02.12.14

KDE Watch: KDE in the Spotlight, New KDE 4.12 Release

Posted in GNU/Linux, KDE at 12:27 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Some recent KDE news, including two new releases and a lot of application updates

• KDE Plasma at the movies

• KDE plasma was used in creation of Oscar nominee Gravity!

  KDE Software has always enjoyed undisputed reputation among the Open Source users; its desktop environment continues to get voted as one of the most popular and widely used DE. KDE SC is not limited to home users, it’s used by organizations around the globe.

• KDE 4.12.2 and 4.11.6 Officially Released with More than 20 Bugfixes

  Today, February 4, the KDE Project has announced, as expected, the second maintenance release for the stable KDE 4.12 Applications and Development Platform, as well as the sixth maintenance release of the KDE 4.11 Plasma Workspaces.

• KDE 4.12.2 Released Along With Plasma WS 4.11.6

• KDE Ships February Updates to Applications and Platform

  Today KDE released updates for its Applications and Development Platform, the second in a series of monthly stabilization updates to the 4.12 series. This release also includes an updated Plasma Workspaces 4.11.6. Both releases contain only bugfixes and translation updates; providing a safe and pleasant update for everyone.

• KDE Software Compilation 4.12.2 available in the stable repositories

  KDE’s second update of its 4.12 series of Workspaces, Applications and Development Platform is now available in the stable repositories.

• KDE Desktop vs. GNOME Apps: The Great Paradox

  A paradox lies at the center of the Linux desktop today. For all their limitations, reader polls consistently show that KDE is the single most popular desktop, preferred by just under a third of users. Yet at the same time, 40-45% use a desktop that sits on top of GNOME technology, such as GNOME3, Cinnamon, Mate, or Unity.

• New Touchpad management app in Kubuntu 14.04

  The new app replaces the old Synaptiks touchpad management app and has many more buttons and settings that you can twiddle and tweak to get the best experience. The Kubuntu team would like to thank Alexander Mezin for working on this replacement app as part of his GSoC project. The package comes complete with its own plasmoid for easy access to enable and disable touchpads! Quite useful for folks who don’t have a physical hardware button to Enable/Disable touchpads

• First look at cockpit, a web based server management interface

  The web page also states three aims: beginners friendly interface, multi server management – and that there should be no interference in mixed usage of web interface and shell. Especially the last point caught my attention: many other web based solutions introduce their own magic, thus making it sometimes tricky to co-administrate the system manually via the shell. The listed objectives also make clear that cockpit does not try to replace tools that go much deeper into the configuration of servers, like Webmin, which for example offers modules to configure Apache servers in a quite detailed manner. Cockpit tries to simply administrate the server, not the applications. I must admit that I would always do such a application configuration manually anyway…

• Homerun 1.2.0

  The main addition in Homerun 1.2.0 is a second interface built atop Homerun’s collection of data sources, the Homerun Kicker launcher menu shown above. Unlike the first Homerun interface, which is designed for use on the full screen or desktop background and meant to be both mouse- and finger-friendly (you can check it out here if you’re new to Homerun or just need a memory boost), Homerun Kicker is a more traditional launcher menu design optimized for efficient use by mouse or touchscreen when placed on a panel.

• kate: intelligent code completion for all languages!

• KDE Commit-Digest for 12th January 2014

• Removing/Disabling The Semantic Deskop in KDE4 (and firing up Thunderbird) Part 1

  As a result of the first article on KMail, three things emerged. First, while some users may like the semantic desktop, there is serious dislike for the semantic desktop (as has been implemented in KDE4) amongst a considerable number of other users, and these people set about disabling the software in various ways. Second, why does the implementation of the semantic desktop produce such apparent deterioration in the performance of the KDE4 desktop and what happens if you try to remove it altogether ? Third, what are some possible solutions ? This second article tries to explore those three items.

• KMail Complexity – and a little Patience

  This article considers some problems I had when I tried to set up and use the latest version of what I still consider is a superb email client: KMail. I believe that this package is no longer intended for the “stand-alone” user, but is firmly aimed at multi-user networks. Attention is also drawn to another far less important but still extensively used KDE4 package, the patience card-game software which I believe has been degraded due to over-development.

• Leveraging the Power of Choice

  That was exactly what I had in mind (and I assume Àlex as well), and it would be a great way to leverage one of Plasma’s biggest strengths: Flexibility, which offers choice! Of course maintaining multiple Plasmoids for the same purpose also means multiplied work, but not all Plasmoids have to be created by the core Plasma team. Everyone can write a Plasmoid for a certain purpose, add the X-Plasma-Provides line to the desktop file and thereby plug it right into this system! With this in place, whenever a user complains that a Plasmoid is either too complex or offers too little choice and an alternative exists, we can point them to it and they can easily switch.

• Nitrux Develops an ARM Mini-Computer Called QtBox, Powered by KDE

  The developer of the beautiful and attractive Nitrux, Compass, and Flatter icon themes is preparing an ARM mini-computer called QtBox and designed to be portable, small (8.8cm x 8.8cm x 8.3cm), running the Nitrux 1.0 operating system and using the eye-candy KDE 4.12 desktop environment.

• QupZilla 1.6.1 QtWebKit Browser Adds New Features

  Moreover, this new stable release of QupZilla fixes speed dial issues when JavaScript was disabled, fixes tab tooltips display issues when tab previews were disabled, repairs search shortcuts that are longer than one character in the address bar, allows users to disable tab previews from the preferences dialog, and fixes building against the new GNOME and KDE keyring passwords.

• Maintenance–The Achilles Heel of Linux

  One of the great things about KDE theming is the fact that the middle man is cut out of the deal. Many theming features invite you to browse different theming possibilities right where you sit. You don’t have to find the websites and the themes; KDE is built to let you choose those things right inside the app. This is pretty cool. From there you can download and install it right from the same GUI.

• New in kdepim 4.13: SieveEditor

  As usual I try to improve sieve support in KMail.
  In 4.9, I fixed the dialogbox for managing them.
  In 4.10, I added a good text editor with highlighting and auto-completion.
  In 4.11, I added a dialogbox for generating sieve code directly (like kmail filter dialogbox)
  In 4.12 I added sieve script parsing and an UI to create sieve script even if you didn’t know sieve language.

• KDevelop / Kate sprint in Barcelona in January 2014

  Last week I have been in Barcelona at the KDevelop / Kate sprint with all the other nice people working on those projects. As always, it was very cool to meet everyone again and spend a week together improving software. A big thanks to the organizers and sponsors, too!

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