KDE Dot
TUXEDO Computers Becomes the Newest KDE Patron
Herbert Feiler, CEO TUXEDO Computers.
TUXEDO Computers, a company known for selling Linux-powered computers and notebooks, now joins us as a KDE Patron!
"Our customized Linux notebooks (for work or play) are equipped with KDE Plasma, which leads to a positive response from our customers", said Herbert Feiler, CEO TUXEDO Computers. "Furthermore, we additionally do our own development work, which could benefit KDE as upstream as well. We are happy to share our knowledge and would like to secure as well as expand KDE's development work in the long run. Feedback that we receive from customers can also flow directly into KDE's development work."
"For KDE, reaching and serving end-users is part of our reason to exist and TUXEDO can be a great ally in this endeavour." said Aleix Pol, President of KDE e.V. "Together, we will get to expand our frontiers and create systems and tools to further serve our users. It's especially encouraging to see TUXEDO's commitment to join our development communities and collaborate towards making KDE products better for everyone."
TUXEDO Computers joins KDE e.V.’s other Patrons: The Qt Company, SUSE, Google, Blue Systems, Canonical, Enioka, Slimbook and Pine64 to continue to support Free Open Source Software and KDE development through KDE e.V.
Announcing the Winner of the Plasma 25th Anniversary Edition Wallpaper Contest
We are happy to announce the winner of the Plasma 25th Anniversary Edition Wallpaper Contest!
Thanks to all those who submitted their artwork. The variety and quality of the submissions in this edition was simply astounding. As always, there were multiple great options and it was very hard to choose. It was a very close call! But at the end, we have a winner: Patak by Aron!
Patak will make its official debut on October 14, when Plasma 25th Anniversary Edition is finally released.
The Call for Hosts for Akademy 2022 is now officially published
Akademy 2022 is on its way and, despite the continuing pandemic, we are aiming for some in-person aspect for our next conference.
For the upcoming Akademy, we are looking to host it later in 2022, as we expect travel to be a bit more attainable and safe by then. Ideal dates would be in late summer or autumn 2022, specifically late August through October.
If you are interested in hosting Akademy in your city, please send a letter of intent or interest before a full bid by the middle of October 2021. In addition, we ask that you assemble a team of at least 3 people before applying.
Details of what to expect and what we are looking for are in the Call for Hosts[PDF]
If you have any questions or concerns we will be very happy to offer advice and a helping hand, so feel free to reach out anytime!
Please submit all letters of intents and bids to akademy-proposals@kde.org
KDE's Summer App Update
The KDE community makes a vast array of apps which get shipped in Linux distros, on Linux app stores, for Windows and Mac and for Android too. Following the re-branding of our scheduled app releases to KDE Gear we are splitting out the app update into these separate articles which will cover the self-released apps where the projects themselves manage their own release schedule. Here's what we have released in the last few months.
MyGNUHealth
Brand new this week is the first stable release of MyGnuHealth.
MyGNUHealth is a Health Personal Record application focused in privacy, that can be used in desktops and mobile devices.
MyGH has the functionality of a health and activity tracker, and that of a health diary / record. It records and tracks the main anthropometric and physiological measures, such as weight, blood pressure, blood sugar level or oxygen saturation. It keeps track of your lifestyle, nutrition, physical activity, and sleep, with numerous charts to visualize the trends.
MyGNUHealth is also a diary, that records all relevant information from the medical and social domain and their context. In the medical domain, you can record your encounters, immunizations, hospitalizations, lab tests, genetic and family history, among others. In the genetic context, MyGH provides a dataset of over 30000 natural variants / SNP from UniProt that are relevant in humans. Entering the RefSNP will automatically provide the information about that particular variant and it's clinical significance.
Digikam
Digikam 7.2 adds an advanced batch rename feature. Albums management has been improved with database fixes to support better items grouping with special use cases. The tool to batch items in queues comes with a few improvements and fixes, especially when removable items are remaned while processing.
Digikam has bundle builds for Linux AppImages, Mac and Windows which all automatically update.
KGeoTag
Another new app is KGeoTag. You can use KGeoTag to assign image files to GPS locations. This can help you with remembering the exact location where a photo was taken, or with discovering images that were taken at the same place. Of course, this is most useful when used together with another program such as KPhotoAlbum, that can adequately display this information and lets you search by GPS coordinates.
Kup
Kup is a backup scheduler integrating with the Plasma desktop with support for versioned incremental backups using Bup and for sync-type of backup by using Rsync.
The new release adds detection of when a source folder has been removed, when this happens Kup aborts saving backup and prompts user to review what should be included. It also adds a way to prune old backup snapshots, with new small app kup-purger.
