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SVG in the KDE 3.2a also looks pretty sweet ;-)

I've been playing with the earlier release candidates, and so far it's been sweet. Much faster than 1.0, better conversion from Office formats, the whole .pdf exporter.

In other wondrous news, KOffice plans on switching to the StarOffice file formats. That should save the filter writers a whole bunch of work on both sides.

I would say, "I'm going to install this on the machines of all my friends and relatives," but rampant piracy has led them to think of Microsoft Office as "free," and the power of brand naming has led them to think of any replacement as inferior. So I'll be installing it on the machines of all friends and neighbors who aren't computer savvy enough to notice the difference. :)

Which language do you use

and why?

If you use the best language for the job methodology,

why have you not coded in Qt?

Obviously, thousands and thousands and thousands of people can do this. We have in GNU/Linux and the BSD's OS' which are either equal to or far superior to their proprietary equivalents.

Service-based business models have cropped up around Free Software. Indeed, Free Software is the best software to use if you want to engage in a service-based business model, since it makes service easier, as bugs are more easy to track and fix. Furthermore, many companies donate some of their programmers to work on Free Software, to fill (or help fill) needs that they may have. Finally, many programmers contribute to Free Software on a part-time basis.

Thanks for the enlightenment! Now I know why KDEPrint evangelist *K*urt Pfeiffle is going crazy about that NX thing. At LinuxTag he dragged everyone he could get hold of before his NX box.

Glad that I resisted... ;-)

KDE Developer George Staikos heard your prayers ;) . See http://lists.kde.org/?l=kfm-devel&m=10644750911077 0&w=2. Kudos to KDE team once again ! .

See: lists.kde.org for an implementation in KHTML.

Afaik msn chat!=the im service, that is, nobody uses the chat(ex-comic chat) anyways.

For those of you wondering what this whole SCO vs. Linux thing was about, I can finally reveal the truth.

As chairman and CEO of Canopy I've done a lot for the Open Source community. I've promoted investments in companies like Linux Networx, who make the third fastest supercomputer in the world and use Linux to do it. Companies like Lineo the masters of embedded Linux. Also Trolltech producing the incredible QT widget set used by the KDE project. And of course Caldera, producing the finest Linux distribution and pushing forwards the United Linux initiative.

But one shadow lay over my record of achievements. Despite all I had done for the Linux and Open Source communities, I still had never achieved the triumph I most desperately sought. Not once had an article I submitted been accepted by Slashdot :(

I'm sure my fellow Slashdotters can understand how this gnawed away at my soul.

Together with Darl McBride and David Boies I hatched a master plan, to achieve my dream of an accepted Slashdot article or to destroy Linux trying.

Caldera would purchase IP rights from the Santa Cruz Operation and with funding from Sun and Microsoft would use them as the springboard to launch a devastating legal and PR blitz against Linux. As part of this Darl would write a searing open letter to the Open Source community, drawing responses in return. One of these from Groklaw would give me the opportunity I needed...

As you can see everything has gone exactly to plan. I have my successful Slashdot submission, and I'm sure that looking back on it you can all see it was worth any 'collateral damage' along the way.

Darl, you can call off the dogs now.

God bless you all.

Ralphie

Even better, it's already been integrated with KDE!

Off the topic, can anyone recommend a good HTML editor for linux? Something like Homesite in terms of features (coloring, validation) would be nice.

KDE's Quanta promises a lot... It comes with the modern KDE, or you can get the souped up Quanta Gold from theKompany.

Yesterday was the day of openssh, and today for sendmail (whats next? bind? apache?)

KOffice will switch to Open Office fileformats - you can read more about it in the Kastle 2003: KOffice Developers' Meeting Report.

• There is a "standard" API, but it's using the old, limited feature Xlib API.
• Today, there exists two very popular alternative Desktop environments, which in turn are based on two different Widget-toolkits. These are Gnome (uses GTK+) and KDE (uses Qt).
• Developers wishing to develop on Linux will usually pick one of these two Toolkits, as almost all Distributions offer both environments (and associated development libraries).

