KDE 4.5.1 Released

The release of KDE 'Software Compilation' 4.5.1 has been announced by the KDE team. The release comes less than a month after the release of the last iteration - KDE 4.5.0

What's new? Nothing jaw-dropping. KDE SC 4.5.1 focuses on delivering stability and bug fixes to the desktop, the full list of which can be read in the change-log.

As with most KDE upgrades the update will be installable via the Kubuntu Backports PPA shortly.

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Ubuntu One KDE style - Alpha available

Ubuntu One gets a revamp for the Kubuntu desktop thanks to Harald Sitter’s Google Summer of Code project.

We briefly mentioned the proposal to mash Ubuntu One awesomeness with KDE tech back in April when the list of accepted projects were made known.

Now blogging on his blog, the self-confessed Kubuntu-Ninja has given a tight run down of his initial success - and how to get an ‘alpha quality’ build for Maverick Meerkat - and boy does it look good.

I urge you to head over to his site for a proper rundown but, in summary some of the features currently present include: -

• Creating an Ubuntu One Status Notifier for the system tray that provides the ability to start, view and configure Ubuntu One
• Ubuntu One embedded in System Settings’ network area
• Ubuntu One entry in KInfoCenter

Install

Before you read any further this alpha only works with Ubuntu 10.10. For more information refer to this mailing post before adding the repository below.

• sudo add-apt-repository ppa:apachelogger/ubuntuone-kde
• sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install ubuntuone-kde

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KDE hits turbo button with 4.5

This is a cross-post from our sister site OMG! Suse! written by rTyler.  

Hold onto your hats! The KDE team just announced the release of KDE 4.5.0, the most recent release of the already awesome KDE suite. This iteration of the desktop environment includes updates to the developer platform, KDE's applications and the core desktop experience, all contributing to a very important release for the KDE community.

KDE 4.5 will be available via Kubuntu Backports well in time for Maverick come October with all of your favourite Ubuntu additions but, in the meantime, what's a little KDE eye candy between friends?
Behold, the KDE 4.5 Plasma Netbook Workspace

The most subtle but impactful change is the inclusion of WebKit in the KDE platform. Those not versed on KDE history might not remember the creation of the WebKit project, which itself was derived from "KHTML", the ultra-fast and innovative rendering engine that powers Konqueror. Back in the day, after much gnashing of teeth in the open source community, Apple cleaned up their act with regard to their fork of the KHTML project and founded WebKit. The project has advanced tremendously since then becoming one of the most widely used web rendering engines on the planet, powering browsers like Safari for Mac OS X and Google Chrome. All the improvements made in the WebKit project over the past eight years are now available to KDE users through Konqueror.

While the addition of WebKit to the mix is huge, it's not the only performance improvement in this release of KDE. For brevity's sake, I won't go into the other changes which are detailed here if you're curious.

So much for the underpinnings! How good looking is KDE 4.5.0 you may be thinking, it's very good looking (I might go as far as to say "purty")! The Plasma Workspace has been cleaned up in a number of ways, most notable the notification area is more polished in this release which sports fancy monochromed icons for the tray

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Face recognition & auto-tagging coming to digiKam

Google’s Picasa desktop application has it, Apple’s iPhoto has it and even Windows Live Photo Gallery now has it. What am I talking about?  Face recognition.

Picasa Vs… Ermm

The lack of capable face-recognition in native Linux photo managers has meant, for many, that the hodge-podge of Google’s Picasa has remained the only viable choice when seeking out a ‘modern’ photo-manager that is able to keep up with the Joneses. For as spurious or novel as face-tagging may seem to some, for users with a shed load of family photos to keep track of it is an invaluable timesaver.

Smile!

Get ready to say cheese for the dearth of auto-tagging based on facial recognition in truly native Linux applications is about to be abated - and it’s all thanks to KDE developer Aditya Bhatt and his work on a new library called ‘libface’.

Developed as part of ‘Google Summer of Code’, Aditya Bhatt’s project sees him nabbling away on implementing automatic tagging of faces in popular photo management application ‘digiKam’ via the use of the libface - a library created by both himself and aimed at bringing face recognition technology to the open source community.

