beineri

Twitter Works - Sometimes

Friday, 7 August 2009

I started to publish on Twitter some days ago to not stay completely silent about the good stuff that is happening with KDE/openSUSE. Most of the time my posts even appear on other people's pages and in Twitter Search. Read More

New KDE Live-CD Release Brings Back Desktop Functionality

Wednesday, 1 April 2009

There have been endless complaints about the KDE4 desktop shell missing certain functionalities like being able to have different wallpapers on each virtual desktop. The openSUSE KDE team has now listened and worked hard to bring back all desktop functionality as you know it from KDE2. Read More

New KDE Four Live-CDs

Sunday, 8 March 2009

New KDE Four Live CDs with KDE 4.2.1, KOffice 2.0 Beta 7 and much more are up. They were built within openSUSE Build Service's KDE:Medias project in which also automatically Live-CDs with KDE trunk snapshot packages (currently 4. Read More

Not a Good Start Into a Problematic Year

Sunday, 22 February 2009

Like some other [open]SUSE developers I was casted and am now forced to look for a new day job. It could have happened in better economic times for sure. :-( Read More

KDE 4.2.0 & KDE Four Live 1.2.0

Wednesday, 28 January 2009

KDE 4.2 has been released and gives "The Answer". With the usual openSUSE KDE4 packages available comes also a new release of KDE Four Live, the most comprehensive KDE4 Live-CD, with following changes: Read More

KDE Four Live 1.1.96

Friday, 16 January 2009

A new version of the KDE Four Live CD with KDE 4.2 RC 1 packages is up. </twitter>

Cute Harmony: Qt goes LGPL

Wednesday, 14 January 2009

Thanks Nokia! It will be really interesting how this will impact the Qt and KDE communities, desktop, embedded, mobile, cross-desktop collaboration. Looking forward to a friendly competition on technical merits only. Read More

openSUSE Build Service KDE:KDE4:* Repository Changes, Step 2

Monday, 12 January 2009

A follow-up to the previous post, the KDE:KDE4:Factory:Desktop repositories now contain KDE 4.2 development snapshot (4.1.87) packages. This is also the repository that will contain KDE 4.2 RC1, KDE 4.2 and the first bug fix releases of KDE 4. Read More

Pointer: Unofficial KDE 3.5 Live CD for openSUSE 11.1

Saturday, 10 January 2009

openSUSE 11.1 Live CDs and USB images featuring KDE 3.5 are now available for download. openSUSE News has the full story.

First openSUSE KDE Team Meeting 2009

Tuesday, 6 January 2009

Tomorrow most people will be back from the holiday season, time to start again with the biweekly IRC meetings of the openSUSE KDE Team. This time we will look back to last year or rather to the openSUSE 11. Read More

Everything Good Comes Together...

Thursday, 18 December 2008

What an exciting day: The openSUSE team has an early christmas gift in the form of the second distribution release this year: openSUSE 11.1 - the best distro with the best KDE desktops. Read More

openSUSE Build Service KDE:KDE4:* Repository Changes

Sunday, 7 December 2008

openSUSE 11.1 will reach Goldmaster status within the next days which also means that things move around in the KDE:KDE4 Build Service repositories: KDE:KDE4:STABLE:Desktop has been already updated to the KDE 4. Read More

openSUSE Lizards: Creating Custom Feeds

Saturday, 6 December 2008

This is likely interesting for more openSUSE Members blogging on lizards.opensuse.org: Yesterday Klaas asked me if he could make only his posts to the KDE category appear on Planet KDE. A short digging showed that WordPress allows to create custom feeds. Read More

openSUSE 11.1: Updates via PackageKit and PolicyKit

Saturday, 22 November 2008

For openSUSE 11.1 the KDE Updater Applet will switch from the zypp backend to its PackageKit backend by default. Authorization is done via PolicyKit-kde: A KPackageKit package will be available in the online repository for those who don't like the YaST Qt Package Manager. Read More

openSUSE 11.1: Introduction to KDE4

Sunday, 16 November 2008

Another small idea we realized for openSUSE 11.1 is a link in the first-login greeter to a "Introduction to KDE4" page. Originally written for the greeter (hence the current layout and shortness) the text ended in the wiki because we were past openSUSE translation freeze. Read More

openSUSE 11.1: Power Management

Friday, 14 November 2008

Another bit for the upcoming openSUSE 11.1 KDE4 desktop is power management: KPowersave has not been ported to KDE4. Powerdevil, which will be part of KDE 4.2, comes to our rescue. Read More

openSUSE 11.1: Three Plasmoids More

Monday, 10 November 2008

openSUSE 11.1 will include (besides the to be expected plasmoids from kdebase4-workspace and kde4-plasma-addons) three more plasmoids to be closer to KDE 3.5 functionality: Quick Access, Quick Launcher and Keyboard Status Applet:

And many more plasmoids are available from the KDE:KDE4:Community openSUSE Build Service repository thanks to the openSUSE KDE Team. :-)

KDE Four Live 1.1.72

Sunday, 9 November 2008

KDE 4.2 is approaching its first Beta release and it has been a while so here is a new KDE Four Live release with KDE 4.1.72 snapshot SUSE packages from the KDE:KDE4:UNSTABLE:Desktop repository. Read More

openSUSE 11.1: Plasma Desktop Toolbox

Sunday, 2 November 2008

Discussions about the usefulness of the Plasma desktop toolbox arise regularly. Usually it focus on the "Zoom Out"/Activities feature which as also Plasma developers admit is not as far implemented and nicely integrated as of KDE 4.1 as everyone wants it to be. If one removes (maybe even irreversible) the "Zoom Out" button, nothing is left in the desktop toolbox which is not also available in the panel/desktop context menus. So why not make it optional completely? For openSUSE 11.0 we offered that as a hidden option.

For openSUSE 11.1 we decided to ship with the desktop toolbox disabled by default. This takes effect with Beta 4 (it's not announced/released yet because of the week-end but ISOs are propagating to mirrors). Technically this is done by adding a desktop containment implementation without toolbox (as possible since Plasma/KDE 4.0) and backporting the desktop containment swicher from KDE 4.2. As result users who want to experiment with Plasma activities can easily switch the desktop toolbox on again:

Also please take note of the third desktop activity type option. :-)

Less Than 50 Days to openSUSE 11.1

Thursday, 30 October 2008

No blog for over a month as everyone is busy with openSUSE 11.1. The release countdown counter got kicked off too again. What will openSUSE 11.1 bring? In short the best shipped KDE desktop yet (KDE 4. Read More

Pointer: openSUSE KDE Bug Squashing Days (20-21 September)

Thursday, 18 September 2008

The openSUSE KDE team is holding a Bug Squashing event to work through the KDE bug reports in bugzilla.novell.com this weekend. Among the goals are reporting non-openSUSE specific bugs to bugs. Read More

Pointer: KDE:KDE4:Factory:Desktop for 11.0 users

Tuesday, 16 September 2008

As there seem to be people who continue, despite being told about dependency errors and packages that cannot be upgraded, to install newer KDE packages (and then wonder about a broken desktop) I want to point out this important service information for users of the KDE:KDE4:Factory:Desktop repository in the openSUSE Build Service. Read More

Pointer: KDE in openSUSE 11.1 and beyond

Wednesday, 10 September 2008

Zonker has posted on openSUSE News and his own blog our decision that openSUSE 11.1 will be the last release to include the KDE 3.5 desktop. This is a compromise how to handle the KDE4 transition after long discussions with many users. Read More

New KDE Four Live-CDs

Wednesday, 3 September 2008

New versions of KDE Four Live are up to accompany the KDE 4.1.1 release and give an impression of the development in trunk half-way to the first KDE 4.2 Alpha release. Read More

Looking for a KDE Job?