Kup is available with your Linux distro.
NeoChat
Here at KDE we have just run our Akademy conference through the Matrix chat network. Neochat is our app to use Matrix chats.
The first thing you will see then opening NeoChat 1.2 is that it is now using message bubbles. The text input component was completely redesigned. It’s also now possible to get autocompletion of commands. It’s now possible to send customized reactions when replying to a message with /react for example /react I love NeoChat.
Most importantly the fireworks and snow visual effects can now cheer up your day.
Neochat is available in your Linux distro and on Flathub.
Money isn't the only way to make great software but here at KDE we make great money counting software anyway. Accounting app Skrooge 2.25 adds a couple of new features. Opt-out from accounts from the "accounts" widget in the Dashboard.
Also included in this release is a new dashboard layouts: by columns and with layouts in layouts.
Tellico is a software application for organizing your collections. It provides default templates for books, bibliographies, videos, music, video games, coins, stamps, trading cards, comic books, and wines. You can also create your own custom collection of anything you like!
Tellico 3.4 is available, with several new features, updated data sources, bug fixes and build changes.
App author Robby Stephenson says "I’m excited about this release. It pulls together a few different things that I’d been working on. I’ve got a few more ideas about charts and reports to be added. The additional coin and stamp data sources really fill a niche. Everything seems to be working really nicely together, so I’m happy to put 3.4 out.".
BugfixesWe also made a bunch of bugfix releases for our apps.
- KStars 3.5.2 adds Polar Alignment can now be performed while pointing anywhere in the sky. Thus, for example, if a tree is blocking your view of the pole, you can still polar align.
- Krita 4.4.5 needs no introduction. The team is are preparing for a major new release but until then this bugfix which removes a nasty bug on MacOS.
- GCompris 1.1 updates graphics in 21 of the activities and not provides a .msi windows installer. Get it from the Microsoft store, Snap Store, Android or even Raspberry Pi.
- KMyMoney 5.1.2 fixes the major issue of budget not using Fiscal Year.
- Kid3, our audio tag editor, fixes a crash in Windows installs
- KDiff3 added MacOS X and Windows 64 bit builds.
- And lastly the image viewer Kuickshow quietly released 0.10.2 to update it to current versions of Qt and KDE Frameworks
Music app Amarok 3.0 Alpha was released for early testing. And Comic reader Peruse 2.0 Beta 1 is out for trial.
App StoresKDE's apps are available through an increasing number of channels. Your Linux distribution usually carries the latest version but you can also get it direct from app stores.
Snap store has over 100 apps. Flathub has recently gained VVave.
KDE Connect preview on the Windows Store
New on the Microsoft Store is a preview of KDE Connect for Windows. Give it a try.
Akademy 2021 - Day 8
After 4 days + 1 morning of BoFs, hacking sessions and meetings, talks at Akademy resumed in room 1 on Friday at 17:00 UTC. Kevin Ottens and Christelle Zouein from enioka Haute Couture kicked things off with the talk Community's Adventures in Analyticsland - Or the State of the Community Through New Analytics. Christelle and Kevin showed us the data analysis tools they have been working on to study information collected from KDE's development repositories and the surprising facts and trends they discovered.
At the same time, in room 2, Volker Krause talked about Releasing Android Apps - Building, optimizing and deploying release APKs. In this talk, Volker explained that, because KDE developers are producing more and more mobile-friendly applications, there was a need to better understand how to release mobile platforms.
Volker covered the efforts to expand KDE's tools for building packages (that already help produce packages for Windows, macOS and AppImage) so developers can also use them to create Android packages.
At 19:40, Manav Sethi and Paul Brown came on in room 1 to talk about a new KDE project: Kockatoo a tool to simplify the management of social media posting. After Paul explained the issues derived from managing multiple accounts on a wide variety of platforms, Manav demonstrated how Kockatoo can help. The speakers then explained what was missing from the project and how they thought Kockatoo could help the different KDE projects be more efficient on social media.
In room 2, Lars Knoll from the Qt Company, talked about Qt 6, its new features and the current roadmap leading toward its completion. In the talk, Lars gave an overview of the largest changes that are included in Qt 6, where the development stands right now with Qt 6.1 and where it is headed.
At 20:20, Albert Astals Cid talked about the KDE Qt 5.15 patch collection, the branch of Qt5 maintained by the KDE community after the Qt Company halted updates to concentrate on Qt6. Albert explained in his talk why this patch collection was created, what it is and how it is maintained.
