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
- Links 28/03/2026: Microsoft's LinkedIn a National Security Risk, Microsoft's Slop "Ambitions Face Investor Scrutiny Amid Soaring Costs"
- Links for the day
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 26 Out of 200: Asking for Documents and Information You Already Have, Even Letters and E-mails That You Yourself Sent!
- barristers are expensive
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- Open Web Destroyed by Centibillionaires, Says Anil Dash of Blogging Fame
- Blogging was going through its 'prime years' about 20 years ago
- "Linux" Slop Going Away, Microsoft et al Pay 'Linux' Foundation to Promote Slop
- It's a timely reminder that the Linux Foundation exists to promote whoever pays the Linux Foundation, even pedophiles and companies that attack the GPL
- Gemini Links 28/03/2026: "Finding My Base Tone", "Astrobotany", and BugoutBack/OFFLFIRSOCH
- Links for the day
- Links 28/03/2026: More Worldwide Bans on Social Control Media (Harms to Adolescents), Protests in US Against Dictatorship
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 28/03/2026: Echo Delay and 0x0.st
- Links for the day
- Rumours of More IBM Mass Layoffs at Beginning of April
- IBM is not doing well
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, March 27, 2026
- IRC logs for Friday, March 27, 2026
- "Headcount" as Distraction From Mass Layoffs and Salary Reductions
- Things aren't looking well when one considers revenue is acquired, not earned
- "Linux" Slop Turning Rarer, New York Times Nowadays Contaminated With LLM Slop
- Another day has passed without much slop about "linux"
- Links 27/03/2026: Studying Whale Births, Apple is Cancelling Products, Cambodia Arrests Journalists Over Photographs
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 27/03/2026: GTD, Gopher Catchup, Gemini Crawlers, and "Slop Everywhere"
- Links for the day
- Mozilla Was Ruined Like Sirius Open Source Was Ruined - From the Top Down
- Mozilla will never return to its Free software roots
- Nokia Could Never Recover From Microsoft
- It's very important to remember what really happened
- Why Techrights and Many Other Sites Stopped Doing April Fools’ Day Articles
- Well before slop (made by LLMs) it was "bad optics" to have satire or humour in a site, irrespective of the day of the year
- President Not-Cocaine Campinos Notified of Historic EPO Strikes (Thousands of Workers Not Coming Back to the Office)
- Please do pay attention to how the media treats these strikes in Europe's second-largest institution
- Slides From the Presentation Discussing EPO Strikes Until End of June or Until End of 2026 (Maybe Next Year Too)
- More to come soon (later today)
- IBM Cuts Are Everywhere (Global), the Aim is to Lower the Pay
- Because the revenues keep falling (IBM buys other companies' revenues using borrowed money)
- Perpetual Strikes to Begin at European Patent Office (EPO), Large Majority Votes for Strikes Any Day of the Week
- Approved industrial actions [...] Notice how none of the media or even so-called 'IP' blogs write about it
- Mozilla is Not a Privacy Company, Mozilla is Run by GAFAM Executives and Managers Who Came From American Surveillance Companies
- Would you trust a VPN they claim to be "free"?
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 25 Out of 200: That Time Matthew J. Garrett Got Temporarily Banned/Suspended From Twitter
- That he gets banned from large social control media platform is hardly surprising given his combative communications
- Ubuntu Started as Free With ShipIt, Now It Becomes Payware That Exploits Debian Volunteers (Slaves)
- "Ubuntu" the distro now replaces the GNU components inherited from Debian with a bunch of Microsoft GitHub (proprietary) things that reject reciprocal licences
- Last Night The Register MS Published a Fake Article. It Mentioned "AI" 27 Times.