Saturday, 9 August 2008

As just mentioned in the openSUSE talk at Akademy, Novell/SUSE is hiring for its KDE team! :-) The team is working on KDE in past and future openSUSE and SUSE Linux Enterprise releases. Read More

KDE 4.1 openSUSE Packages and Live CD

Tuesday, 29 July 2008

Warning: Lazy copycat from openSUSE News ahead! :-) The KDE team today released KDE 4.1. The KDE developers, including the openSUSE KDE Team, have been working on it for the last six months. Read More

KDE 4.1 RC 1 Escort

Wednesday, 16 July 2008

KDE 4.1 RC1 has been released yesterday - without big announcement as this is still a development release. The release of KDE 4.1 is planned for July 29th. As usual there are packages for openSUSE 11. Read More

Akademy upcoming

Tuesday, 15 July 2008

Akademy, the big yearly KDE conference, is only three and a half weeks away. Novell sponsors at Gold level this year and will by last count be represented by 8 people (me, Dirk Müller, Will Stephenson, Lubos Lunak, Vincent Untz, Danny Kukawka, Klaas Freitag and Cornelius Schumacher) and involved in three talks during the conference part. Read More

First on openSUSE 11.0 Based KDE Four Live Release

Tuesday, 24 June 2008

KDE 4.1 Beta 2 + openSUSE 11.0 = KDE Four Live 1.0.83 :-)

openSUSE 11.0: Press Review

Sunday, 22 June 2008

The launch of openSUSE 11.0 was a big success and positive reviews keep showing up :-), two especially nice ones: ars technica: This is a very strong OpenSUSE release with a lot of compelling improvements. Read More

openSUSE 11.0 Announced

Thursday, 19 June 2008

Release Announcement Hint: If you get your ISOs within the next 24h you will enjoy full Akamai speed.

openSUSE 11.0: The Plasma Desktop

Tuesday, 17 June 2008

[image:3515 align=right hspace=2 vspace=2 width=341 height=256] openSUSE 11.0 will be finally released on Thursday! :-) The Sneak Peeks story about KDE has just been published and I want to follow up with a list how our Plasma desktop differs from the stock KDE 4. Read More

In Need of a Geeko?

Tuesday, 10 June 2008

I am a proud owner of a Geeko. Those seemed to be out of stock and not produced anymore. But now I spotted a first merchant which promises new Geekos for second half of 2008 - and not only a 35cm version but also a 120cm big one! Read More

An Exciting openSUSE Month

Saturday, 7 June 2008

It has been several months since I blogged about exciting openSUSE stuff happening (all about at the same time). The next few weeks enough long in the work things are on the home stretch to make June an openSUSE month: :-) Read More

openSUSE 11.0: Don't like Cashews?

Thursday, 5 June 2008

From the listening-to-users department, the openSUSE 11.0 Plasma desktop toolbox contains more useful options as in KDE 4.0 but still many users want to hide it. Try this with our KDE packages on openSUSE 11. Read More

Post LinuxTag 2008

Thursday, 5 June 2008

Just a short late summary: LinuxTag 2008 was fun and interesting, met some new faces both from openSUSE and KDE communities and many familiar ones. I have uploaded some pictures mostly of the openSUSE and KDE booths. Read More

LinuxTag 2008 Upcoming

Sunday, 11 May 2008

In two and half weeks the likely biggest Linux Event kicks off: LinuxTag 2008 in Berlin. Four days of exhibition and more talks (the organizers say 240, German/English mixed) than ever before. Read More

openSUSE 11.0: Qt Package Manager Improvements

Sunday, 11 May 2008

Just want to point out four improvements of the YaST Qt package selector in the upcoming openSUSE 11.0 that were missing too long, much requested (at least by me) and now added :-) : Read More

KDE 4.0.4, Codenamed Out-Of-Stuff-To-Tell

Wednesday, 7 May 2008

The usual monthly game: a new KDE bugfix release, openSUSE packages and a new Live-CD which as already said looks more and more less like KDE 4.0 but like our openSUSE 11. Read More

KDE:Qt44++

Tuesday, 6 May 2008

From the cross-blogging department, Qt 4.4 has been released and is entering Factory for openSUSE 11.0 with packages for older openSUSE releases being available in KDE:Qt44 (this will move sooner or later to KDE:Qt). Read More

openSUSE 11.0 Beta 1

Saturday, 19 April 2008

openSUSE 11.0 Beta 1 has been released including the new beautiful installer, an incredible fast installation and package management, KDE 4.0.3 and 3.5.9. With this Beta the media layout changed: no 1 CD install media anymore, just the KDE4 Live-CD and the DVD which allows to choose between KDE4 and KDE3. Read More

KDE 4.0 on HP 2133 Mini-Note

Wednesday, 16 April 2008

Last week HP announced it's Mini-Note PC with preloads of SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10. Our heros of the Mobile Devices Team have worked the last weeks on that. The Mini-Note is available in different configurations starting at $499 (that would be only 313 Euro if applied for Europe without surcharge). Read More

openSUSE's KDE 4.0.3 Packages

Thursday, 3 April 2008

KDE 4.0.3 is out and openSUSE packages are available at the usual place as is a new "KDE Four Live" CD. Just want to note that these packages are less pure KDE 4. Read More

Some Interesting Summer of Code Ideas

Friday, 28 March 2008

Only three days left to apply as a student for the Summer of Code for either KDE or openSUSE ideas. So how about spending this week-end thinking what you could do this summer? Read More

openSUSE Accepted to Summer of Code

Monday, 17 March 2008

The participating mentoring organizations for the Google Summer of Code 2008 have been just announced and the openSUSE project is among. If you're a qualifying student and want to earn some money by contributing to an Open Source project, please start discussing with us your (eg Build Service, KDE or YaST related) idea. Read More

KDE Four Live 1.0.66

Sunday, 16 March 2008

It has been over a month since the last version and it's still a month until KDE 4.1 Alpha 1 so it seems a good time to create a new Live CD with the openSUSE KDE 4. Read More

CeBIT 2008 Impressions

Sunday, 9 March 2008

Yesterday I made an excursion to CeBIT. Despite some major names missing and three halls staying closed it's the world's largest IT fair - and my legs remind me today of my marathon. Read More

Chemnitzer Linux-Tage 2008 Summary

Wednesday, 5 March 2008

The last week-end me and Martin manned the openSUSE booth at Chemnitzer Linux-Tage: [image:3315 size=original hspace=50] Executive summary: the organizers counted 2400 visitors, Martin gave an "openSUSE project" talk to 100-120 people, we distributed 400 Promo-DVDs, several openSUSE caps and some Novell pinguins. Read More

Spreading Out

Wednesday, 20 February 2008

It's this time of the year when all the events seem to happen at almost the same time: the upcoming week-end Dirk and Will will be at FOSDEM and give a talk "KDE 4 on openSUSE 11" on Sunday morning in the openSUSE Developer Room. Read More

openSUSE and Tracking 4.1 Development

Sunday, 10 February 2008

First two mentions from an exciting openSUSE week: the new openSUSE evan..uhm community manager has been finally disclosed, it's Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier. And openSUSE 11.0 Alpha 2 has been released with which we put KDE 4. Read More

KDE 4.0.1, openSUSE Live CD, New KDE Repository Layout

Tuesday, 5 February 2008

The openSUSE News story has the same title and I don't want to repeat everything here, just add some bits: The new KDE Four Live CD will hopefully work also on some computers whose broken BIOS had problems finding the boot code in certain sectors before. Read More

Kepas - KDE Easy Publish and Share

Monday, 21 January 2008

Congratulations to Tom Patzig, currently serving in the openSUSE KDE Team, for the first release of Kepas: "Kepas is a KDE4 file transfer tool. It discovers your local LAN for buddies (KDNSSD) and lets you transfer files or Klipper entries from a tray icon or via drag'n'drop with the Kepas plasmoid. Read More

Thanks Again Trolltech!