Meanwhile, in room 2, Shawn Rutledge talked about Interactive UIs in Qt Quick 3D. In his talk, Shawn explored the possibilities of enabling controls and interactive elements in 3D virtual reality-like environments and showed us some seriously cool examples of how technology works.
At 21:00 UTC, Nuno Pinheiro took over in room 1 and talked of his work developing O² ("Oxygen squared"), a new icon set based upon KDE's iconic Oxygen designs of yore.
KDE's now classic Oxygen icon set.
In room 2, Thomas Hartmann introduced us to Qt Design Studio, a new tool that intends to break the cycle of painstaking feedback loops between designers and developers.
After this talk in room 2, all the attendees convened in room 1 to hear Aleix Pol, president of KDE, talk about working professionally with KDE. In his presentation, Aleix shared his own experiences of working with the KDE Community and reflected on the experience of having hired several contractors to work within KDE.
The last act of Akademy 2021 after the BoF wrap up of the day, was the traditional ceremony of the Akademy Awards. This year they went to Alexander Semke of LabPlot for Best Application, Paul Brown from the Promo team for Best Non-Application Contribution, and Adriaan de Groot, who received the Jury Award for his selfless dedication and work within the KDE Community.
This year's Akademy Award winners with Luigi Toscano hosting the event.
And that was it! Another fun-filled and fruitful Akademy was over, and now we all look forward to meeting next year again, hopefully in person this time.
All the talk recordings are now available on PeerTube or if you prefer you can also just grab the files
Akademy 2021 - Wedneday BoF Wrap-up
Wedneday continued the Akademy 2021 BoFs, meetings, group sessions and hacking. There is a wrap-up session at the end of the day so that what happened in the different rooms can be shared with everyone including those not present.
Watch Wednesday's wrap-up session in the video below
Your browser does not support the video tag.
Tuesday BoF Wrap-up video
Akademy 2021 - Tuesday BoF Wrap-up
Tuesday continued the Akademy 2021 BoFs, meetings, group sessions and hacking. There is a wrap-up session at the end of the day so that what happened in the different rooms can be shared with everyone including those not present.
Watch Tuesday's wrap-up session in the video below
Your browser does not support the video tag.
Tuesday BoF Wrap-up video
Akademy 2021 - Monday BoF Wrap Up
Monday was the first day of Akademy 2021 BoFs, group sessions and hacking. There is a wrap-up session at the end of the day so that what happened in the different rooms can be shared with everyone including those not present.
Watch Monday's wrap-up session in the video below
Your browser does not support the video tag.
Monday BoF Wrap-up video
Akademy 2021 - Day 3
The day started at 8:00 UTC sharp with four very interesting lightning talks. Kai Uwe Broulik talked about how to become productive using Plasma at home. He pointed out tips and tricks that allow you to avoid interruptions and improve your time working from your couch.
Niccolò Venerandi explained from experience how to grow a KDE Video Community. Niccolò runs a fledgling and upcoming YouTube channel and gave advice on how to manage your content and even how to successfully monetize it.
Alexander Saoutkin talked about KIO FUSE and how it brings a slew of useful features that help integrate remote file systems into the local one.
Rohan Asokan talked about Kalk, his first OSC project and his first experience developing for KDE. His story was an uplifting look into how you can get started in Free Software development.
At 9:00 UTC, Aleix Pol, Adriaan de Groot, Eike Hein, Lydia Pintscher and Neofytos Kolokotronis delivered their traditional yearly live KDE e.V. Board report. The Board members gave an overview of the activities carried out over the last year and provided an outlook for the next. Highlights included employing more contractors to carry out vital KDE work, plans for upcoming events and sprints (in person at last!), and the plans for KDE's 25th Anniversary happening later this year.
David Edmundson, from the Financial Working Group, explains KDE's monetary situation.
This was followed by KDE's working groups' reports. Tomaz Canabrava kicked off things by telling us about the Community Working Group, the group of valiant volunteers who tackle conflict resolution within the Community. Although 2020 was rough for many reasons, the CWG managed to solve disputes and added a new member to their ranks.
Frederik Gladhorn and Olaf Schmidt-Wischhöfer told us about the KDE Free Qt Working Group. The KDE Free Qt Foundation is in charge of maintaining and managing the agreement between KDE and the Qt Company regarding the licensing as free software of the Qt framework. The working group is supporting the members of the foundation and helped setting up KDE's Qt 5 Patch Collection.