So the problem isn't a lack of API details (GTK API's and Qt API documentation), but moreso an issue of choice.

To tell you the truth, I don't really use KDE for it's amazingly straight-forward and simplistic user interface that most users (including non-technical) can really appriciate. I don't even use it for it's incredibly nice built-in tools like Kmail for email. Nor do I use it for the fast, lightweight, renounded KHTML engine you find in Konqueror -- the same engine used in Apple's Safari webrowser. Not only do I have KDE users making sure they can open their banking accounts online, but i have the 15 other mac users to do that for me to ( :D joke ppl ). I use Konqeror's KIO Slaves to get my work and play done faster, better and easier. I use karmera:// to get all my digital images, fish:// to get around nfs bullcrap, audiocd:// to rip my audioCDs to ogg quickly.

You know, you may not call me a "technical user", but I do a couple "technical" things. KDE enpowers me to write scripts that interact with my KDE programs using dcop. Quick and easy GUI automation -- even for the "non technical users". Oh and have you EVER programmed FOR KDE? it's simply amazing! Very easy to use and a robust toolkit to use. Much easier to learn than GTK(2) or MFC were.

Now you make call me names and tell me i sould use *box -- but you are missing an amazing featureset using tools that you just happen to pick up and add to your "desktop environment". It might be time for you, oh great master of GNU/Linux, to give KDE another try.

<sarcastic>
it's not that hard to install it, all you have to do is open a "command line thingie" on your uber-blackbox system and type in "sudo urpmi kde"... unless that's for the "real techies" -- in which case you can use Drake's control center
</sarcastic>

dont' call my Desktop n00b, n00b

love, standsolid

To tell you the truth, I don't really use KDE for it's amazingly straight-forward and simplistic user interface that most users (including non-technical) can really appriciate. I don't even use it for it's incredibly nice built-in tools like Kmail for email. Nor do I use it for the fast, lightweight, renounded KHTML engine you find in Konqueror -- the same engine used in Apple's Safari webrowser. Not only do I have KDE users making sure they can open their banking accounts online, but i have the 15 other mac users to do that for me to ( :D joke ppl ). I use Konqeror's KIO Slaves to get my work and play done faster, better and easier. I use karmera:// to get all my digital images, fish:// to get around nfs bullcrap, audiocd:// to rip my audioCDs to ogg quickly.

You know, you may not call me a "technical user", but I do a couple "technical" things. KDE enpowers me to write scripts that interact with my KDE programs using dcop. Quick and easy GUI automation -- even for the "non technical users". Oh and have you EVER programmed FOR KDE? it's simply amazing! Very easy to use and a robust toolkit to use. Much easier to learn than GTK(2) or MFC were.

Now you make call me names and tell me i sould use *box -- but you are missing an amazing featureset using tools that you just happen to pick up and add to your "desktop environment". It might be time for you, oh great master of GNU/Linux, to give KDE another try.

<sarcastic>
it's not that hard to install it, all you have to do is open a "command line thingie" on your uber-blackbox system and type in "sudo urpmi kde"... unless that's for the "real techies" -- in which case you can use Drake's control center
</sarcastic>

dont' call my Desktop n00b, n00b

love, standsolid

To tell you the truth, I don't really use KDE for it's amazingly straight-forward and simplistic user interface that most users (including non-technical) can really appriciate. I don't even use it for it's incredibly nice built-in tools like Kmail for email. Nor do I use it for the fast, lightweight, renounded KHTML engine you find in Konqueror -- the same engine used in Apple's Safari webrowser. Not only do I have KDE users making sure they can open their banking accounts online, but i have the 15 other mac users to do that for me to ( :D joke ppl ). I use Konqeror's KIO Slaves to get my work and play done faster, better and easier. I use karmera:// to get all my digital images, fish:// to get around nfs bullcrap, audiocd:// to rip my audioCDs to ogg quickly.