Friday, 18 January 2008

As announced just minutes ago at the KDE 4.0 Release Event, Trolltech’s Qt to be licensed under the GPL v3 - both Qt3 and Qt4. Thanks Trolltech, this saves the distributors and everyone quite some license compatibility mess headaches. Read More

Lenovo Preloads with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10

Wednesday, 16 January 2008

The Lenovo Thinkpads with SLED 10 SP1 preloaded start to ship these days. Not yet available via web today you can already order the first 6 configurations (R61/T61 with 14.1" screens) via phone in the US. Read More

The KDE 4[ 1.].0.0 Release

Saturday, 12 January 2008

KDE 4.0 was released yesterday and of course openSUSE complimented with packages for openSUSE 10.2, 10.3 & Factory and the version 1.0 of KDE Four Live CD. For reactions see openSUSE News, Digg or look at screenshots - many readers seem to understand the nature of this "1. Read More

How to Browse openSUSE's Source Packages

Saturday, 5 January 2008

This works for a long time but I don't think that it's widely known: you can browse/view/download all the latest patches of openSUSE development in the openSUSE Build Service Factory project (yes, you have to login). Read More

KDE Four Live 0.9

Saturday, 5 January 2008

This new version of KDE Four Live shows the changes done during the holiday season until new year. Compared to the final 4.0 release it misses some days of bugfixing and the final Oxygen artwork (new sounds and wallpapers, icon updates). Read More

KDE 4.0 Reviewer Reminders

Wednesday, 2 January 2008

Before everyone starts to spread his opinion about KDE 4.0 let me spread some reminders: KDE 4.0 is not KDE4 but only the first (4.0.0 even non-bugfix) release in a years-long KDE4 series to come. Read More

A Nice Christmas Gift by Canonical?

Sunday, 23 December 2007

The week saw this Kubuntu announcement being posted which mixes two news, reasons the one with the other and left some users imo rather confused as shown by this user comment: "IMHO this is a nice present by the Kubuntu Community and Canonical to the KDE Community". Read More

More openSUSE News Statistics: Konqueror Most Popular

Saturday, 15 December 2007

After my previous blog about openSUSE News numbers I became curious and installed StatPress. Of course the site is mostly visited by SUSE Linux users (~53%), followed by just under 30% MS Windows users (XP outnumbers Vista by factor 7). Read More

Multiple Patterns in Build Service Projects

Friday, 14 December 2007

Defining more than one pattern for a Build Service project finally works after some bugfixes by Michael. :-) [image:3152 size=preview hspace=50] Above you see how we use it in the KDE:KDE4 project, eg "KDE 4. Read More

KDE 4.0 RC 2 / KDE Four Live 0.8

Wednesday, 12 December 2007

KDE 4.0 RC 2 has been released so it's time for a new version of the most comprehensive KDE4 Live-CD: [image:3140 size=original hspace=50]

openSUSE News Milestone

Saturday, 8 December 2007

I just noticed the internal statistics of openSUSE News saying "There are currently 200 posts and 1,800 comments, contained within 17 categories" (posts include calendar entries). Thanks to everyone contributing to make its start such a success. Read More

Which Distro Will Be First to Ship KDE4?

Saturday, 8 December 2007

This amusing question seems to pretty bother some users in forums/story comment sections and fanboys of distros are fast with answering their distro will for sure be it. :-) It's amusing for several reasons: Any question about KDE4 is faulty by concept. Read More

And The Companies' Favorite Developer Environment Is...

Friday, 7 December 2007

The 2007 Linux Desktop/Client Survey of the Linux Foundation closed recently. One interesting result: [image:3129 size=original hspace=50] Didn't someone claim that companies would prefer Gtk+ because of the license? :-) Read More

openSUSE KDE Developments

Sunday, 2 December 2007

I want to summarize some as yet unmentioned changes which we have done during the last weeks: The KDE Wiki page has been spiffed up and should be now a good portal to inform everyone quickly about everything worth knowing about KDE on openSUSE. Read More

KDE 4 Application Porting Status

Friday, 30 November 2007

I created a page on TechBase to track the porting status of Qt/KDE applications, which are not part of the KDE 4.0 release, with the applications that distributions tend to have in their default installation as a start. Read More

Another Week, Another KDE Four Live Update

Thursday, 29 November 2007

The KDE 4.0 RC 1 version of the KDE Four Live CD generated publicity, was downloaded over 10000 times within the first days and finally scared Dirk. Thanks go to openSUSE project for jumping in and providing powerful torrent seeders during the later hours. Read More

GNOME 2.20.2 Declared Bug-Free

Thursday, 29 November 2007

Just read in the GNOME 2.20.2 release announcement: "This is the second update to GNOME 2.20.0. The update fixes all known and unknown bugs and crashers." I have a follow up question, what about my still unresolved bug report, reported over one year ago as example for many continued violations of the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines? Read More

Distribution Development: Package Rebuilds

Wednesday, 28 November 2007

I wondered several times in the past why Novell/SUSE people eg in Novell Open Audio interviews presented our internal autobuild system as something special. The relevant feature here is that both the legacy autobuild as well the new openSUSE Build Service have the functionality to rebuild all dependent packages everytime after a change. Read More

KDE 3.96 and KDE Four Live 0.7

Wednesday, 21 November 2007

The so called "Release Candidate" of KDE 4.0 has been released, with packages for openSUSE available. The KDE Four Live CD release 0.7 contains them. I looks like whatever will be released or presented at the event which was scheduled by marketing/sponsor to happen in January will be only used by very early adopters. Read More

openSUSE: Guiding Principles and Board; KDE Four Live 0.6.1

Thursday, 8 November 2007

As of today the openSUSE project has the Guiding Principles finally taking effect. Everyone can express support for them on the new openSUSE User Directory site. Also the first openSUSE board has been appointed by Novell. Read More

openSUSE 10.3 Installable Live-CD

Saturday, 3 November 2007

The initial comments about openSUSE 10.3 have been ranging from "best openSUSE release ever" to "worse than 10.2". Strange, or? So why not form your own opinion? It's easy with the openSUSE 10. Read More

People of openSUSE: Stephan Binner

Saturday, 27 October 2007

Seems I couldn't prevent any longer the completion of a questionnaire: People of openSUSE: Stephan Binner.

KDE Four Live Beta 3+

Sunday, 21 October 2007

What would a KDE4 Hack Week be without a new version of KDE Four Live released at its end? :-) [image:3060 size=preview hspace=100] This version has KDE 4.0 Beta 3+ (mostly 3. Read More

openSUSE 10.3 Box Shipping

Wednesday, 10 October 2007

The openSUSE 10.3 box is shipping! Some subscribers seem to have received it already yesterday, today I received my employee copy (German version). I'm pleasantly surprised that it didn't take this time over one month after the release, and that the two DVDs are safe in a plastic cover: Read More

Some openSUSE 10.3 Misconceptions

Monday, 8 October 2007

There are some misconceptions floating around about openSUSE 10.3. Unfortunately uninformed people are still allowed to blog ;-) so let me pick up some I read: "No Live-CD! Every hobby distro has one. Read More

Some openSUSE 10.3 Hints

Saturday, 6 October 2007

Let me share some hints for openSUSE 10.3 which just came to my mind: If you use GNOME and eg don't like the yast2-gtk package selector or miss the powerful Qt package selector, install the yast2-qt package and set in /etc/sysconfig/yast2 the WANTED_GUI variable to " Read More

openSUSE 10.3 Released

Thursday, 4 October 2007

Today, after ten months of work, openSUSE has 10.3 been released. :-) Francis did an excellent coverage of everything new so let me just relist his Sneak Peeks: Greatly Improved Boot Time, with Stephan Kulow 1-Click Install, with Benjamin Weber New Package Management, with Duncan Mac-Vicar Prett Compiz and Compiz Fusion, with Matthias Hopf and Jigish Gohil KDE 4, with Dirk Müller SUSE-Polished GNOME 2. Read More

openSUSE 10.3 RC1

Thursday, 20 September 2007

After all the sweat just the important links: Announcement, Screenshots, KDE Live-CD (i386), KDE Install CD (i386), other ISOs/DVD/Torrents.

openSUSE 10.3 Home Stretch & KDE Four Live 0.4.1

Sunday, 16 September 2007

All efforts these days concentrate on openSUSE 10.3, the one CD installation medias and Live CD installer testing: the release candidate is planned for Thursday. The German box version is already listed and can be pre-ordered (eg SUSE Shop, Amazon. Read More

openSUSE 10.3 and KDE 4.0

Monday, 3 September 2007

Did anyone miss a news splash these days about openSUSE 10.3 not shipping KDE 4.0 as default KDE desktop like some other distro? Or maybe not as we have not been telling everyone the last half year that we would. Read More

sysinfo:/ Improved

Sunday, 19 August 2007

Other distributions certainly like to pick up stuff that Novell/SUSE are developing (and have been using for long). Recent examples include Ubuntu and Mandriva starting to integrate AppArmor or Oracle porting YaST to their Enterprise Linux and RHEL. Read More

