KDE 4.0: KDE2 2.0

After the final freeze of KDE 3.X I had some thoughts about KDE 4.0 and the expectations the people will have. After all I read it reminded me a bit of everything I read about KDE 2.0.

KDE 4.0 will be totally rewritten in large areas: Phonon, Solid, Plasma, Sonnet, Nepomuk, Strigi, krunner, Raptor, etc. All these new core technologies add huge possibilities – and therefore the users will have huge expectations.

However, not every application will take every core technology to its edge: the developers will need time to get used to the new APIs and also simply to get used to all the new possibilities – there are just so many.
Also, the core technologies will be out in the wild the first time – that means that there will be bugs and parts of these bugs need a 4.1 release to be fixed. In this regard it is already known that Plasma will see quite some changes for KDE 4.1 since the next Qt release will provide specific functions Plasma would like to integrate.

After all I hear, this situation is comparable to KDE 2. When KDE 2 came out there were several brand new technologies for example DCOP, kio and kparts. Also, the konqueror was brand new. The core technologies needed time to smooth out the rough edges, and the application developers needed time to get used to the new things (at least that’s what I was told, at that time I didn’t even knew what KDE is).
And the KDE 4.0 release will be very similar. In this regard KDE 4.0 will remember many people of KDE 2. Like a second release of KDE 2 – but on a new level.

Still, things have changed over time: the entire KDE project matured quite a bit, has much more people working at it and things will be much smoother than at the KDE 2 release. Therefore I’m pretty confident that with KDE 4.1 you won’t notice that there had been a major rework – if you notice it at all.
Of course that does not mean that you should wait until KDE 4.1 – after all I’ve seen there will be enough crazy people (like me) testing KDE 4.0 Alpha and Beta versions so most of the rough edges should be fixed by release date.

The only thing stopping me by now is that my distribution does not provide pre-compiled packages, and my laptop would melt through the desk…

Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit

The first Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit takes place mid June, featuring the fourth Desktop Architects Meeting, an LSB face to face meeting and various council meetings.

The Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, taking place form June 13-15 at Google’s Mountain View Campus in the Bay Area, is supposed to bring company and enterprise orientated minds around Linux together. The invitation-only event combines several previously singular events together, among them also the Desktop Architects Meeting which took place last time in december 2006 and the LSB face2face meeting which also took place last time in that December.

The schedule and agenda of this combined event give an overview over the main talks which will be given:

• State of Linux Kernel Roundtable Discussion — What’s New with Core Development
• State of Linux Roundtable discussion — Where are We Going? Where Have We Been? An Industry Perspective
• Cross Industry/Cross Distro Software Development: The Ubuntu Perspective
• How Do We Get More Apps on Linux? What are the Issues Facing Linux Application Development and How do we Solve Them? (Ha, I can answer that one )
• The Legal Protection of Linux – Patents and Licensing, GPLv3 and the Future
• End Users and Linux: What Works, What Doesn’t?
• How Do We Work Together as a Collaborative Community?
• LF Collaboration Summit Reception
• Joint Meeting of the Vendor, User and Developer Advisory Councils

Besides these talks the sub-events also feature their own talks, which adds up to quite a lot. Here is a list of the sub-events, called tracks:

• Desktop Architect’s Meeting 4, the only track which goes two days long
• User Advisory Council Meeting: Device Drivers
• Vendor Advisory Council Meeting
• LSB Face-To-Face Meeting
• Printing On Linux
• Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) Breakout Meeting
• Mobile Linux
• Kernel messaging
• IPv6
• Testing on Linux
• Multimedia/Audio

Ha, find a topic which is missing. To me it looks like almost everything is covered – and I wonder how many people will attend? It is more or less a conference on its own.

The list of speakers is also a nice read: almost every bigger company and distribution is represented there. Also other companies like Adobe or Real which provide Linux apps have speakers there. If you miss the more community centered groups there, they do appear as attendees.