You know, you may not call me a "technical user", but I do a couple "technical" things. KDE enpowers me to write scripts that interact with my KDE programs using dcop. Quick and easy GUI automation -- even for the "non technical users". Oh and have you EVER programmed FOR KDE? it's simply amazing! Very easy to use and a robust toolkit to use. Much easier to learn than GTK(2) or MFC were.

Now you make call me names and tell me i sould use *box -- but you are missing an amazing featureset using tools that you just happen to pick up and add to your "desktop environment". It might be time for you, oh great master of GNU/Linux, to give KDE another try.

<sarcastic>
it's not that hard to install it, all you have to do is open a "command line thingie" on your uber-blackbox system and type in "sudo urpmi kde"... unless that's for the "real techies" -- in which case you can use Drake's control center
</sarcastic>

dont' call my Desktop n00b, n00b

love, standsolid

Just visit the screenshot pages of the major/new applications: Kontact (2, 3, 4), JuK, Kgpg, KAddressbook, KBruch, Kig, Kopete, KVim, KCacheGrind, Umbrello, KDevelop, Plasktik,

Just visit the screenshot pages of the major/new applications: Kontact (2, 3, 4), JuK, Kgpg, KAddressbook, KBruch, Kig, Kopete, KVim, KCacheGrind, Umbrello, KDevelop, Plasktik,

Just visit the screenshot pages of the major/new applications: Kontact (2, 3, 4), JuK, Kgpg, KAddressbook, KBruch, Kig, Kopete, KVim, KCacheGrind, Umbrello, KDevelop, Plasktik,

Just visit the screenshot pages of the major/new applications: Kontact (2, 3, 4), JuK, Kgpg, KAddressbook, KBruch, Kig, Kopete, KVim, KCacheGrind, Umbrello, KDevelop, Plasktik,

Just visit the screenshot pages of the major/new applications: Kontact (2, 3, 4), JuK, Kgpg, KAddressbook, KBruch, Kig, Kopete, KVim, KCacheGrind, Umbrello, KDevelop, Plasktik,

Just visit the screenshot pages of the major/new applications: Kontact (2, 3, 4), JuK, Kgpg, KAddressbook, KBruch, Kig, Kopete, KVim, KCacheGrind, Umbrello, KDevelop, Plasktik,

Kcontrol has seen vast improvements since KDE 3.1, as have a lot of other usability issues.

If you have the time to spare, and good ideas on KDE usability, consider subscribing to the usability mailing list. Even if you can't program C++, you can help discuss usability problems, and so help the developers focus on coding.

For those like myself who can't program in C++, but who can install this alpha version, or any other versions before 3.2 final, there is a lot you can do to help KDE:

* Report bugs. If you find something crashes, doesn't work as you'd expect it to, or there's a feature you think is missing, report it at http://bugs.kde.org.

* Submit documentation. Lots of apps in KDE will have out of date documentation, or none at all. If you understand how to use just such an app, consider writing documentation for it and submitting it to KDE.

* Submit translations. If American English isn't your native language, consider translating the text in applications to languages you feel confident with.

More can be found at: http://www.kde.org/support

For those like myself who can't program in C++, but who can install this alpha version, or any other versions before 3.2 final, there is a lot you can do to help KDE:

* Report bugs. If you find something crashes, doesn't work as you'd expect it to, or there's a feature you think is missing, report it at http://bugs.kde.org.

* Submit documentation. Lots of apps in KDE will have out of date documentation, or none at all. If you understand how to use just such an app, consider writing documentation for it and submitting it to KDE.

* Submit translations. If American English isn't your native language, consider translating the text in applications to languages you feel confident with.

More can be found at: http://www.kde.org/support

Kolab is looking interesting, and if you combine this with Kontact you could just have the real Lotus Notes killer. With MS Exchange support, the extensibility of Kontact would make it easy to integrate in a Lotus Notes environment as well.

Ostensibly these look to be part of KDE 3.2, has anyone done the download/compile/install yet that can confirm/deny this.

