Will Stephenson 

We (as a UI shell project) see the limits of our territory as the window, when there is the assumption nowadays that MDI tabbed interfaces are where most significant user activity takes place. Read More

Everything's booked: the weekend after next I'll be in Bilbao at KDE's tenth Akademy meeting. Catch my talk about the latest happenings in Klyde, the lightweight presentation of KDE at 14:30 on Saturday in the New Ideas track. Read More

It's Hack Week 9 at SUSE, and I'm working on a cracking project this time around. I've codenamed it 'KLyDE', for K Lightweight Desktop Environment, and it's an effort to point KDE at the lightweight desktop market. Read More

Yesterday I woke up to the news that Canonical are no longer going to fund Riddell to work on Kubuntu. I've trying to figure out what that means for KDE and for community Linux generally. Read More

Flat things are good. I'm at Tokamak 5 in Nijmegen, the KDE sprint where we plough a deep furrow into the future of the Free Desktop and sow KDE seeds that will grow into exciting, novel interfaces and make the stuff we already have even faster and more reliable. Read More

Did that get your attention? Good, it was supposed to. Now get back to making KDE 4 rock in whatever way you are able and resist the temptation to put 'KDE 5' in your blog title to get some clicks. Read More

I'm feeling very lucky today. Why? Because in a few hours I'll be getting on a plane to Bengaluru, India and attending conf.kde.in. Pradeepto has been asking me for years to look outside the cosy confines of the US-Europe Axis of KDE, and thanks to my role in the openSUSE Boosters team, this has finally become possible. Read More

I couldn't resist snapping as many KDE folk at the openSUSE conference as I could, and editing them together into: a short video. If anyone can tell me how to embed in kdedevelopers. Read More

Next week is openSUSE Conference week! I'm using both my openSUSE and KDE blogs to remind everyone that we're having a pre-conference meetup at 6pm for the KDE team before the real conference begins at Barfüßer in the Nuernberg old town. Read More

Yes, this is basically a job ad. The openSUSE Boosters team is expanding again (when will it ever stop?) and we're looking for another member. If you want to work full time on Linux, enjoy the idea of building a community around the distribution and think you have the right skills why not apply and have the chance to work with me, Lubos Lunak, Stephan Kulow, Klaas Freitag and many other people you know from the KDE and wider Free Software scene? Read More

Today openSUSE 11.3 is released, concluding 8 months of intense and enjoyable work. This release has been especially enjoyable for me, as it was the first openSUSE release where the community KDE team really took the driving seat and made decisions about what to include, updated packages and intensively tested. Read More

Did you know every app built with KDE 4 can save files as easily to a FTP server or a remote computer using SSH as easily as it accesses your local hard disk? Read More

KDE Developers may have noticed that the developer documentation server at api.kde.org is down. This is due to a hardware failure which will be recovered next week. That need not put the brakes on your work though, since if you have the source code on your system you can build the API docu locally yourself, as HTML, as man pages, or as Qt Assistant help files to view in Qt Assistant or Qt Creator. Read More

Aaron, Sandro, moofang, Shantanu and Diego have been hacking up a Plasma storm lately on the Javascript bindings for Plasma and the Plasmate builder tool. Since good code is running code, and running code is a lot easier when somebody else builds it and packages it, I've updated the Plasmate packages in KDE:KDE4:Playground to 0. Read More

Create a folder somewhere eg ~/Desktop/My Favourite Apps Drag and drop the folder onto a panel Choose "Folder View" from the popup that appears Drag apps from the menu, documents from Dolphin and other stuff onto the new panel icon Click it and enjoy your new menu! Read More

New KDE Four Live CDs with KDE 4.4.1, and much more are up. They were built with openSUSE Build Service's KDE:Medias project and SUSE Studio and consist of openSUSE 11.2 plus all updates, KDE 4. Read More