Actually, the list of attendees reads like a who-is-who of the Linux ecosystem – especially the more business centered part. Interesting here are the numbers (although they probably don’t mean much): the distributions (Novell, Red Hat/Fedora and Ubuntu) has each a fistful of people in the game. But there are companies which send more: Nokia and HP send each 6 people, Google 7, Ricoh and IBM each 9 and Intel even 11 people!
While I can understand IBM, HP and Google and definitely appreciate Intel I wonder why other companies like Ricoh send so many people. And Adobe only has the Flash player and Adobe Reader for Linux, why do they send 4 people? And what about Cisco’s 4 members? Do they sell devices with Linux on them? And what is DreamWorks doing there with three attendees? And where is Trolltech?

Anyway, as I said at the beginning, the meeting is focusing on the topics which are important for companies working in the Linux ecosystem. The important non-company community parts are also represented, but clearly are a minority.
This is not bad (yes, for me even companies are part of the community), but knowing that avoids wondering.

I’m looking forward to the outcome of the meeting. I haven’t found any information about where results will be posted/reported.

First Plasma Screen Cast online [Update]

Aaron Seigo released the first Plasma screen cast. Also, some demos for a system guard Plasma widget are available. Judging from the demos Plasma will be able to deliver quite some nice graphical effects.

Troy Unrau posted the links since Aaron has problems with his blogspot blog at the moment.

There are basically three links: the first (torrent file) one is a screen cast by Aaron showing and explaining one of the basic principles of Plasma: form factors. The idea is that every Plasma widget can understand in which kind of form factor it is. This is important because in the future we will be able to drag and drop Plasma widgets from the Desktop to the task bar and back. In such cases the Plasma widgets might want to change their form and maybe also the amount of data displayed because the desktop usually offers much more space than the task bar.
Aaron shows in case of The Clock how theoretically (because there is no kicker replacement ready yet) the clock changes from the round, analog type which takes much space to a digital version which takes less space.

The other two mentioned demos show two variants of possible ksystemguard Plasma widgets. There are two teams which have made a widget each, and you can check both. The really interesting part about the demos is that it shows a bit what the Plasma system is already supposed to be capable of in the future – and its amazing!

And now put this together with recent news: just imagine a Plasma widget which shows you semantic information in real time: incoming e-mails are put into context of contacts and recent discussions with the contacts while the files attached to the e-mails are automatically checked for possible relations with other discussions. I like that though!

KDE 3.x final freeze, KDE 4 module freeze

The KDE team announced that the 3.x branch is officially closed. There will be no further features or changes besides bug fixes. In the meantime, the KDE 4 module is frozen as well.

This is it: everything is now heading towards KDE 4. The book on KDE 3.x is now closed:

The Release Team has decided that it is time to close the books on KDE 3.5.

To quote coolo:
“No more features, no more string changes, no more docu changes….
Bug fixes are allowed and after some time we’ll do another maintenance
update 3.5.8 – e.g. in september.”

So bugfixes only from now on in the 3.5 branch. If the bugfix requires
a string change, you will need to coordinate that change with the translators.

Keep in mind that this does not touch the KDE-PIM releases – afaik they have their own schedules and even run an “enterprise” branch which will be updated with bug fixes for a long time.
I also hope that KDE 3.x will be updated for quite a long time in the future in case of security bugs because KDE 3.x will be used for the next months and even years by many, many people. But I think the KDE team will keep an eye on this baby.

But this freeze also means that everyone is now concentrating on KDE 4. As you know all basic technologies are now in shape for the application developers and it is time to take them up.

Of course many things wont make it into KDE 4.0 because even KDE developers are just humans and can only include so much new stuff into their programs. But that’s another story. I wonder when I should start using KDE 4. It really sounds as it becomes ready enough to be used by totally crazy people. Like I am.

Speaking about KDE 4: today is also scheduled for the KDE 4 module freeze:

Trunk is frozen for new or resurrected applications.

This also marks the day where all module maintainers have to announce if they are going to follow the official KDE release schedule or not – as an example, KDE-PIM does not follow the way. However, I doubt that any other module will leave the core. But you never know…
We should also soon see a list of all applications which will make it into KDE 4: the time now comes where all KDE 4.0 applications have to leave kdereview to enter their module. The Module Status Page already gives a first impression about some apps which might be dropped for the KDE 4.0 release.

However, don’t panic if your favourite application is among these: it still can find a place in KDE extragear (where several important apps like Amarok and K3B live) and it also might find its way back into the core with the next release like KDE 4.1.