An Exciting (open)SUSE Week

Saturday, 11 August 2007

This week was so filled with events and news that it easily qualifies for the most exciting openSUSE week yet: On Monday the rush until feature and version freeze of openSUSE 10. Read More

Kickoff Goes KDE 4

Wednesday, 25 July 2007

Porting of Kickoff to KDE 4 has started: the first step is trying to make it work with the Kicker remains. Some code is still disabled but you can already search/browse applications and start them: Read More

openSUSE 10.3 Alpha 6 Remarks

Friday, 20 July 2007

Yesterday openSUSE 10.3 Alpha 6 has been released (major changes). As Coolo mentioned this is the first alpha release which feels really alpha due to the package management refactoring. During the last month much other stuff happened so not many visible changes besides version updates for the KDE desktop; the new 10. Read More

openSUSE News Goes Live

Thursday, 19 July 2007

Today one of my hack week projects went online: openSUSE News. Actually I have been working on it together with Robert Lihm already before and finished it only after. :-) Read More

KDE TextCompletion History Editor

Sunday, 15 July 2007

Did you ever feel bothered by a wrong suggestion of the text completion after having entered a typo in an application name, web page url or some web form entry before? Read More

The Return of kdedevelopers.org

Thursday, 12 July 2007

The missed kdedevelopers.org site is back! Thanks go to Ian Geiser for founding and hosting it until recently. Starting this week it's hosted on a KDE e.V. server and administered by the KDE sysadmins. Read More

The Three Weeks Newsreel

Thursday, 12 July 2007

A quick roundup what happened during the last three weeks: It started with the Novell OPS Hack Week: I continued one project I started already previously and started three others. One got finished and about two I will blog once they go online/are finished and in our KDE packages. Read More

openSUSE Build Service on Steroids

Tuesday, 26 June 2007

Thanks to a yet to be announced generous sponsor (also the first non-Novell sponsor to the openSUSE project) is the openSUSE Build Service running like on steroids since last week: over 120 CPUs are now available in the build host farm. Read More

openSUSE 10.3 Alpha 5: One CD Installation Media

Thursday, 14 June 2007

openSUSE 10.3 Alpha 5 was announced today (major changes): most exciting novelty are additional one CD installation media giving you a rather complete English desktop. Compared to the default desktop installations from DVD most of the missing applications are games. Read More

LinuxTag 2007; Novell Sponsorship

Tuesday, 5 June 2007

I'm back from vacation / LinuxTag 2007: met many openSUSE, Trolltech, KDE and GNOME people - more than expected. Jump over to some pictures. On other news, Novell will be Silver sponsor of both aKademy and GUADEC this year. Read More

KDE 3.5.7

Tuesday, 22 May 2007

I hope it surprises nobody that KDE 3.5.7 packages for openSUSE exist: the wiki has a guide how to upgrade. And in case that you belong to the 25% who accidentially installed another desktop ;-), a second guide explains how to install KDE. Read More

openSUSE 10.3 Alpha 4 Remarks

Saturday, 19 May 2007

This week openSUSE 10.3 Alpha 4 has been released. As previously announced it doesn't contain ZMD anymore. From my point of view the inclusion of first KDE4 packages and the installation of four KDE4 games in the default KDE selection is more exciting. Read More

KDE Four Live Alpha 1

Friday, 11 May 2007

KDE 4.0 Alpha 1 has been released, code-named "Knut" (btw my reasoning was: "small but growing and being forgotten soon"). And of course it's accompanied by a new KDE Four Live version and packages for openSUSE. Read More

openSUSE Survey Results

Thursday, 3 May 2007

The openSUSE Survey results are in: thanks to the over 27k people who participated. And over 70% of those use the best desktop environment! :-) Read the complete results (PDF) if you have doubts which is it. Read More

KDE Four Live++

Sunday, 22 April 2007

New KDE Four Live CDs are online. The last week unmentioned problem with squashfs which led me to uploading a "DVD.iso" is history, now you can get the same content of a typical desktop setup in a 477MB ISO. Read More

Lessons for Lizards

Friday, 20 April 2007

Lessons for Lizards is a community cookbook-style book project for openSUSE which started a few months ago (FOSDEM presentation). Most of the current articles deal with system adminstration, but there are also already two about KDE: "KDE Configuration for Administrators" and "Customizing KDE". Read More

Announcement: Software Management for openSUSE

Thursday, 19 April 2007

On SUSE Linux 10.1 it was required, on openSUSE 10.2 you can deselect it during installation, for openSUSE 10.3 it was planned to be made an optional install but yesterday Andreas Jaeger announced: Read More

KDE Four Live

Tuesday, 17 April 2007

I found a nice name for my openSUSE-based KDE 4 Live CDs/DVDs: "KDE Four Live" - which has also spoken a nice second meaning. :-) It has been three weeks since the initial announcement, but still two weeks to go until KDE 4. Read More

openSUSE Build Service News Feeds

Tuesday, 10 April 2007

Even less known than that there are RepoView pages created in every OBS repository's repodata/ sub-directory seems to be that there is also a latest-feeds.xml file which you can subscribe to with your feed reader. Read More

Factory + Dashboard + OBS + KIWI = ???

Monday, 26 March 2007

A short story about using the right tools: Factory is the development distribution of the openSUSE project, currently at version 10.3 Alpha 2+. The SUSE-powered Dashboard tells you what is compiling - or not. Read More

Kickoff Buttons

Friday, 23 March 2007

Andy Koehler has created some nice animated Kickoff buttons in case you don't like the one that your distribution ships. :-) They look best at their native size but can be used with any: when you change the panel size the animation is not resized initially but a "dcop kicker Panel restart" will fix that. Read More

#opensuse-kde

Wednesday, 21 March 2007

After the GNOME team made a big splash about their openSUSE involvement some people thought it would be a good idea to found #opensuse-kde to not flood other #opensuse-channels with KDE talk anymore. Read More

Start Menu Blogging

Tuesday, 20 February 2007

Two days ago Miguel de Icaza blogged about the revised Main Menu of the GNOME desktop in the upcoming SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 Desktop Service Pack 1 and how it and the KDE Kickoff start menu inspired each other. Read More

openSUSE Survey Online

Sunday, 18 February 2007

The openSUSE project is interested in knowing how you feel about the openSUSE project and the openSUSE 10.2 distribution. Please take a few minutes to fill out this survey until April 30, 2007. Read More

A More Productive Kerry Beagle

Monday, 5 February 2007

Above is the title of a blog I found linked at tuxmachines.org (btw great site with a daily mix of desktop related news and blogs). Its author describes the interface changes in the latest Kerry Beagle release and likes them very much. Read More

openSUSE Build Service available under GPL

Wednesday, 24 January 2007

Joining the list of tools being used internally at Novell/SUSE being available as Open Source (like SWAMP or Testopia) now also the source code for the openSUSE Build Service is available under GPL from today on. Read More

Do you know KNetWalk?

Wednesday, 17 January 2007

You think that you know every game that KDE ships? How about KNetWalk? It's a nice little game - not just for system administrators. The chance that you have it already installed is high, it's in the kdegames module! Read More

Kickoff: Talk Video, SVN Branches, More Options

Sunday, 14 January 2007

It's again time for some Kickoff news: the video of the talk Coolo gave at aKademy 2006 is finally online since start of this year. The work/suse_kickoff/ branch in SVN saw no activity since mid-November as we branched it to work/suse_kickoff_qstyle/ branch at that time to reimplement the tabbing with QTabWidget - still other distros shipping with Kickoff and Kickoff packages for distros seem to continue to ship the old pixmap based version. Read More

Disambiguation "KDE 4", did you mean "KDE 4.0"?

Tuesday, 2 January 2007

The last feature release of KDE is just over a year old, is well maintained and gains selected features about every two to three months. Still people long for the first release starting with the number 4 often called "KDE 4" - which is wrong. Read More

Often you don't recognize how good your work actually is...

Tuesday, 2 January 2007

Often you don't recognize how good your work actually is unless you take the time to look at what others do. The reason I say this is that I just read the first issue of a new promising dot. Read More

Smarter YaST Control Center for openSUSE 10.2

Tuesday, 26 December 2006

If you're annoyed by the openSUSE 10.2 YaST Control Center not remembering its last size (but starting always too small/with one column) as me, my home project in the openSUSE Build Service has a yast2-control-center package which does. Read More

Novell Open Audio: openSUSE 10.2 Overview

Sunday, 17 December 2006

Novell Open Audio has a new half an hour episode about the openSUSE 10.2 release featuring openSUSE evangelist Martin Lasarsch (and also a new mention of the missed KDE episode).

