Stuart Jarvis

Lots of KDE goodness for everyone

As if the new look KDE website wasn’t enough Software Compilation 4.4 is out too.

There are plenty of goodies in this new release (see the feature guide for a more complete run down). However, one of the most exciting new features is the Plasma Netbook workspace. Almost makes me want to get a netbook, but I suspect I’ll give it a run out on my old but little laptop anyway.

In the KDE Platform there are all kinds of exciting changes that have a direct impact on the workspaces. You can now share Plasma widgets remotely, handy if you’d like to share info between your machines (a simple universal todo list perhaps?) and there’s more social web integration thanks to the new GetNewStuff interfaces built on OpenDesktop.org‘s open collaboration services that also allows you to find other KDE software users and search online help.

There’s plenty more polish everywhere and entire new apps – one of the most interesting for me is probably Cantor which promises to make some powerful but unfriendly science applications a bit more user friendly. Anyway, I won’t ramble on too much more about new features here – just check the guide for that or have a look at the SC 4.4 screenshots on Flickr.

Heroes of SC 4.4

So, enough of what we’ve done. When you read through the feature guide you’ll see the names of a whole load of people who helped make this release (and there are hundreds more who made contributions, big or small). But there are also some people you won’t read about in there at all.

There is the web team who have worked miracles in getting the new website up and running. Even when I saw Eugene‘s mockups at the Promo Sprint I never really believed it would be ready for 4.4 – perhaps 4.5 – but the web team proved me wrong. (Yes, we know there are some rough edges and broken links at the moment).

Then there is the promotion team who have put together the release announcement (kudos to Sebas and Jos I believe). Even more impressive there is the comprehensive feature guide which saw over 2700 revisions by 26 contributors (Jos was all over that, Luca, Justin, Aron Asor, Sebas, Vivek Prakash, Ricky Laishram and Carl Symons all made significant contributions too – there may well be many others who aren’t in the author list).

Ah well, too many people to list – translators, developers…

Spread the word and have fun

There may be release party near you so be sure to check. Otherwise Lydia has been coordinating the social web effort: spread the word on the usual suspects: identi.ca, twitter, Facebook, your blog and the like – tag “kde44″ where possible.

You can see what everyone else is saying at buzz.kde.org (props to
Franz Keferböck for his work on that).

Enjoy the software that makes up Software Compilation 4.4

Tags: community, Plasma Desktop, Plasma Netbook, releases, web technology, wow factor

I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours – well, actually, I’ll show you mine anyway

Thomas Hannigan suggested on kde-promo the rather good idea of making a flickr group to showcase some of the ways you can build your own ideal workspace using KDE’s Plasma Desktop. This can act as a store of various ways people have built working environments different to the ones you normally see (that could be handy for us in our own promotional activities) and also, being on flickr, can help expose KDE software to an audience that might not be aware of us.

So, if you’ve done something a bit different with your workspace, please upload the picture to the group. You can be super helpful by applying a Creative Commons license to it so that we can re-use it easily any time should we want to do so. CC-by-sa or something even more permissive would be ideal.

Update

I just noticed on the thread relating to this on kde-promo: there is also a screenshot thread on the KDE Forums which is a great additional (or alternative if you don’t have a flickr account) place to post your screenshot.

Tags: help needed, Plasma Desktop, promotion, screenshots