Links 25/01/2014: KDE News Roundup
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-01-25 20:11:59 UTC
- Modified: 2014-01-25 20:11:59 UTC
Summary: Selected (important) news about KDE, accumulated over the past 1.5 weeks
Releases
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Today KDE released updates for its Applications and Development Platform, the first in a series of monthly stabilization updates to the 4.12 series. Starting with the next Applications and Development Platform release, 4.12.2, there will also be a maintenance release of Workspaces 4.11.6. This release contains only bugfixes and translation updates; it will be a safe and pleasant update for everyone.
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The KDE community has announced the updates for KDE SC 4.12 series. According to the community blog, “Starting with the next Applications and Development Platform release, 4.12.2, there will also be a maintenace release of Workspaces 4.11.6. This release contains only bugfixes and translation updates; it will be a safe and pleasant update for everyone.”
Development
Conferences/Meetings
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The Plasma team is meeting in Barcelona, Spain these days to work on the next major version of KDE’s popular workspaces. As we are in a transition period, technically and organisationally, this is a very important meeting. I won’t go into too many details in this post, as they are still being fleshed out, but to give you an idea what we are talking about, here’s a quick run-down of some of the things we talked about.
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conf.kde.in was announced in November, to take place February 21 – 23, 2014 in Gandhinagar, India. This three-day conference, the biggest KDE event in India, will bring together Qt developers, KDE contributors, open source enthusiasts and users from all across the nation. Visitors will have the opportunity to learn, share, contribute, innovate and create around Qt and KDE technology.
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In the second week of January, KDE's Plasma team gathered in the Blue Systems office in Barcelona, Spain, to discuss and work on the next generation of KDE's popular workspace products. The meeting comes just at the right time, as the Plasma team has just finished a first technology preview, which puts the base technology in place and allows for an evaluation of the current progress. It also gives an opportunity for more refined plans for a first stable release.
Applications
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Akregator is the default KDE RSS/Atom feed reader and it does it very well. Without being bloated with a lot of features, Akregator takes a rather simple approach, yet providing all the needed features one would expect from a feed reader. You have an integrated web browser, tabs, feed fetching interval configuration, feed archiving, system tray notifications and a few other notable features shown below. Akregator is part of the KDE Kontact Suite.
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If you have used Gwenview before KDE SC 4.11 you might be familiar with the following situation: you are running Gwenview in fullscreen mode, pressing Space to go through a folder full of images. At one point, pressing Space does not do anything anymore... What's wrong? A quick move of the mouse to bring up the fullscreen bar reveals that you are on the last image.
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The Calligra team is proud and pleased to announce the second beta release of version 2.8 of the Calligra Suite for testing! The team will now focus on fixing remaining bugs. Let’s make sure the final release of 2.8, expected by the end of January is as stable as possible by giving the current beta a good testing!
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Mesa contributor and KDE developer Fredrik Höglund has been working on support within Mesa for GL_ARB_multi_bind. This OpenGL 4.4 extension is implemented across eighteen patches and Fredrik hopes to land the support next week.
Misc.
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In May of this year, our project to place refurbished computers into the homes of disadvantaged kids will turn nine years old. Aside from an extremely short-lived and disastrous trial with Microsoft Windows in the beginning, Reglue (formally HeliOS) has depended on Linux to power those computers and we’ve used a number of distros over the years.
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KDE’s leadership is an opportunity to extend free and open technology, providing creative minds unlimited room to innovate. Mainstream tech companies try to do this without disrupting their profits or stock prices. We are fortunate to have such freedom.
Recent Techrights' Posts
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- The real reason is, GNU/Linux is rising
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- Dying fast, partly by design
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- Links for the day
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- Kompromat as a concept was covered here in the past in relation to Microsoft
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- We are in no particular hurry
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- Links for the day
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- Replicated from adrforum.com
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- IBM has no culture of free speech
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- "Silent" or "secret" sometimes because the media won't cover them
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- They want cheap, obedient lemmings
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- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
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- Botspam is the problem, it's not a constructive approach in any shape or form
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- Days ago it said 6.4%, now it's up to 6.8%
- RA-pocalypse: IBM Tells Workers "Taking a Hike" is Their "Next Step" ('Voluntary' Layoffs), Now It Prepares to Sack Lots of Contractors
- There definitely is something going on
- Legal Attacks on Techrights Have Made Techrights More Popular and More Widely Read
- The misogynists will have plenty of work to do this summer
- Kai Stephens (Barkley Walsh) & British Democrats in Clacton by-election hustings
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Daniel Pocock 'Punching' Nazis in the UK
- The so-called "cult" of so-called "Debianism" was left with nothing but massive legal bills
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 142 Out of 200: GemText is Not a Webpage, Gemini Protocol is Not the Web, and Capsules Are Not Websites
- our intention to appeal (escalate to the Court of Appeal)
- Microsoft: Our August 2026 Layoffs Are Not Layoffs Because... Reasons
- That's like IBM making "spin-offs", then pretending that no layoffs are happening
- Links 07/08/2026: UMG and Anthropic in Trouble Over Copyright Infringements Sold as "Training" (Slop)
- Links for the day
- Links 07/08/2026: "BMW Is Showing Commercials On Their Car's Dash Screens And They Want You To Think It's A Treat", Software Patents on Drones
- Links for the day
- What We Said About Red Hat's Fate Under IBM Turned Out to be Right on the Money (That IBM Lacks)
- There are no layoffs at IBM
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- That IRC daemons are still actively developed and patched in summer of 2026 (over 38 years after IRC was born) says a lot about IRC's importance
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- I am a bit shocked to recall that I wasted a lot of time on it
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- In reality, the security non-experts 'championed' (and salaried) by GAFAM are anti-security people who advocate back doors
- The GNU/Linux Anniversary is Next Month, Not This Month
- It'll turn 43
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- No doubt many problems in society are caused or at least amplified/accentuated by this horrible phenomenon
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- The Register MS Took Money From Broadcom to Publish Fake 'News' With "AI" Mentioned 35 Times
- not legitimate or authentic journalism.
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- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
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- Links for the day
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- Links for the day
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- Links for the day
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- Red Hat is in trouble
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- Saying GNU/Linux user-agents are just "bots" (Microsoft Lunduke and other Microsofters say this) is like asserting that the Twin Towers fell not because of two giant planes but because of explosives
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- If you want to find tech news online
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- "That's not a workforce, that's a waiting room."
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- GAFAM Mass Layoffs and Mountains (Trillions of Dollars in 'Secret' or 'Off-the-Ledger') Debt
- GAFAM is having layoffs this month
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- It's hard to assess how many are impacted but signed an NDA, preventing them from speaking about what really happened
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- IBM is in very serious trouble
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 141 Out of 200: Brett Wilson LLP Failed to Learn From the Mistakes of the European Patent Office (EPO)
- my solicitor, David Allen Green, put them in their place
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- Over at Tux Machines...
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