"KDE 3.5.5 on openSUSE 10.2" for VMware Player

Thursday, 14 December 2006

The openSUSE 10.2 Release Guide is a nice description of the openSUSE 10.2 goodies whose box edition is meanwhile also listed by shops (North America/World Wide, Germany). I updated my popular VMware image to KDE 3. Read More

The openSUSE 10.2 Release

Monday, 11 December 2006

On Thursday the download edition of openSUSE 10.2 was announced (screenshots). The interest seems to be high but from what I read users experienced a good download speed thanks to FTP mirrors being prepopulated the week before, some strong initial Torrent seeders and usage of Metalink. Read More

Invitation to Ubuntu Users

Friday, 24 November 2006

In less than two weeks openSUSE 10.2 will be released with really edgy components. And you can download and try its release candidate today and help to find the last bugs! Read More

Kerry Beagle Bits

Sunday, 19 November 2006

Last week I released Kerry Beagle 0.2 in preparation for openSUSE 10.2 (whose release candidate is scheduled for Thursday). I think this version is a nice improvement over version 0.1: new interface, more supported hit types and a more complete configuration module than the original beagle-settings. Read More

KDE:KDE4 Build Service Project Complete

Wednesday, 8 November 2006

During the last days I updated the existing packages, added the until now missing KDE modules to the KDE:KDE4 project of the openSUSE build service and fiddled a bit until all packages built successfully for SUSE Linux 10. Read More

openSUSE 10.2 Beta 1 Released

Thursday, 26 October 2006

openSUSE 10.2 Beta 1 has been announced marking the begin of the feature freeze. The release schedule btw fits this time nicely with many upstream releases: we have Kernel 2.6.18.1, X. Read More

KOffice 1.6

Tuesday, 17 October 2006

Another great feature release of KOffice and this time it fits fine into the release schedule of next upcoming openSUSE release: You can find fully functional rpms of it in Factory and for SUSE Linux 10. Read More

SUSE Linux 10.1 "Remastered"

Sunday, 15 October 2006

Seems it's up to me as nobody else blogs about it: SUSE Linux 10.1 "Remastered" CD and DVD ISOs are now available (if you have still the original ISOs around, there exist delta ISOs against them). Read More

KDE - Defining the Linux Desktop for Ten Years!

Saturday, 14 October 2006

Today ten years ago the KDE project was founded. It certainly influenced the life of many people including mine. :-) The party at the 10 Years KDE event to celebrate this anniversary started yesterday and ended today. Read More

Kickoff: Talk, Web Page, Source Code

Monday, 25 September 2006

Yesterday, on the second conference day of aKademy 2006, the Kickoff talk was given by Coolo. It was well attended and received. Many questions afterwards including if simple calculations in the search line work like in mini cli (yes, they do). Read More

aKademy / Ireland

Sunday, 24 September 2006

Some random thoughts, if you want coverage of the talks happening here: Planet KDE has many impressions. I have never seen so many people being interested in golf. The Ryder Cup is visible everywhere in the town, on many advertizing spaces, on all TVs in the pubs. Read More

The KDE Team and Friends are Leaving SUSE...

Thursday, 21 September 2006

...and are on the way to Dublin's aKademy 2006 to "shape the future of the free desktop". :-) My last count resulted in 9 Novell/SUSE employees attending, 4 talks of and 2 BoFs with them. Read More

aKademy 2006 Keysigning Party

Sunday, 17 September 2006

Wondered this morning why there is no GPG/PGP keysigning scheduled for next week's akademy 2006. Obviously it was forgotten, so after a quick query with the organization team about a free time slot I just posted this to akademy-announce: Read More

Introducing the KDE:Community Project

Saturday, 16 September 2006

You may think that I have blogged about every KDE-related openSUSE build service project by now. Not quite yet. :-) Besides the unsupported backports of openSUSE Factory packages in KDE:KDE3 & KDE:Backports and the experimental stuff in KDE:Playground (like KOffice 1. Read More

openSUSE 10.2 Alpha 4 with Kickoff Start Menu

Thursday, 7 September 2006

openSUSE 10.2 Alpha 4 has been released and it includes the new Kickoff start menu for KDE: As you can see we changed some things because of the usability tests performed with the prototype: some users didn't find the search functionality, so we made it appear more prominent. Read More

One Quickie for Every of My Favorite Planets

Tuesday, 29 August 2006

I created KDE4.x/ application directories in ftp://upload.kde.org's incoming/ directory. The first application it was used for was okular, an universal document viewer for KDE 4 based on KPDF, with a snapshot preview requiring the recent Krash release. Read More

Kickoff Start Menu - Sneak Preview

Tuesday, 22 August 2006

As previously blogged, openSUSE 10.2 will have a redesigned KDE start menu created by the KDE and usability team at SUSE, after doing usability testing with other start menus. We now have a working prototype, code-named 'Kickoff' (started during world soccer championship, obviously), which is currently being tested with real users in the SUSE usability lab. Read More

KDE "Krash" RPMs for SUSE Linux

Saturday, 19 August 2006

The important warning first: this is only for developers and not openSUSE 10.2 stuff! KDE has released a first development snapshot of KDE4 and the KDE:KDE4 project in the openSUSE Build Service has RPMs of qt, kdelibs, kdepimlibs and kdebase for SUSE Linux 10. Read More

Linux Magazine Story About Kerry Beagle Online

Tuesday, 15 August 2006

Linux Magazine informed me that they put parts of their September 2006 issue online including a PDF copy of the "KTools: Beagle Helpers - Kerry and KBeaglebar" story. It's about the 0. Read More

Happy Birthday openSUSE!

Wednesday, 9 August 2006

Exactly one year ago Novell announced the openSUSE project to develop its Linux distribution, which is also the base for the Linux enterprise products, in an open way. I was one of the first to download Beta 1 of SUSE Linux 10. Read More

"KDE 3.5.4 on SUSE Linux 10.1" for VMware Player

Monday, 7 August 2006

I have updated the KDE VMware virtual machine which I have been offering for some months now. It now contains the SUSE KDE 3.5.4 packages installed on a SUSE Linux 10. Read More

KDE 3.5.4 in openSUSE Build Service

Wednesday, 2 August 2006

KDE 3.5.4 was released today and the openSUSE Build Service has unsupported rpms of it: SUSE Linux 10.1 YUM repository (32bit and 64bit) SUSE Linux 10.0 YUM/YaST repository (32bit and 64bit) SUSE Linux 9. Read More

KDE:Playground; KOffice 1.6 Alpha

Tuesday, 1 August 2006

We have founded yet another KDE project over at the openSUSE Build Service. It's called KDE:Playground (SUSE Linux 10.1 repo view). Its purpose? To allow the SUSE developers to test development versions like the current Beta releases of Amarok, Basket, Digikam and Gwenview. Read More

aKademy 2006 Abstracts

Thursday, 27 July 2006

After the schedule some days ago now also the abstracts for this year's upcoming KDE Contributors Conference are online. Let me point to the talks of my SUSE colleagues about Network Status Support in KDE and How to Use It and our team project Kickoff - Start Menu Research on which we spend much time during this too hot summer. Read More

SUSE Linux becomes openSUSE

Thursday, 13 July 2006

The community was confused. The press was confused. The SUSE Linux Enterprise customers were confused. So it has been decided that the next release of what has been famous as SUSE Linux distribution will be renamed to openSUSE 10. Read More

XBlast for SUSE Linux

Thursday, 29 June 2006

If I should name the reason which most extended my university visit I might mention XBlast. ;-) What is XBlast? XBlast is a X11 multiplayer game inspired by the classic game Bomberman (known in Europe as Dynablaster). Read More

Test Drive SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10

Tuesday, 27 June 2006

If you're interested how the KDE desktop of SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 looks like, Novell offers now a pre-release for free download. It contains all the functionality of the regular release, but is not the final product. Read More

