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
- Altering Perceived Reality to Make It Seem Like Microsoft is Thriving, Not Failing
- pretend XBox did not die
- 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
- Where and How to Spot LLM Slop
- Many people correctly perceive LLMs as a site's downfall, a step towards the abyss
- Links 25/03/2026: Nations Return to Russian Oil and Burning Wood
- Links for the day
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- 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
- 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.
- 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
- 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
- Gemini Links 25/03/2026: Resisting Authoritarianism and Why Slop Needs to Go Away
- Links for the day
- Fedora Maintainer-ship Using Slop (Mistakes) Would Make Fedora Less Reliable
- It won't produce reliable code or stable systems one can rely upon
- IBM's "Legacy Employees" (Experienced Workers, IBM Management Dubs Them 'Dinobabies')
- This notion of "legacy employees" seems like something overlapping with "expensive" (well paid) staff, even if not entirely equivalent
- EPO's "Current Industrial Actions Are Likely to Intensify Further."
- There is another strike in 5 days
- This Morning The Register MS Published Slop Promotion With the Term "AI" 15 Times In It. The Register MS Was (As Usual) Paid to Do This
- This is not a serious publisher
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 23 Out of 200: We Were Right All Along (for 2 Years) About Third Party Funding and Willingness to 'Break the Bank' in Pursuit of "Revenge"
- How much damage can a person do to oneself in pursuit of cover-up of legitimate technical concerns?
- Gnome Foundation Inc is in Trouble
- the agenda is set GAFAM and IBM rather than donors
- Links 25/03/2026: Airports Further Militarised, "Slopification and Its Discontents", Microsoft 'Open' 'Hey Hi' Shutting Things Down
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 25/03/2026: Blogging Fright and Absolutely Useless 'Apps' Made by Slop Machines
- Links for the day
- Rise in Energy Prices Will Significantly Accelerate the Death of So-called "AI Companies"
- It should be noted that fake news about Microsoft OpenAI doubling workforce (mere words, not actions) can serve as a nice distraction from the death of Sora due to divestment
- It's Always a Question of Trust
- There's a widespread stigma of lawyers being manipulative and chronically dishonest
- Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Must More Carefully Investigate or Assess the Financial State of Law Firms in the UK
- We'll cover this in depth in the future
- GAFAM Mozilla Removes Theora Support, Now GNU Needs to Re-encode Videos
- Mozilla used to mean something to Free software advocates
- An Open Admission Profits Depend on Addiction
- Proprietary software tends to be like this
- IBM Americas President Ayman Antoun Comes to OpenText, Weeks Ahead the Mass Layoffs Begin
- Is that what IBM will be good at?
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 24, 2026
- IRC logs for Tuesday, March 24, 2026
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 22 Out of 200: When You Complain People Impersonate You in IRC (But You Yourself Impersonate People in IRC and Lock Them Out of Their IRC Handles)
- We'll cover this with direct evidence some time soon
- Gemini Links 24/03/2026: Junk Drawer Time Capsule and Building Outside Alire
- Links for the day
- Not Much LLM Slop About "Linux" Lately, It Only Ever Comes From the Same Few Sites
- As long as only few such sites use LLM slop we can skip and avoid them
- Links 24/03/2026: "Epic Lays Off Over 1000 Employees" and US in Financial Trouble According to the Fed
- Links for the day
- The "Media" Does Not Only 'Miss' Mass Layoffs
- "The Treasury just declared the U.S. insolvent. The media missed it"
- The Empty Suits of IBM Managers (NIH or "Nothing Invented Here")
- IBM's management adopted the business model of parasites
- 2012: 'Secure' (Microsoft-Controlled) Boot Has Not (Yet) Been Made Obligatory. 2026: systemd Has Not Implemented Age Verification
- should we stop calling "nazi" everyone we don't agree with?
- More Threats (Including Physical Threats) Against Us Are a Dumb Move
- It's like a "hit list" (targets list) and I shall keep the police duly informed
- New Example of Pentagon in "Feminist" Clothing Inside Fake News of Publishers Paid to Promote Outsourcing to US ("Clown Computing") and American Slop
- Google now pays money to promote Google as a friend of women
- Hating Techrights is a Career
- but is it good for civil society?
- Dr. Stallman’s Work Will Never be Considered 'Mainstream' Because He Rejects and Works Against the So-called 'Mainstream'
- Try to be more like Stallman
- The New Layoffs: 'Silent Layoffs', 'Secret Layoffs', 'Quiet Layoffs', 'Passive Layoffs' 'Stealth Layoffs', and Unannounced Layoffs Disguised as Return-to-Office (RTO Mandates)
- The US needs to revisit and fix the WARN Act
- EPO "Cocaine Communication Manager" - Part IX - Cocaine Addicts in Charge of the EPO Attacking Families of EPO Staff
- Things like being high-profile and being a serious drug addict aren't opposites
- What Feminism in Science Means (Codes of Conduct Don't Tackle the Real Issues)
- Universality matters, more so in a project or community that's said to build the "universal operating system" (Debian)
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 21 Out of 200: It's About Behaviour Online, Not How Much Money From Shadowy Third Parties Gets Spent on Lawyers and Two Barristers
- 75+ KG of legal papers, 2 cases, 2 barristers (one hiding in the metadata) and maybe two law firms (also hiding in the metadata) against two modest people in Manchester seems disproportionate and vindicative
- Links 24/03/2026: "Airports on ICE" and "Have You Paid Your “Intuit Tax”?"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 24/03/2026: Slop Interview and Why Slop Makes Lousy Code
- Links for the day
- Richard Stallman to Give Public Talk This Thursday at the University of Bologna (Italy)
- Hardly the first time he speaks in Bologna
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 23, 2026
- IRC logs for Monday, March 23, 2026