- Paid-for nonsense! [...] What's left of once-respectable news sites actively harms society
- Links 27/03/2026: Google Executive (GAFAM, US, Surveillance) "Named the New BBC Head", Prominent Climate Scientist Resigns From NASA
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 27/03/2026: "Being Busy" and "Posting Again"
- Links for the day
- GNOME Has No "Real" Executive Director, Only an IBM (Perma)'Interim' One With No Openings in Sight
- GNOME is having financial problems
- Microsoft Experiencing "Leadership Exodus"
- Microsoft's current position is no better than Meta's (Facebook)
- GNU/Linux Distros Should Reject "Age Verification" and Uphold Software Freedom for Users
- It's not about protecting children
- Slop Plunge
- we can already "smell the blood" of the so-called 'AI industry'
- IBM Media Puff Pieces While Layoffs Go On and On
- Has the PR industry absorbed the press?
- Media Says Microsoft Hiring Freezes, But There Are Already Microsoft Layoffs
- They want the public to talk about Microsoft as if it's just not hiring when it is actually firing
- Richard Stallman lynchings: Sruthi Chandran splitting Debian
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 26, 2026
- IRC logs for Thursday, March 26, 2026
- Links 26/03/2026: Tor Relay at National Taiwan Normal University, Copyright Hammers Fall
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 26/03/2026: "The War of the Worlds" and "sometimes science is just the dumbest thing"
- Links for the day
- The World Wide Bots
- The shape of the Web is so bad that bots exceed humans in some places
- Links 26/03/2026: Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Closes 101 Law Firms in 2 Years, "Please Compensate the Work You Appreciate"
- Links for the day
- Regaining Software Freedom Means Regaining Control Over Programs That Run on Our Devices
- Richard Stallman will speak in Italy
- Microsoft Secure Boot Removes Users' Choice
- Has Greenland banned Microsoft and 'secure' boot yet?
- IBM Pushes Workers Out, It Does Not Count Them as "Layoffs"
- The number of IBM layoffs can be as large as tens of thousands per year
- Hard to Find a Job After Working for Microsoft (Back Doors Giant, Bribery Hub)
- It generally looks like people who chose to serve Microsoft's agenda don't end up too well
- Microsoft Lost 31% Of Its Alleged "Value" in Five Months, Then It Got Downgraded
- In 2026 Microsoft focuses on keeping the layoffs silent
- Altering Perceived Reality to Make It Seem Like Microsoft is Thriving, Not Failing
- pretend XBox did not die
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 24 Out of 200: The Failed Effort by Brett Wilson LLP to Strike Out My Lawsuit and My Wife's Lawsuit Against Garrett (the Master Allowed Our Lawsuits to Proceed)
- This is lawfare
- Official New Figures Show That Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Sees Rise in Dishonesty Among Law Firms Forcibly Shut Down ('Euthanised' Due to Misconduct)
- It's rather if in our little country as many as 16 law firms were found to be so dishonest that they needed to be shut down
- Back to Normalcy
- In our datacentre at least
- IBM is "Increasing Its Temporary and Part-time Headcount" While Net Headcount Falls (Despite Buying Many Companies and Their Workforce)
- Headcount is a rather superficial yardstick.
- Confluent Insiders: IBM Laid Off Over 800 at Confluent, Not Just 800
- For the record, the layoffs at Confluent won't be over. After the bluewashing there will be "IBM RAs" impacting Confluent folks, aside from PIPs
- EPO Union Decides to Continue Industrial Actions, Next Strike in Four Days
- The latest strike had the highest participation rate
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 25, 2026
- IRC logs for Wednesday, March 25, 2026
- Microsoft's "Silent Layoffs" in Slop Clothing
- "AI-powered transformation" is just a euphemism for mass layoffs
- Where and How to Spot LLM Slop
- Many people correctly perceive LLMs as a site's downfall, a step towards the abyss
- Public Talk by Richard Stallman in Half a Day "at the Engineering and Architecture Campus of Cesena of the University of Bologna"
- He'll probably attract a fairly large crowd
- Gemini Links 26/03/2026: Buying a House, Stargazing, OFFLFIRSOCH 2026
- Links for the day