This is great stuff, btw. I'm excited that KDE is tackling these kinds of applications, I may just switch back from Moz once the kinks have been worked out.

Kolab is looking interesting, and if you combine this with Kontact you could just have the real Lotus Notes killer. With MS Exchange support, the extensibility of Kontact would make it easy to integrate in a Lotus Notes environment as well.

Ostensibly these look to be part of KDE 3.2, has anyone done the download/compile/install yet that can confirm/deny this.

This is great stuff, btw. I'm excited that KDE is tackling these kinds of applications, I may just switch back from Moz once the kinks have been worked out.

Yeah, good thing we do write decent well-documented code, huh?

The KDE team have done a fantastic job at providing the necessary tools for even a slightly tech savvy user to upgrade to the latest development release.

Checkout Konstruct to learn how to run a simple script to download, verify, compile and install the components to get KDE working on your machine.

• Still has that shitty file dialog!
• File roller has removed the extract here option from the right click menu, now you have go through about 5 menus just to extract a file
• Metashitty still dosen't support button reordering
• Nautilus still dosen't have split pane support!
• The new panel architecture sucks! Its harder to use and configure
• Epiphany, which was once going to be a lean browsing machine, has been turned into an AOL clone! Its a shameful 1.0 release, and they removed Bookmark folders, now all your bookmarks will be cluttred
• Still no colour scheme changer
• Wanda the fish stil looks gay
• Totem still crashes on avi files
• The documentation is still half assed
• The anti feature nazis have taken over 100 features away from Gnome since 2.2, I can't list them all, figure it out for yourself
• bonobo-slay still owns your dialogs
• The smelly foot is still there, with NO WAY TO change it, since the feature police took it away.

Let's start with the windowing environment, since that is the first thing users will notice. While both KDE and GNOME are mature, stable, and accepted as IEEE standards, Apple has elected to use neither. In fact, they don't even use X at all! Their display system is a proprietary, closed-source system called Quartz Extreme. In addition to the moral issues involved with closed software, this precludes the user from running X apps. There is an untested and alpha-quality X11 emulation layer available for download, but it is emulation, so programs will be slow. Does this sound like a standards-based system to you?

Looking under the hood, it gets worse. While all other *nixes use standard ELF binaries, Darwin (Apple's name for their proprietary "Unix" kernel) does not. It uses Mach-O, an unproven format that is proprietary to Apple. The moribund FreeBSD, off which OS X is based, uses ELF, so clearly Apple went to the extra effort of "switching" (heh) simply to break compatibility. With ELF, users would be able to run most of their Lunix apps; with Mach-O this is impossible. Additionally, Apple has moved most configuration info fromhuman readable text files into a proprietary database called "NetInfo", which is much like the Windows registry we all loathe. Why? These are only a few of the ways that Apple has deliberately broken compatibility with other systems, presumably in order to lock users in to expensive Mac hardware.

When we factor in the threat to users' civil liberties that is posed by the DRM included to support the iTunes Music Store (do you really think it will end there?) it is obvious that real *nix gurus should give OS X a wide berth. Caveat emptor.

"Btw, I wonder why no other open-source office application can read and/or write it."

Actually, they are working on it.

The next version of kmail is said to have virtual folders - see the feature list

I don't think radio comms are that intresting for the vast mayority of users, except for possibly the cellid information. However, This thing is pretty useless if it can't run standard qt/embedded ( c++ ) apps. The apis and performance J2ME gives are simply too limited.

kstars opera, nethack, gpsdrive ssh, vnc, qt-rdesktop, irc etc are stuff that would be very hard to implement in MIDP, while they are ALREADY available for qt/embedded, probably needing just small display size tweaks.

While we are at it, could it be possible get some screenshots of this device? so far I've only seen the marketing pics of it.

Well, maybe there would be more women if only the KDE boys could grow up and stop playing with their food

See the KDE Women page for more psychological manipulation.

A tip about girls... you can't go wrong with flowers

Knowing full well what geeks are they, they have their own website: http://women.kde.org.

