Slashdot Mirror

You have apparently not heard of the KDE Klingon Translation Team. According to them, the K in KDE actually stands for Klingon.


Gee, I wish I had that much time on my hands.

Well, it already exists. There is a network monopoly server called monopd and there are gtk and qt based clients for it. The game is totally customizable and you can make all sorts of monopoly-like games with it. I don't think you can print out your custom made boards, but you can play them right there on the screen. You can play over the net, so go have fun :)

For the last time (not!): it's the Klingon Desktop Environment. Only ~130 strings translated though, if only I'd get some help!

You do realize that KDE actually has a translation of Esperanto? kde-i18n-esperanto has been available at least since the 2.x days. Someone wanted to make a Klingon i18n of KDE, but the developers said that they wouldn't include it with the official distribution. I'm not sure if it's still being developed independently or not. Try the mailing list if you're interested.

Want me to add this to the TODO / planned features list of Atlantik? Seems like there is a large demand for customizing games (good thing you can already designed your own boards with a Designer app).

As most of you desktop users already know, the KDE Project recently released KDE 3.1beta2, which will be the final development release before KDE 3.1. The good news is, KDE 3.1 is scheduled for release in just a few weeks.

KDE 3.1, the strongest KDE release to date, promises new goodies for just about everyone who gets to enjoy the full KDE desktop experience. Here is a sampling of what is in store for you:

Browsing with Tabs. The many fans of tabbed browsing will be delighted by this new addition to the KDE web browser ( Konqueror ) (screenshot). To simplify downloading a large number of files, a new download manager (KGET), which fully integrates into Konqueror, has joined the network package (kdenetwork). It manages any number of downloads in one window, where transfers can be added, removed, paused, resumed, queued or scheduled. A dialog displays transfer status, including progress, size, speed and estimated time to completion.

Eye Candy. The artistically-inclined KDE contributors have showered us with a basket of new eye candy. As shown in this screenshot, KDE 3.1 will ship with the contemporary Crystal icon set as well as the original new Keramik theme. The screenshot also shows the new drop-shadows. To help manage these stunning themes, KDE will provide a new theme manager with improved theme style and color decoration previews (screenshot). Menus and other desktop windows can also use attractive drop shadows, as shown in the screenshot above.

Personal Information Management. On the PIM front, the email client ( KMail ) has gained several privacy and security enhancements - namely S/MIME, PGP/MIME and X.509v3 support - in collaboration with the Aegypten project, an IT security project sponsored by the German government (screenshot). The calendar / scheduling application (KOrganizer) features a new Exchange 2000 plugin. The address book (KAddressbook) has gained the ability to fetch contact information from one or more LDAP servers. It can also print contact information and import industry-standard vCards.

While not included in the 3.1 release, the next quantum jump in KDE's email / groupware architecture is scheduled for KDE 3.2, when KDE will ship a completely copy-lefted, integrated groupware system. Currently known as the Kroupware Project, it is being sponsored by the German government and will integrate the major KDE PIM applications (screenshot, screenshot). More about this project, and some additional screenshots, can be found on the dot. KDE 3.2 will also feature the ability to use Vim as the mail composer (screenshot).

File Management. The file manager (Konqueror) has a number of new goodies, such as folder icons which reflect a folder's contents, a video thumbnail generator and a number of plugins for providing enhanced- or meta-information about various file types (e.g., images, binary packages, source code). The file search utility can now search file meta-information for searching multi-media files.

Desktop Sharing. For those who switch work stations frequently, KDE offers a new VNC-compatible desktop sharing framework. It enables users to share a KDE desktop across multiple machines (screenshot).*

Enterprise. Enterprises, Internet cafes and similar users will appreciate enhancements to the KDE Kiosk framework (the Kiosk framework provides an easy way to disable certain features within KDE to create a more controlled environment). In addition, the panel (Kicker) now supports fully customized menus.