At the last minute I'm getting away from the snow and ice to visit Camp KDE in San Diego this weekend. I'll be there waving the openSUSE flag, giving a talk about using the Build Service to package and distribute your KDE applications for many Linux distributions, generally enthusing people about openSUSE and thinking about ways for KDE to be better as distributed. Read More

If you've been paying attention at the back there, you'll know that openSUSE started using a new community-driven online update administration process for 11.2. As well as Novell employees, community people are taking care of the workflow of examining and approving online updates to buggy packages. Read More

Since today is the big day when KDE trunk starts to depend on Qt 4.6, Raymond Wooninck (tittiatcoke), community packaging hero, has worked to provide packages of the unreleased Qt 4. Read More

I'm just back in from the first day the openSUSE conference. The day started badly when I woke up in a cold sweat dreaming that OpenOffice ate my presentation (again), but it was still there when I resumed my laptop and so I biked the 5km into the Berufsförderungswerk Nuernberg, the technical college where the conference is a guest. Read More

The main openSUSE users' mailing list are a demanding bunch who know what they want. Over the last few months the KDE group have been asking them what they still miss from KDE 3 in KDE 4, and one of those things has been the ability to add a submenu of the main app launcher, whether Kickoff or traditional, to the panel as a button in its own right. Read More

KDE needs as an entire project to support a Web browser that everyone can use in 2009. That's the simple message behind this blog entry and my talk at LinuxTag on Saturday. Read More

On Sunday the work continued at a furious pace. Dario carried on moving the connection list generating code out of the applet and into the KDED module. This makes the applet much simpler and easier for Plasma specialists to improve. Read More

I felt like the grumpy grandpa of the NM sprint when the others hammered on my door at 9.30am after I'd rolled over for just another 10 minutes two hours earlier. Read More

I pried my eyes open at 0430 and stumbled to the airport. This all started about a month ago when we had the idea of having a developer sprint to get Network Management into shape in time for KDE 4. Read More

Martin Schlander already said the most important things but repetition never hurt a good message: KDE 4.3 is coming to KDE:KDE4:Factory:Desktop<. If you do nothing and use this repo you will get KDE 4. Read More

A promising student was talking with me about working on Network Management in GSoC 2009, but decided to concentrate on his studies this summer. Out of the discussion I've created this idea proposal. Read More

A helpful chap just popped into #opensuse-kde and asked about our c# bindings. It turns out that our packages exclude them in the most violent way possible. This made me curious as to why, as AFAIK they are a high quality binding that exposes the Joy Of KDE to an untapped pool of developer talent. Read More

I'm drinking my Saturday morning tea and looking back on a pretty crappy week. I was burning the candle at both ends to get various enterprise stuff finished in time, and didn't have enough energy to really enjoy FOSDEM. Read More

I took a few pictures of KDE people and the area around the hotel most were staying in. Click for the rest:

I'm nearly ready to move NetworkManager-kde4 to kdereview now, after a crazy week of rehashing the connection layer (the bit that writes your configured connections to KConfig (and optionally KWallet) into something that I actually want to support for a few years. Read More

I was going to make it "Konsole Tabs Are Session Managed Again" but it's a restored KDE 3 feature and all the kids know that commandline hacking is not cool. Read More

I'm a bit slow off the mark, but I was busy fixing a few last bugs in openSUSE 11.1 and entertaining krake. Today I noticed that Ars Technica have chosen openSUSE as one of the distributions of the year, with a special mention for the quality of our KDE environment. Read More

Those of you've been around desktop computers for a while know the calming effect of a simple desktop. One of the things I've missed is the ability to have a basic tiled pattern with user defined colours. Read More

Here we are on the steps at the Linuxhotel in Essen, Germany. From left to right: Igor Trindade Oliveira, Bertjan Broeksema, Stephen Kelly, Ingo Klöcker, Kevin Krammer, Thomas McGuire, Volker Krause, Will Stephenson and Tom Albers. Read More