While there were indeed 3 girls there, one of them has had a bit too much to drink as you can see
here.

A great way to capitalize all the discussions at the Kastle: the devs are starting the 3.2 release cycle now . The integration of PIM stuff in 3.2 will make for a complete, extremely consistent desktop environment (except for KOffice that will need onesome extra time to mature, incorporate the OpenOffice filters, etc.)

Do you see what I see

In fact, not far off. Notice the Nazi helmet

I read the KOffice Developers' Meeting page and it says that they'll be switching to OpenOffice.org's file format for all major applications. As someone who occasionaly uses both OpenOffice.org and KOffice this is great news, and will also provide an easy way to translate between current KOffice formats and OpenOffice.org. Maybe we have on our hands a new, truly cross-platform file format.

You can just drive free software as easily as the next M$ junk.

Bob's main argument was that it's just too hard to develop free software GUI aplications because of the wide variety and choice of free software tools. This is the same lie taken up one level. It's not any harder to use KDE tools for software development than it is to use Visual Studio and the free tools are beter than the expensive and restrictive one the same way the restrictive and expensive interface is inferior to the free ones.

Microsoft is desperate to keep people enslaved to developing for their platform. Wben they can't get there by making soemething worthwhile, they simply lie. Microsoft's standing is so low right now that their representatives have to conceal who they work for. I don't know if this poor Russell Jones is bought or just ignorant, but what he says makes no sense and fits the general M$ FUD pattern.

Russell Jones starts with the same tired arguments that choice is bad and that free software developers can't make an easy to use interface. You can change out "easy to use interface" with "operating system", "kernel" or "quality software" to realize that this is a very old argument. It's been BS before and it's BS today. Someone makes a choice for the neophyte, and there are free intefaces just as easy to migrate to as the next crappy M$ interface.

Bob's twist on this is aimed at stemming the flood of developers asway from M$ junk by turning reality on it's head. He tells us that developing applications for multiple window managers is just too hard. That's silly. Why would anyone continue to pay Micrsoft licenses when there's many free GUI deveopment kits of equal or better quality available? He complains, "Supporting many GUIs isn't just a simple process of including one set of libraries or another; it's often a frustrating and error-prone exercise in writing GUI-specific code," as if Microsoft's interface were any better or less frustrating. He admits that programs written for one window manager run on others, can he say that for Win32 crap? No, he can't. In fact, you are lucky if your MFC program will continue to run from one version of Windoze to the next and even low level API calls are known to change. The whole "including libraries" FUD is a baseless projection from Microsoft DLL hell. When you open your eyes, what you see it that the more you rely on Microsoft the more painful your world is. When you get away from M$, you see how inadequate their tools really were.

Keep on comming, windoze developers, the water is fine. Freedom does have it's drawbacks, but they are nothing like those encountered in the Windoze world. You will never know just how easy and rational things are in the free software world unless you try it out. The fact is that Marketing morons can not and do not make software that's easy for their users of their developers, they make software that screws both.

Umm... Both Kolab and OpenGroupWare.org are suitable for this purpose. They are freely available, work with quite a number of clients and offer a complete alternative to Exchange (including groupware calendaring features).

Now I admit that there is an investment required for them to be usable with Outlook and, by extension, Evolution, however this is minimal compared with the cost of licensing Exchange.

The biggest expense is time. They are not 'trivial' to set up just yet and do require a decent time investment in doing so. However, they are most definitely built on open standards and free/opensource software.

I'm sure there are plenty of others that'd do it to, but those are the ones most recently making waves and thus the ones that stand out in my head at the moment.

You don't seem to understand how the GPL works. A derived program can be licensed under any GPL compatible license. Thus, it is entirely legitimate for KDE (which is a mix of LGPL and BSD) to use Qt, which is GPL, since LGPL and BSD are both GPL compatible licenses.

Look, just Read the KDE licensing page. Neither the FSF nor the Debian Project have any futher complaints about KDE's licensing mix. I think they know just a little bit better than you how the GPL interacts with varous licenses.