Novell/SUSE Sponsoring KDE Four Core Meeting

Monday, 26 June 2006

There is now a public announcement for the hack fest hinted at in my last blog: KDE Four Core aims at paving the way for KDE 4 development for others and is sponsored by Novell/SUSE together with Trolltech. Read More

Kerry Beagle 0.2 Beta; RPMs for SUSE Linux 10.1

Sunday, 25 June 2006

I released this week the current KDE SVN version as Kerry 0.2 Beta because not much progress will happen the next two weeks: coding part of a KDE improvement project together with the usability experts of my SUSE team started and a long-planned week of vacation (for recreation, while others will heavily hack in Norway :-) ). Read More

Native Google Earth for Linux

Tuesday, 13 June 2006

We knew that some big companies like Adobe or Google developed some of their applications for MS Windows with the Qt toolkit. But they didn't take full advantage of Qt's cross-platform sweetness. Read More

12000 KDE desktops on SUSE Linux; SUSE 10.1 Package Manager Update

Friday, 9 June 2006

Two good news today: ZDnet reports about a German tax authority migrating 12000 desktops to KDE on SUSE Linux from Solaris. And a first SUSE Linux 10.1 package management update (should be installed with YaST Online Update) was released which fixes several annoying bugs (performance improvements are planned for later). Read More

KDE 3.5.3 in openSUSE Build Service

Saturday, 3 June 2006

This week saw the release of KDE 3.5.3 (bugfixes and carefully chosen new features) and also the openSUSE Build Service, although still in Alpha phase, becoming productive as it now creates and offers the KDE and KDE applications backports among other stuff. Read More

Distributor KDE Patches Collection Update

Tuesday, 30 May 2006

After a long time I have updated my Distributor KDE Patches Collection during the last days. It now contains the latest release or release candidate tweaks and fixes of the most actively patching distributions like SUSE Linux, Kubuntu, Mandriva and ArkLinux. Read More

Interview with Andreas Jaeger, SUSE Linux

Tuesday, 30 May 2006

Short reading hint: this week's issue of Distrowatch Weekly features an interview with Andreas Jaeger, the project manager of SUSE Linux about the 10.1 release process and more.

KOffice 1.5.1 rpms for SUSE Linux

Tuesday, 23 May 2006

KOffice 1.5.1 has been released and as usual there are rpms for SUSE Linux available: either as directly built against the distros' packages for SUSE Linux 10.0 and 10.1 (these packages were btw built within the progressing openSUSE Build Service) or as part of the KDE supplementary repository for SUSE Linux 9. Read More

Novell Open Audio: SUSE Linux 10.1 Unleashed

Saturday, 20 May 2006

I think this was not yet mentioned on Planet SUSE, at least Ted didn't blog about it as he was on vacation: Novell Open Audio, the company's own podcast show, had a long episode about the SUSE Linux 10. Read More

/pub/suse/ /supplementary/ KDE/update_for_10.1

Monday, 15 May 2006

ftp.suse.com and first mirrors now carry the "KDE supplementary" package repository for SUSE Linux 10.1. "supplementary" is one of the unsupported playgrounds of SUSE packagers for providing newer application versions like KDE 3. Read More

SUSE Linux 10.1 Release

Saturday, 13 May 2006

SUSE Linux 10.1 has been finally released including Xgl preview, NetworkManager, AppArmor 2.0 and XEN 3. Learn more about it reading the Product Highlights and studying the first incoming reviews and screenshots galeries. Read More

Novell / openSUSE at LinuxTag 2006

Sunday, 30 April 2006

Joining the announcements about presences at LinuxTag 2006 in Wiesbaden next week, let me spread that Novell will be back this year with a booth (hall 9, number 918). The openSUSE project will be presented, SUSE Linux 10. Read More

KOffice 1.5 in supplementary/KDE

Wednesday, 12 April 2006

Congratulations to everone involved for the KOffice 1.5 release and especially Krita - finally a usable painting and image editing application with professional color support: You can find rpms for it for SUSE Linux 9. Read More

Kerry 0.1

Friday, 7 April 2006

[image:1819 align=right]With the upcoming SUSE Linux 10.1 Release Candidate (really, no kidding!) and no further changes allowed for it I thought it was time to release Kerry 0.1 including translations for 18 languages done by the Novell translation teams. Read More

On Terminal Emulator "Performance"

Thursday, 16 March 2006

Reading the GNOME 2.14 feature guide you are told that "several important components of the GNOME desktop are now measurably faster" - which is nice. As example the GNOME Terminal is mentioned which a graph says is three times faster than the previous version and now being four times faster than xterm. Read More

The Tale of Fixed Release Schedules

Thursday, 16 March 2006

Once upon a time there were some dwarfs who wandered around the earth and told everyone who liked to hear that they would produce a desktop including the distribution of their handcraft every sixth months. Read More

KOffice 1.5 Beta 2 for SUSE Linux

Saturday, 11 March 2006

KOffice 1.5 Beta 2 has been released together with binaries for SUSE Linux 9.3, 10.0 and Factory. Please help to test it to make the release rocking stable and install the provided debuginfo rpms for best crash reports if you can afford to download them. Read More

SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10

Thursday, 9 March 2006

Novell today announced SLED 10 at CeBIT. Apparently there is some confusion caused by bad coverage: it's the successor of Novell Linux Desktop 9, a rebranded NLD 10 - if you like to say so - which gives you the choice to use either KDE or GNOME. Read More

Kerry Beagle Desktop Search

Thursday, 23 February 2006

[image:1819 align=right] The KDE desktop of SUSE Linux 10.1 (and the future enterprise products built on it) will contain a KDE frontend for Beagle called Kerry. For this Beagle has been splitted into non-GUI and GUI parts, some backends are now in sub-packages (Evolution, Firefox) and the libbeagle API has been improved in parts. Read More

Novell/SUSE Represented in KDE's Technical Working Group

Tuesday, 14 February 2006

The KDE project has elected its first Technical Working Group. Three Novell/SUSE employees are among the seven elected members (the others either didn't get elected, are busy with KDE e.V. board work or didn't candidate ;-) ). Read More

Bugzilla Voting for SUSE Linux 10.1

Saturday, 11 February 2006

A bit too silent in my opinion voting within Novell's Bugzilla was enabled: you can now vote for bug reports and enhancement requests which are filed against the "SUSE Linux 10. Read More

KDE 3.5.1 Packages for SUSE Linux 10.0

Monday, 6 February 2006

KDE 3.5.1 packages for SUSE Linux 10.0 are now available which include fixes for the worst KDE 3.5.1 regressions. They will also appear at the usual YaST source. These packages are unsupported and mostly untested: kdelibs3-devel has a known wrong dependency which can be safely ignored and will be removed in the next revision. Read More

"KDE 3.5 on SUSE Linux 10" for VMware Player

Monday, 2 January 2006

Announcing something which has been cooking already last year but got delayed by POTS bandwidth shortage over the holidays: VMware released a player for free with which you can run pre-built virtual machines. Read More

A KDE View on SUSE Linux 10.1 Alpha 4

Friday, 16 December 2005

With SUSE Linux 10.1 Alpha 4 being announced let me list some KDE-related interesting news of it: it includes KDE 3.5 with several packages updated to last weekend's KDE 3.5 branch. Read More

The Importance of KDE 3.5

Wednesday, 30 November 2005

KDE 3.5 has been released (press quote: "The newest version of KDE will have users happy that vendors have recently decided to keep supporting it"), the really last feature release in the until now three and a half years successful KDE 3 series. Read More

KDE 3.5 YaST-Repository

Sunday, 20 November 2005

KDE 3.5 RC 1 has entered the supplementary/KDE repository on ftp.suse.com and its mirrors. If you previously missed YaST definitions next to the packages hosted on ftp.kde.org, here you go. openSUSE. Read More

SUSE Taking the Lead

Friday, 18 November 2005

The development snapshot SUSE Linux 10.1 Alpha 3 has been released yesterday and of course it contains the latest release candidates of KDE 3.5, Firefox 1.5, Thunderbird 1.5 and X.org 6. Read More

Klax KDE 3.5 RC 1 Live-CD

Sunday, 13 November 2005

To complete the KDE 3.5 RC 1 release efforts there is now also a Klax Live-CD with KDE 3.5 RC 1 available. Now let me see if someone left something from this weekend over for me. Read More