So far the project is coming along very nicely and is working pretty well (as identified in the screen-grab above). Better yet according to updates on Abitya’s blog a QT/KDE wrapper for libface, named, and no groaning, ‘liKface’, will likely end up ‘somewhere in kdegraphics/libs’ meaning that this ace new library will not only benefit the intended application ‘digiKam’ but be available for other programs to use, too.

Great work!

Image | Aditya Bhatt

Thanks to Eoin

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KOffice 2.2 Now Available for Kubuntu users to install

KOffice 2.2 - the latest and greatest version of the KDE Office suite - was released a few days ago with many improvements in stability & and file compatibility.

Whilst many users will find OpenOffice the all-round-more-capable office suite, KDE users wanting something integrated and still able to handle most everyday tasks will be pleased to know that Koffice 2.2 is now available to install in Ubuntu via Lucid Backports.

Install Koffice 2.2 in Ubuntu

• Enable 'unsporting updates' via software source
• Open a terminal/konsole and enter: -
• sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install koffice 
• You can now launch Koffice 2.2 from the Applications > Office menu. 

Via | TechieBuzz

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Opera 10.52 gets initial KDE integration, PPC Linux support

The Opera desktop team have made available a new snapshot of their popular browser, this time with "...initial work on KDE 4 integration." Also available is the first Linux PPC build for 10.52. Linux users are still waiting for a final release of Opera's latest browser, released officially for Windows last month, due in part to the stripping out of the QT component in the user-interface and switching to X11 for drawing the interface. This will result in near-native window styling for both GNOME and KDE users. Refer to the official post for known issues and related discussion. Downloads

• Opera 10.52 32bit .deb
• Opera 10.52 64bit .deb
• Opera 10.52 PPC .deb

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UbuntuOne KDE Frontend Coming Soon (PPA Inside)

KDE dev Harald Sitter has been working on something a lot of Kubuntu users are going to love: A native UbuntuOne frontend for KDE. And boy-oh-boy is does it look the business!

The systray application notifies you when of transfers uploading or downloading, when they’ve started and when they have finished. “Additionally”, Harold wrote on his blog announcing this preview, “it will show up whenever there is a problem with the connection.”

Awesome stuff!

Of course, I've gently skipped over the fact that this is merely a post-protoype preview and not in any way a stable snapshot of a release. Hardold himself warns that users can expect “…crashes, start-up failures and missing functionality…”.

Try it out

You can install this early glimpse of this KubuntuOne-client (as i like to call it) via the following PPA: -

https://launchpad.net/~apachelogger/+archive/ubuntuone-kde

However do note the following on how to get it up and transferring: -

Before you do anything you need to run the GNOME client (ubuntuone-client-applet) at least once to obtain authentication from the Ubuntu One server, then you can just quit the GNOME client and start the KDE one (you need to start it with --nofork or it will not work).

Future Plans

Sitter plans for this to land into Kubuntu Lucid, so expect some prompt development over the next coming months. Authentication needs to be implemented and he even talks about possible Dolphin integration, too.

Nice!

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KDE 4.3.3 Released – Boasts Nothing Major

This months update to KDE sees a ton of bug fixes and some more translation work.

Among the improvements in KDE 4.3.3 are: -

• Improved KWin effects
• JuK has been made more stable
• Konqueror ‘detached tab’ bug fixes
• KDE PIM see’s a range of fixes and tweaks

For a full list of changes see here [link].

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KDE 4.3 Released – Sexy As Hell!

KDE 4.3 “Caizon”" was released today. This release sees over 10, 00 bug squashed and almost 2,000 features implemented. KDE 4.3 will be the default desktop in Kubuntu Karmic Koala. 

A host of new applications, improvement in usability and stunning new features make this the likely tipping point for KDE 4 as a whole. Hit the read more button to check out a short 2 minute screencast and truly appreciate the full “wow” factor that KDE 4.3 brings.

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