devel mailing list. After talking with Jean-Baptiste, Vincent has called upon individual developers interested in Kdenlive to come forward. Among the actions called for is putting the Git master code-base back in order, ensuring the code is in good quality, provide new communication about the project, integrate new features like GPU-powered effects and a Qt5 port, and progressively integrate the new Kdenlive design."
KDE

KDE Releases Applications and Development Platform 4.12 44

Posted by samzenpus from the check-it-out dept.
KDE Community writes "The KDE Community is proud to announce the latest major updates to KDE software delivering new features and fixes. With Plasma Workspaces and the KDE Platform frozen and receiving only long term supportt, those teams are focusing on the technical transition to Frameworks 5. This release marks substantial improvements in the KDE PIM stack, giving much better performance and many new features. Kate added new features including initial Vim-macro support, and games and educational applications bring a variety of new features. The announcement for the KDE Applications 4.12 has more information. This release of KDE Platform 4.12 only includes bugfixes and minor optimizations and features. About 20 bugfixes as well as several optimizations have been made to various subsystems. A technology preview of the Next Generation KDE Platform, named KDE Frameworks 5, is coming this month."
Red Hat Software

Fedora 20 Released 147

Posted by timothy from the is-it-a-true-fedora? dept.
sfcrazy writes "The Fedora Project has announced the release of Fedora 20, code named Heisenbug (release notes). Fedora 20 is dedicated to Seth Vidal, the lead developer of Yum and the Fedora update repository, who recently died in a road accident. Gnome is the default DE of Fedora, and so it is for Fedora 20. However unlike Ubuntu (where they had to create different distros for each DE) Fedora comes with KDE, XFCE, LXDE and MATE. You can install the DE of your choice on top of base Fedora."
KDE

KDE Releases KDevelop 4.6 93

Posted by timothy from the always-with-the-k dept.
New submitter KDE Community writes that the KDE project has released KDevelop 4.6.0 as the latest version of the free and open source integrated development environment. "KDevelop 4.6.0 improves debugging support with GDB. The GDB integration improvements include some operations now going into effect immediately rather than needing to re-run the program, improved debugging from external terminals, and a CPU registers toolview. KDevelopers' CPU registers toolview also allows for showing and editing all user-mode registers and general purpose flags for x86/x86_64/ARMv7 platforms. Other KDevelop 4.6.0 changes include greater language support within the PHP plug-in, Python language support improvements, more C++11 language support, improved project management, and a clean-up to the IDE's user-interface."
Chrome

Google Launches Voice Search Hotword Extension For Chrome 54

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the always-listening dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Google has launched the Google Voice Search Hotword extension for Chrome, bringing the 'OK Google' feature to the desktop. You can download the new tool, currently in beta, now directly from the Chrome Web Store. Android users with version 4.4 KitKat will recognize the feature: it lets you talk to Google without first clicking or typing. It's completely hands-free, provided you're already on Google.com: just say 'OK Google' and then ask your question." Quick, someone wire Pocketsphinx up to Firefox, or integrate Simon into Krunner.

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