KDE 3.5 Release Candidate 1

Saturday, 12 November 2005

KDE 3.5 Release Candidate 1 is finally released. Updating the Konstruct build script was easy, but creating the SUSE packages in time did cost me some hours of sleep which I in my current state should have better spent in bed. Read More

KDE to Stay on Novell Linux Desktop and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server

Friday, 11 November 2005

Maybe you haven't heard this yet as international pr[ess] is slow: After last week's reports that Novell plans to not ship the KDE desktop anymore on Novell Linux Desktop and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server products, the company got lots of feedback from its customers. Read More

Re: My Dad's Thoughts

Thursday, 10 November 2005

Jeffrey Stedfast is strengthening FUD about KDE developers on some planets. Strange that in the first paragraph he only cites a point for proof, Novell dropping KDE on certain products, which actually was true last week. Read More

Re: GNOME on NLD/SLES

Tuesday, 8 November 2005

James Ogley writes: "NLD is Novell's enterprise desktop product, I'm pretty sure it's always used GNOME". James, you obviously don't know Novell's products well. Neither is GNOME the only desktop on Novell Linux Desktop 9, nor is it the default. Read More

Pictures of Berlinux

Tuesday, 25 October 2005

Last Friday I had my first free day. And what did I do? Likely not what normal people would do. I participated on Friday and Saturday the Berlinux 2005 event. Berlinux took place the second time under that name and location and has only regional impact - but it's growing. Read More

KDE 3.5 Beta 2: Klax Live CD, SUSE Packages and Konstruct

Tuesday, 18 October 2005

KDE 3.5 Beta 2 has been announced and the full range of testing possibilities is available: My small "Klax" Live-CD has been updated to KDE 3.5 Beta 2 and KOffice 1. Read More

"openSUSE" v "SUSE Linux"

Saturday, 8 October 2005

SUSE Linux 10.0 is available for purchase and download in different flavors and some people are still spreading wrong information (initially started by some journalists). To make it short: "openSUSE" is only the name for the development project. Read More

KDE 3.5 Beta 1 Packages for SUSE

Saturday, 24 September 2005

KDE 3.5 Beta 1 packages for SUSE distributions versions 9.1 to 10.0 are available. These packages are unsupported and completely untested. We are nevertheless interested in package related bug reports over at openSUSE because KDE 3. Read More

SUSE 10.0 Release Candidate

Thursday, 8 September 2005

The first release candidate of SUSE Linux 10.0 Open Source edition has been published today. You can download it at openSUSE.org. The KDE task force team at SUSE, consisting of Coolo, Dirk, kAdrian, Seli, Will and me has squashed countless bugs for it. Read More

First Work Day

Thursday, 1 September 2005

Today I had my first work day - at Novell/SUSE, packaging KDE as successor of kAdrian Schröter (please note the part about "poor successor" on that page!) who became a lead for the openSUSE project. Read More

Akademy Express

Wednesday, 31 August 2005

The "Express" in this blog entry title both refers to me only being able to attend Akademy 5 days this year as also this being the only blog entry summarizing some thoughts and observations after the two initial ones which were supposed to start a daily series. Read More

Malaga Day 0

Friday, 26 August 2005

My KDE related activities, besides visiting the local usability meetings, increased over the last days again (finally implemented the feature to open blocked popup-windows within Konqueror). With the contract for my job starting next month signed, I can now be sure it will stay at a high level. Read More

Malaga Day 1

Friday, 26 August 2005

For most people day one will be the first day of the user conference, for me and the e.V. members it is Friday. As previously written I didn't sleep well last night, not much more than 3 hours. Read More

Also This Week

Saturday, 13 August 2005

Took the last exam of my studies at long last. :-) Received a KDE-related job offer and accepted it. :-) Booked my flights for Akademy. :-) Unfortunately I will not be able to attend whole Akademy but have to depart on the evening of the last conference day because my work, more on that later, starts on 1st September. Read More

Special 'Planet KDE' and 'Developer Journals' Tags

Thursday, 11 August 2005

It's nice to see the amount of people on Planet KDE rapidly growing, indicating a thriving KDE developer community. :-) Let me point out two special tags which some blog newbies don't seem to be aware off: Read More

KDE 3.5 Alpha

Wednesday, 10 August 2005

KDE 3.5 Alpha source tarballs are up on the FTP servers. It's really Alpha quality so you don't will see a big announcement splash for it. One day before tagging KMail got completely messed up. Read More

OpenSUSE & Clueless Users

Wednesday, 3 August 2005

Congratulations to Novell for deciding, according to several reports, to open the development process for SUSE Linux as "OpenSUSE". Also for planning to spread it as widely as possible while keeping the boxed retail version with manuals/support. Read More

The Importance of Version Numbers

Tuesday, 2 August 2005

KDE 3.5 Alpha will be tagged in three days and many applications in /branches/KDE/3.5 still show the version number they had in the 3.4.0 release. :-( I usually go trough all modules before releases and look for many applications whether there have been changes since last release and if the version number has been already increased. Read More

Don't Neglect kde-announce!

Thursday, 28 July 2005

If you're the maintainer of a non-minor KDE application please don't think that posting your release to kde-apps.org is sufficient. Consider also to post a nice announcement including what your application is about and the highlights of the release to the kde-announce mailing list. Read More

The Usefulness of kde-commits Archive

Saturday, 23 July 2005

I know that not everyone is subscribed to and reading the kde-commits mailing list (hint: if you work on or are interested only in a specific area of KDE visit the CommitFilter site). Read More

Welcome on the Biggest Desktop Planet!

Wednesday, 20 July 2005

You are reading the Free Software Desktop Planet which aggregates the most voices. Especially nice to have also several female voices on it. :-) And looking forward to see selected Trolltech blogs also become integrated in future. Read More

Missing KDE Applications

Friday, 15 July 2005

I'm happy about the whole bunch of applications which are nowadays available for people's daily tasks: Whether you want to play music, burn CDs, chat, send instant messages, read RSS feeds, manage your photos, keep your money together, draw a mindmap or download a Torrent - there is a KDE-based and nicely integrated solution available. Read More

kdedevelopers.org is back

Wednesday, 13 July 2005

Thanks to Geiseri for working hard after his return and the Drupal guys helping to bring the Developer Journals back online. Happy blogging! :-)

The KDE for Red Hat Project

Friday, 1 July 2005

Fedora is being called a community effort by RedHat. Despite that and demand it doesn't create decent KDE packages. Their KDE still defaults to the ugly and buggy "BlueCurve" style of the past "BlueCurve" age which tried to give GNOME and KDE applications a similiar look. Read More

"KDE is the Default..." 2nd Follow Up

Wednesday, 29 June 2005

I guess the news about Sun cooling down Linux desktop plans means that I can eat the promised cookie now myself. And it seems GNOME realized that some of their deployment claims are short on details. Read More

Nominees for Most Fancy User Request

Friday, 24 June 2005

Good evening. Sometimes users file funny, far beyond the capabilities of KDE, or crazy wishes. And I don't talk about the "remove my neighbor country's flag" evergreen. And the nominees for "The Most Fancy User Request" award are: Read More

4 at 10th

Thursday, 9 June 2005

Let us all together ensure that KDE 4.0 will be released at latest before the 10th anniversary of the KDE project (14th October 2006): this will put us into a good position against that legacy OS' major release "late next year". Read More

"KDE is the Default..." Follow Up

Saturday, 4 June 2005

It's nice to hear that (big) companies actually check the number of Linux desktop deployments they are being told. Not good if then "200.000 desktops in Spain" are discovered as addition of some at a conference spread Live-CDs and some magazine accompanying CDs. Read More

"KDE is the Default on Novell Linux Desktop"

Thursday, 2 June 2005

Would I tell you this? No, I'm fair and don't try to cheat you. Whoever tried Novell's Linux Desktop 9 will know that it has no default desktop, you have to choose either KDE or GNOME during installation and there is no indication what to prefer. Read More

Nat Friedman about Desktop Developers

Friday, 27 May 2005

Just read an interview with Nat Friedman, carrying a 'Novell Vice President' title, in German c't magazine 12/05 (to be published on Monday). For your information, c't is a reputable computer technology magazine and not something like LUG Radio. Read More

Trolltech Doing Everything Right?