Bhushan Shah then introduced the work being carried out by the Sysadmin Working Group. The list of tasks and achievements completed by KDE's sysadmins over 2020 is too long and impressive to list here, but, the highlights include setting up the Big Blue Button infrastructure for KDE events and sprints, upgrading and modernizing KDE's server infrastructures so it can handle the increase in demands from the Community (it served 40 Terabytes only in April!), the implementation of MyKDE, which will soon substitute KDE Identity, and improved specialized services, like maps.kde.org, that serves maps and plans to KDE's mapping applications such as Marble and Itinerary.
Neofytos introduced the Advisory Board Working Group and explained its role as a point of contact for sponsors and members of the Advisory Board. Neofytos also introduced KDE's two new patrons: Pine64 and Slimbook.
The Financial Working Group reported that one time donations increased by 40% in 2020. These are donations made by private citizens. The income from student mentorships (GSoC, Code-In) decreased as the interest seems to be trending down for these activities. Meanwhile, major income sources remained stable, although financial assets grew in 2020. Hence, as a non-profit, KDE needs to spend more money and is currently doing so by starting to employ more contractors.
Carl Schwan introduced the Fundraising Working Group, the group that identifies fundraising opportunities. Carl introduced the new member of the group, Niccolò Venerandi, and told us about the updated relate.kde.org and donations pages.
Regular talks started again at 10:20 UTC, and Raghavendra Kamath told us how they built a new way for artists, users and developers to communicate in the Krita community using Discourse. Apart from the technical details of the implementation, Raghavendra explained different features and how they benefited the users.
Meanwhile, in room 2, Kai Köhne, from the Qt Company, talked about "Porting user applications to Qt" and how the release of Qt 6 is going. Kai explained that, although 6.0 was released in December, not all of Qt 5 was ported at that time. Gradually, over 2021, more and more Qt libraries and frameworks will be implemented into Qt6, reaching completion in early 2022.
Later, in room 1, Neofytos Kolokotronis delivered his talk "Developing products that break out of our bubble(s)" in which he presented the various levels of bubbles that KDE's products need to break out from in order to grow their userbase. He used examples from applications that are already doing well, and proposed candidates ready to travel outside KDE's orbit.
In room 2, Timothée Ravier introduced us to "Kinoite", a new immutable Fedora variant with the KDE Plasma desktop based on rpm-ostree, Flatpak and podman. Timothée explained how "Kinoite" improves the user experience with atomic and safe updates for the system (rpm-ostree), the applications (Flatpak) and development tools or containers (podman).
The morning sessions finished with Lydia Pintscher and Neofytos again in room 1 talking about "Making a living in KDE", and Arjen Hiemstra in room 2 with his presentation "Closing the distance between CPU and GPU with Signed Distance Fields".
At last year's Akademy, the KDE e. V. board announced that they were putting together an initiative to help people make a living with KDE products. In today's presentation, Lydia explained what they wanted to do in that regard and the plans for the future.
Meanwhile, in room 2, Arjen explained how traditional 2D rendering methods using exclusively CPU were missing out from using increasingly powerful GPUs. In his talk, Arjen described a technique called Signed Distance Fields, already in use in the KQuickCharts framework and ShadowedRectangle in Kirigami, that offers a very powerful tool for advanced 2D rendering.
After a break, the conference started up at 17:00 UTC again with sponsor talks. openSUSE, Canonical, reMarkable, Pine64, Shells and Collabora all sent video messages explaining what they do and wishing the Community a happy and productive Akademy.
In the first talk of the evening in room 1, Andreas Cord-Landwehr introduced us to "The Art of Logging", and showed us how the Qt logging framework worked and how one can access and analyze logs via remote access even using an embedded device, like a Plasma Mobile smartphone.
In room 2, Marco Martin talked about "Plasma internals: the next few years", where he talked about the move from Qt5 to Qt6. He explained that, while the port to Qt6 is not posing a technology challenge as big as when KDE migrated from Qt4 to Qt5, it does open the door to learning from the lessons of the Plasma 5 lifetime, and the possibility to refactor and simplify things in order to offer a leaner and more robust experience for users and developers alike.
At 20:20 UTC, David Edmundson presented "Addressing Wayland Robustness" in room 1, in which he talked about the current inherent instability of Wayland and how Plasma, as a late-adopter of the X Windows successor, could possibly avoid some of the issues that troubled other environments.
In room 2, Christian Strømme took us to another dimension with his talk "Qt Quick 3D in Qt 6.2". In his talk, Christian introduced us to Qt Quick 3D and its features and showed us how it could be used to create spectacular 3D renders and effects.
Later, Björn Balazs took to room 1 and told us "How we can solve the personal data problem". Given the issues derived from collecting and processing personal data, Björn provided in his talk a vision for the KDE Community of a system, that would be trustworthy, democratic, transparent and that guarantees digital privacy for each and every one. At the same time, it would provide fair access to personal data for those interested.
