New in GTK+ 3.12: popovers

One of the nice things about popovers is that they are just normal containers – you can put any widget into them, and keyboard navigation and input works like everywhere else. This is a marked contrast to menus, which are very specialized. Attempts to put entries, sliders or buttons into menus usually end badly.

Setting Up GNOME Is Easier With Version 3.12

More HiDPI Changes Land For GNOME 3.12

As a quick update to the HiDPI support on top of yesterday's article about GNOME Shell 3.12 getting last minute HiDPI improvements, more work has landed today for supporting high-resolution Retina displays within this next GNOME desktop environment update.

TARBALLS DUE: GNOME 3.11.92 release candidate + HARD CODE FREEZE

Here comes the 3.11.92 release candidate, last stop before 3.12. Tarballs are expected on Monday, this is the last chance to get your fixes in, we will then enter the hard code freeze, and you will need a big bunch of approvals to get changes in. Let's repeat, tarballs are due on 2014-03-17 before 23:59 UTC for the GNOME 3.11.92 rc release, which will be delivered on Wednesday. Please make sure that your tarballs will be uploaded before Monday 23:59 UTC: tarballs uploaded later than that will probably be too late to get in 3.11.92.

App folder configuration

GNOME has been moving away from hierarchical menus for applications. It is problematic for many reasons. One problem is the need for a global, hierarchical classification (‘categories’) – the world is just not that simple, and applications don’t always fit into these predefined categories. Another problem is that menus don’t really scale beyond a single level of submenus or beyond more than 10-15 items per menu. Not to mention that menus are hard to use on touch devices.

KDE wins Linux New Media Readers Choice Award 2014

Last week at CeBIT, KDE won the Linux New Media Readers Choice Award 2014 (link to German language Linux Magazine) for the best Linux Desktop Environment. 46% of the readers of Linux New Media's global publications voted for KDE. Runner-ups were GNOME with 18% and XFCE with 13%. Other awards went to CyanogenMod, Raspberry Pi, Bitcoin, Puppet, Tor and Git.

Cornelius Schumacher, President of KDE e.V. received the award on behalf of the KDE Community from Mathias Huber, Editor at Linux Magazine. The video of the award ceremony will be available on the Linux Magazine web site later.

Second beta of KDE 4.13 Applications arrives, install it on openSUSE, Arch Linux

KDE Ships Second Beta of Applications and Platform 4.13

The KDE community today released the second beta of Applications and Development Platform 4.13. With API, dependency and feature freezes in place, the focus is now on fixing bugs and further polishing. We kindly request your assistance with finding and fixing issues.

Plasma/KDE: Progressing towards Next

In the Plasma team, we’re working frantically towards the next release of the Plasma workspaces, code-named “Plasma Next”. With the architectural work well in place, we’ve been filling in missing bits and pieces in the past months, and are now really close to the intended feature set for the first stable release. A good time to give you an impression of what it’s looking like right now. Keep in mind that we’re talking Alpha software here, and that we still have almost three months to iron out problems. I’m sure you’ll be able to observe something broken, but also something new and shiny.

Applications 4.13 Coming Soon, Help Us Test!

Some of your existing data will need to be migrated from the current Nepomuk backend to the new 'Baloo' backend. Running the nepomukbaloomigrator should take care of that. The old Nepomuk support is considered “legacy” (but it is still provided). The programs that have not yet been ported to the new architecture have Nepomuk integration disabled. One significant regression is file-activity linking, which will not work until KDE Applications and Platform 4.14. If you rely on this feature, we recommend not upgrading at this time. For the final release, distributions might choose to optionally have the old search (Nepomuk) available.

KDE Works On Input Redirection, Wayland Cursor Themes

The initial release of KDE Frameworks 5 and Plasma Next will likely not have perfected Wayland support but many components should be usable within Weston and other improvements -- including KWin as its own Wayland compositor -- will come with time.

MyKolab.com users: As green as you can be.

Here at MyKolab.com we are often surprised when companies flaunt having turned to green energy to power their services. We always considered this the lowest bar of sustainability everyone should meet. After all, this is the 21st century and we have known for decades the damages and risks of fossil and nuclear energy. That's why for all of MyKolab.com's history, every server and all of Kolab Systems have run on green energy. Our energy mix is mostly hydroelectric, some solar, and a little bit of wind, due to the geographic conditions in Switzerland.

Overview of Kate Editor in KDE 4.12.3

Kate (the KDE Advanced Text Editor) is the well know, powerful text editor that ships by default in KDE, and has plenty of powerful features for both simple text editing as well as programmers. Some of the well-known functions that it offers include indentation, syntax highlighting for hundreds of programming languages, block-selection mode or check-spelling.

KDE Commit-Digest for 9th February 2014

Desktop Effects Control Module in KWin5

KWin5 will feature a new configuration module to control Desktop effects. KWin5 will be a part of the upcoming Plasma Next Workspace. The control module is rewritten with QtQuick controls.The focus of the control module will be on Desktop Effects.

making friends with kontact again

Enlightenment Foundation Libraries Application Round Up

Most folks who have been around Linux and/or open source software for awhile are aware of what GTK and QT are - tool kits for building applications. Something that not as many may be aware of is that there is another open source tool kit out there - the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries. These serve as the building blocks not only for the Enlightenment desktop, but also for a growing number of applications.