Multimedia. The multimedia framework (kdemultimedia) has a new video decoder based on Xine. Xine is a video framework which provides support for various video formats, such as AVI, DivX, Cinepak, Sorenson Video, MPEG 1/2 and 4, QuickTime / MOV, ASF and others.

Games. For the playful among us, KDE 3.1 will offer a number of new games in the games package (kdegames), including a golf game ( Kolf ) (screenshot), an Atlantik and Monopoly-type game ( Atlantik ), a Blackjack game ( Megami ). and a Same-like game ( Klickery ).

Ease of Use. A number of other improvements are meant simply to make the desktop easier to use and configure. For example, the application finder (KAppfinder) provides a nice tree view for selecting the applications to include in the KDE desktop menu hierarchy. Two new user notification methods have also been added for providing non-obtrusive informational messages: a passive popup window (KPassivePopup), which pops up next to the application's entry in the panel's taskbar (without stealing the focus), as well as messages which appear in an application's title-bar (KWindowInfo). In addition, the control center (KControl) has received a face lift and better organization (screenshot).

Miscellaneous. Of course work under the hood continues for KDE 3.1 as well. It provides a number of speed improvements, such as Konqueror start-up time, a number of usability enhancements by the KDE Usability Project, as well as almost 1,000 critter fixes.

More information about planned KDE 3 features is available for KDE 3.1 and KDE 3.2.

Some interesting KDE statistics: the KDE CVS source code repository consists of about 2.6 million lines of code (LOC) (for comparison, the GNU/Linux kernel version 2.5.29 consists of about 3.1 million lines of code). The KDE Project consists of hundreds of active contributors, with 300 of them translating KDE into over 70 languages (KDE 3.0.4 shipped in 51 languages). In May 2002 over 11,014 CVS commits were executed. The KDE website has 24 official mirrors in 16 countries and the KDE FTP site has 71 official mirrors in 30 countries.

Opened a project page for this. I'm basing it on the idea of having absolutely no trust in data, not even official releases or distributed signatures of data.

This might be extreme and will still not be the ultimate tool, but it should provide significant aid to end users and packagers to automate audits.

I didn't look at the link, since I'm the author. Read my charter for the Atlantik future and you'll see that I have a pretty wild idea on how old board games are pretty much the same in concept (as in, they are board games) and although Scrabble might be tough to implement, I'll give it some thought.

Board games under Linux work, so that's one less reason.

KDE stands for: (The) Kalle Dalheimer Experience ;)

ghobe' bIlughbe' ji-bIlugh Klingon Desktop Environment

naDev tlhInganpu' tu'lu' yaj'a' majQa'

Even though I develop for KDE, I must agree about the current status of Linux on the desktop. That is probably why I work on KDE in the first place.

I've written a response (might still be in the voting queue), mostly aimed at the KDE community, argueing for new efforts for system configuration and integration. Yes, this is a difficult task with all the distributions and *NIX flavours around, but it is a must.

If you feel at all involved with the development of a distribution, system application that needs configuration, a user friendly environment, or whatever, please let me know. This is the one thing that keeps Linux from the desktops and the ability to configure servers graphically with ease (in addition to the beloved edition of text files).

Watching for changes to configurations should be easy, the kernel supports file change modification and so does KDE for example, with KDirWatcher.

Even though I develop for KDE, I must agree about the current status of Linux on the desktop. That is probably why I work on KDE in the first place.

I've written a response (might still be in the voting queue), mostly aimed at the KDE community, argueing for new efforts for system configuration and integration. Yes, this is a difficult task with all the distributions and *NIX flavours around, but it is a must.

If you feel at all involved with the development of a distribution, system application that needs configuration, a user friendly environment, or whatever, please let me know. This is the one thing that keeps Linux from the desktops and the ability to configure servers graphically with ease (in addition to the beloved edition of text files).

Watching for changes to configurations should be easy, the kernel supports file change modification and so does KDE for example, with KDirWatcher.