Monday, 23 May 2005

Trolltech seems to be hard working to smooth out every imaginable point of criticism and to be the best Free Software team player: It ensures with the KDE Free Qt Foundation that Qt will be always available for Free Software developers. Read More

Localizing the "Klax" Live-CD

Friday, 20 May 2005

A powerful feature of the "Klax" Live-CD, inherited from its Slax and UnionFS base, are "modules": you can download a module like Gimp or Firefox and either load them into the running Live-CD on the fly or by adding them to the /modules/ directory on the CD (without the need to remaster the whole compressed file system) before burning the ISO image. Read More

KDE in the Open Directory

Thursday, 19 May 2005

In general I like the idea of the Open Directory Project (dmoz), a community-edited directory of the web. The part I feel most important about is of course its KDE category. Read More

Thoughts on Votes and Bounties

Saturday, 14 May 2005

Last week new KDE contributor Ivor Hewitt committed the first version of an image blocker for Konqueror which ranked first position in the list of most wanted features at that time. Read More

Interesting Days

Friday, 13 May 2005

On Wednesday evening I visited the podium discussion for the Open Source Jahrbuch 2005. Afterwards some speakers and visitors moved on to a nearby cafe and I chatted with Oliver Zendel of LinuxTag e. Read More

The Rise of KDE Applications

Tuesday, 10 May 2005

It's nice to not only see increasing popularity of KDE but to also see applications for KDE prosper and getting the recognition they deserve: last five dot stories are all about KDE applications people have written stories about. Read More

kcontrol5 Mockups

Monday, 2 May 2005

Yesterday I suddenly realized with horror that I missed a trend: everyone seems to rewrite kcontrol or create mockups how it should look like but not me. :-) First I had to find a project name, I chose kcontrol5 because kcontrol3 and kcontrol4 already exist in kdenonbeta. Read More

gcc 4.0 C++ Compilation Speed

Friday, 29 April 2005

KDE sources now blacklist gcc 4.0.0 because it miscompiles KDE but that shouldn't be a reason to do no compilation benchmarks, or? :-) My test machine was an Athlon XP 2600+ with 512MB and SUSE 9. Read More

The kdedevelopers.org Blog Misconception

Friday, 29 April 2005

kdedevelopers.org hosts different content categories: polls, stories and blogs. As user roles "authenticated user" (working email address, hello spammers) and "KDE developer" (has to be manually verified as such) exist. Every "authenticated user" can submit stories to the story submission queue on which "KDE developer"s have to vote about whether they should be published - in practice nobody does. Read More

New "Klax" Live-CDs

Wednesday, 27 April 2005

With the release of the 5.0 series of the Linux Live scripts and KDE 3.4 packages being available in Slackware-current I thought it was time for a quick update of my "Klax" Live-CD. Read More

KIllustrator to Prevent Adobe Monopoly

Tuesday, 19 April 2005

So Adobe is about to buy Macromedia for 3.4 billion US dollars. Because of the possible antitrust investigation of the market for illustration tools company executives like the Adobe CEO and the Adobe Chief Financial Officer were eager to point out the strong competition with explicit mention of KIllustrator. Read More

KDE International

Tuesday, 5 April 2005

KDE is not only developed worldwide and being translated into over 75 languages making it the most and broadest translated Free Software graphical desktop environment. kde.org/international shows that the KDE community also consists of many, mostly non-English speaking, local groups worldwide who promote KDE in their country or region (like KDE Chile at the Latin America Free Software Install Festival recently) and help KDE users in their native language. Read More

Distributor Patches: Linspire 5.0 and Some Others

Saturday, 2 April 2005

First, greetings to everyone who is still (already 2nd April here) reading this entry on http://planet.gnome.org. :-) I wanted to complete my collection of distributor patches with the ones Linspire has applied to the Qt and KDE packages in their Five-0 release. Read More

KDE 3.4 RC 1: Klax and Konstruct

Saturday, 26 February 2005

We lost the dot/wiki host for the week-end thanks to the software wonder called Zope, so let me tell you for the case you don't know already that KDE 3.4 Release Candidate 1 was released. Read More

"Klax" KDE 3.4 Beta 2 Live-CD

Friday, 11 February 2005

I have long time not blogged but now that KDE 3.4 Beta 2 code-named "Keinstein" (blame me for the name) was released this week and with it the feature and i18n freezes in place this might change. Read More

Handling your bugs.kde.org Account

Friday, 19 November 2004

Your email address is your user id on bugs.kde.org. You create an account by having you mailed a random password. You can of course change your password later. If your email address changes, please also change your bugs. Read More

Some Statistics

Friday, 19 November 2004

On one side: In October 1050 distinct people have filed bug or wish reports on bugs.kde.org. In the six months from May to October 2004 there were 4635 distinct reporters. During the last 180 days (from today) 8340 bug and 3202 wish reports were filed. Read More

KDEMail.net

Tuesday, 12 October 2004

Do you know KDEMail.net? It provides free email aliases in the form "firstname.lastname@kdemail.net" for KDE contributors and developers of KDE software, not necessarily in the main distribution, who are interested in a stable contact address to put as contact point into their work. Read More

Credit to Whom Credit is Due

Sunday, 10 October 2004

Learned yesterday on IRC that people still think that the KDE Credits page is access restricted. That's wrong, everyone with a CVS account can update it (cvs co www/people/credits/). If you don't have an account read the paragraph at its bottom. Read More

Berlinux Preparations

Friday, 8 October 2004

KDE will be present at Berlinux 2004 in two weeks and I'm busy with several preparations for that. There will be several mostly German talks, including some prominent names likes Georg Greve and Jon 'Maddog' Hall, and I should be a bit prepared for my talk about KDE being qualified as enterprise desktop: Kurt provided me with an account for his NX demo server. Read More

Distributor KDE Patches Collection

Tuesday, 28 September 2004

Did you always want to know what patches the distributions apply against vanilla KDE source? Did you ever receive weird bug reports with 'impossible' behavior or stacktraces for your application? Or wanted to forward port this feature you saw in screenshots, read about in reviews or used on a machine with that other distribution? Read More

Maintainers' Release Duties

Tuesday, 7 September 2004

Do you remember my blog entry about the software developer who put days of effort into a new version but then failed to raise the hour to properly announce his software (btw, meanwhile he has stopped its development without clear rationale)? Read More

aKademy Thoughts

Thursday, 2 September 2004

So aKademy is over for most people, only the aKademy press staff continues to publish stories based on content collected and interviews conducted in Ludwidgsburg and it will take some weeks to close all financial transactions. Read More

#aKademy

Friday, 20 August 2004

I'm attending the whole day the KDE e.V. meeting since 10am and it's still continuing (now 5.30pm). Luckily there was a long midday break with free delicious food (four possible choices including one vegetarian) at "Blauer Engel" restaurant sponsored by IBM. Read More

Arrival at aKademy

Thursday, 19 August 2004

Today Ossi and I arrived together at aKademy in Ludwigsburg. The organization room seems to be the busiest place at the moment, full with working people, sleepy North Americans, loaned hardware (refrigerators, laptops, network and sound equipment) and delivered merchandizing stuff. Read More

KDE_3_3_BRANCH

Friday, 6 August 2004

For those not following the mailing lists, the KDE_3_3_BRANCH (and ARTS_1_3_BRANCH) has been created in CVS from which the release candidate and the final KDE 3.3 release will be created. kdelibs/kdecore/kdeversion. Read More

Looking Forward to aKademy

Wednesday, 21 July 2004

I just read that Aaron is excited to go to aKademy and that he will meet KDE developers (and not few!) there. Let me say that I also look forward to get to know some new faces including Aaron, Fabrice and Waldo. Read More

KDE_3_3_0_BETA_2

Sunday, 18 July 2004

That's the magic CVS tag which allows you to pull the KDE version from CVS which is supposed to become KDE 3.3 Beta 2. Start your build (perhaps with the help of kdecvs-build) and to write your "KDE 3. Read More

"There must be a final stroke!"

Saturday, 17 July 2004

I want to tell you a true story which happened about half a year ago but is still in my mind. As you perhaps know I maintain Konstruct. Sometimes it happens that an archive disappears from its specified download location, often the cause is a new version release and the old version being deleted. Read More