Mostly convenience foods are fun but loaded with sugar and salt. But building software needn't be inconvenient or make your waistline or disk requirements start to bulge. I've been pushing the openSUSE Build Service to anyone in the KDE community who'll listen, since making tiny tweaks to existing codebases with minimum effort is exactly what it's designed to do. Read More

Back in May I blogged about the network management architecture in KDE 4. It's October now and I can't believe we still don't have a native NetworkManager frontend. But there's nothing like a imminent openSUSE release to focus my energies, and now we're a big step closer to having one. Read More

I just updated the Build Guide for KDE on openSUSE for 11.0, some fixes for recent package splits, and some better formatting. Unless you are or want to become a developer, our Build Service 4. Read More

openSUSE 11.0 is out and with it are a set of KDE PIM (Personal Information Management) packages from KDE 4.1. This is part of the KDE 4 desktop choice and they have been extensively patched to work with the KDE 4. Read More

Today I took the plunge and merged the Solid network management infrastructure into KDE SVN trunk, where it will soon be released as part of KDE 4.1. Here's a summary of what it includes. Read More

I'm at II Guademy 2008, the Spanish conference combining aspects of GUADEC and Akademy this weekend. I arrived yesterday, had lunch with my Novell colleagues Rodrigo Moya and Vincent Untz, then got straight into our presentations, which are a combined call for more cooperation and communication between the two Free desktop environments communities, leading to more effective sharing of data and infrastructure. Read More

I've just published the Building KDE on openSUSE guide over at the openSUSE wiki. It makes it insanely easy to build latest KDE 4.1 in a minimal number of steps, but the goal is not just to make it easy, but to give people the tools and the skills to go from just building KDE to developing it. Read More

Google have extended the Summer of Code 2008 student application deadline until April 7 so if you were busy last week or concerned your application wasn't good enough, now's your chance to get it in. Read More

Student? Love KDE and/or openSUSE? Want to get 0x1194 bucks for improving them? Then check out the openSUSE Google Summer of Code ideas page or suggest your own project. There are a number of projects listed already which would improve KDE on openSUSE and upstream. Read More

Some people already think we do a damn fine job packaging KDE at openSUSE. But we're just a few guys and we'd do it even better with your help. Tonight at 1900UTC we're having our latest openSUSE-KDE IRC meeting in #opensuse-kde on FreeNode and we'd love to see you there. Read More

Over in Salt Lake City, Utah, Novell's BrainShare 2008 event is taking place. This is where the faithful come to see what's new and good in the big red N world every year, and what would be better to liven up a wintry landscape than a colourful talk about KDE 4? Read More

I'll keep this short because my mental batteries are running a bit low. Yesterday Dirk, Cornelius and myself from SUSE travelled to Mountain View in California for the KDE 4 launch event at Google. Read More

The nice thing about a community event is the way it brings everyone together. I just gave a presentation to all my colleagues at the SUSE office here in Nuernberg on KDE 4. Read More

I decided a couple of weeks ago to sort System Settings out and here is the first result: I reworked the views using Qt4's InterView framework, reusing the KCategorizedView from Dolphin. Read More

Not mine, but one Korneliusz Jarzebski (in Polish) has done the numbers (pro-linux coverage in German) and produced a chart showing exactly how the RAM consumption of comparable KDE4 and KDE3 sessions measure up. Read More

So someone just asked in #kde4-devel whether it was worth trying KDE 4 on a 2500Mhz/256Mb computer and I was characteristically careful and guessed "It will work, but won't be good. Read More

[image:3123 align=left hspace=20 node=3123]One of the big things about KDE 4 at an app level was moving from KControl to System Settings. The major complaint about KDE (from non-KDE users) is that it is too configurable, where 'too' generally means they can't find the thing they want to configure. Read More

Today and tomorrow are the first openSUSE KDE/GNOME Packaging Days. In all timezones. A truly global event. One of the goals of openSUSE is to get SUSE packages in the care of non-Novell employees, so Dirk Mueller and Michael Wolf have been organising a couple of days where fearless peeps can get on board the openSUSE Build Service with a little help from the pros. Read More

So I'm doing a bit of hacking on Kopete and System Settings tonight and thought I would compile kdemultimedia for the first time in ages and see what KDE4 sounds like. Read More

As Cornelius blogged, this week the KDE people at SUSE are spending our hard-won innovation time on polishing KDE 4. The vast majority of our new development time is now allotted to KDE 4, so to make sure that our efforts go in the right direction and to coordinate them with the work the rest of the community, we'd like to announce an inaugural openSUSE KDE IRC meeting happening tomorrow, Wednesday 17 October, in #opensuse-kde on FreeNode, at 1800 CEST. Read More

So after 2 days of frantic hacking we made some good progress on Akonadi - including sorting out the database schemas with professional help for performance, producing benchmarking tools to find areas to improve in other layers, fixing MIME parser bugs, improving KMail in KDE 4. Read More

A couple of weeks ago we had the openSUSE hack week and at last it was the newly renamed KDE Team's turn to share our thoughts with the Novell Open Audio team. Read More

I'd like to inform you all of my tutorial on instant messaging development for Kopete (the KDE instant messenger), at 10.00am (huh?) on aKademy 2007's tutorial day. In an act of breathtaking opportunism I noticed that the no-one else has promoted their talk yet, so with a massive First Post! Read More

Something I read on aaron's blog just now struck a chord with me, and cut through my morning head haze nicely. We are the renaissance geeks. Some of the stuff we do is indescribably technical and abstract, but it all has the end of increasing general utility, that is, by letting people use their computers in ways that grow their happiness and productivity. Read More

With apologies to Public Enemy, but KDE has now got recognition of its usability, in that KDE 3 officially meets ISO 9241. We might not be the best at marketing it, but more and more people are finding out for themselves about KDE's goodness by picking it up themselves. Read More

The geeko is hungry, so for the past few days Coolo and I have been feeding it the carcasses of many of the more serious bugs in KMail. Our focus has been on online IMAP, as that has had the most egregious bugs in our opinion, but we're also after low-hanging fruit anywhere else in KMail. Read More

About an hour ago the Decibel hackathon in Darmstadt started. Hosted by Basyskom, this weekend brings together domain experts in instant messaging, VoIP, PIM data and contact management to create the real time communication infrastructure for KDE 4. Read More

The NetworkManager backend for Solid in KDE 4 is ready to announce. Since writing the frontend in September I hadn't gotten round to making it useful, but after a lot of encouragement from ervin I picked up my tools again. Read More

I was feeling a bit poorly today so I decided to spend the day doing something fairly easy but productive and beneficial for openSUSE: re-familiarising myself with the Build Service by packaging some software. Read More

The recent couple of distro release posts on the Dot touch a nerve with me. One could say that publicity is all good - after all, don't we in KDE want the world to know how many quality distributions include KDE? Read More

Most of my development effort at Akademy this year has been on the network management part of Solid. I gave a talk on the present and future of KDE network management and this went pretty well. Read More

... your fridge contains less than the one at work. A couple of years ago, when I was new in Nuremberg, Adrian told me that most people at SUSE never eat at home, and some people who had newish flats still had the cellophane on the kitchen hardware and appliances. Read More

Got into Trysil, Norway for KDE Four Core at 10pm and it was still sunny. Now (00:17) it's still quite light outside which is playing silly beggars with my head, I've lost the ability to speak German. Read More

Since Licq got integrated with the rest of the KDE desktop using KIMIface (nice work Kevin), it's inspired me to make a couple more changes to improve our integration. Now it's easier to link IM contacts with people in your address book, and you can use your calendar to switch your IM presence. Read More

Everyone else is doing it so why can't we? Today Kopete jumped on the Hot New Stuff bandwagon by letting users fetch and install new emoticon themes from the Configure dialog. Read More