Meanwhile, in room 2 Igor Ljubuncic, aka "Dedoimedo", took us to Snaps, the final frontier with "Dev Trek - The Next Generation". In Igor's talk, he told us about the advantages of Snaps, self-contained applications, that boast reliable updates and a coherent behavior across a wide range of distributions.
Towards the end of the evening, Bhavisha Dhruve, Aniqa Khokhar, Aiswarya Kaitheri Kandoth and Tomaz Canabrava told us about KDE Network, the project that builds communities in places where Free Software adoption would otherwise be scattered at best. In the talk, the panel explained the achievements they have reached since the program began, and the upcoming projects they are currently working on.
Jeri Ellsworth delivers a keynote at Akademy 2021.
The last session was the keynote by Jeri Ellsworth, "Journey from Farm Girl to Holograms". Jeri is a maker extraordinaire, ex-Valve hacker, self-taught chip designer and inventor of a system for playing 3D tabletop games using Augmented Reality glasses. She told us how her mentors helped her become the successful techie she is today in a roller coaster of a story, with so many twists and turns, that this brief description cannot do it justice.
You will just have to hear it for yourself.
In fact, if you missed any of today's talks, you can catch up watching the raw unedited version of the footage on YouTube.
Although this is not the best way to watch the talks, and we are working on bringing you higher quality, nicely edited videos, if you can't wait, here are the links:
Akademy 2021 - Day 2
First thing in the morning, Aleix Pol, president of KDE, introduced the event at and explained how Akademy 2021 was still "special" because we could still not meet in person.
Aleix then introduced the first keynote speaker of the event: Patricia Aas, co-founder of TurtleSec and a C++ developer and trainer. In her talk, Patricia explored bugs, types of bugs, how to deal with the secondary problems bugs create.
Then Aleix was back with his own talk, in which he told us about KDE's "All about the apps" goal. The goal encourages community members to develop, improve and help distribute KDE apps. Thism it turns out, is especially important for new KDE environments, such as Plasma Mobile! He explained how the goal is going and encouraged people to join the effort.
Aleix Pol talked about the "All About the Apps" goal. Illustration by Jens Reuterberg (ohyran).
Niccolò Venerandi took over and talked about the "Consistency" goal. The Consistency goal seeks to make sure all KDE elements integrate well with each other, and makes sure the look and feel of apps and environments are similar across the board. He explained, with live drawings, how people working on this goal establish rules for each of the elements in graphical elements, such as app windows, and how that has contributed to apps gracefully integrating with each other.
Méven Car then talked about all the progress made by the people working on the Wayland goal, and Vlad Zahorodnii covered the next steps of what would soon be arriving.
All the goal Champions, Aleix, Meven and Niccolò, got together with Adam Szopa and Lydia Pintscher and talked about their projects and how they help focus the efforts of the KDE community. Although, as Lydia pointed out, it is not the only way to get things done in KDE, it is a good way to start and understand what KDE's main concerns and aims are.
The morning ended with four lightning talks, in which Anupam Basak talked about how to use Qt with Python; Carl Schwan analyzed the health of the KDE Community with some very illuminating (and colorful!) graphics and charts; Andreas Cord-Landwehr talked about SPDX License Markers in KDE, that is markers placed inside code that identifies the license the code is distributed under and that can be read by a machine (saving a lot of money in legal fees!). Finally, David Redondo talked about Power Profiles in Plasma, that is, how Plasma manages the power it needs, the state of the battery and so on.
The evening talks started at 17:00 UTC with the Sponsors' Talks, where the companies and organizations that helped finance Akademy explained their products and services, and the role Open Source software plays in their businesses. Mbition, KDAB, Qt Company, GitLab, Fedora all delivered talks.
Later, in Room 1, Nicolas Fella used his talk "What's cooking for KDE Frameworks 6" to explain the work being carried out to build KF6. KF6 is the version of KDE Frameworks which will use, and be compatible with Qt6. In the talk, developers learned about upcoming changes and how they could contribute to the effort.
Meanwhile, in Room 2, in his talk "Staying Indoors - OSM indoor maps for KDE Itinerary", Volker Krause observed that providing information about the insides of building, such as big stations and airports, can be vital for travelers. Unfortunately, often the data you get from online services is confusing and overwhelming. Volker explained how KDE's Itinerary app splits up the information, making large buildings easier to navigate.
At 20 past six, Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen took over in Room 1 and told us their History of Software Distribution, and explored the many ways they have tried to get software to users.
At the same time, in room 2, Daniel Vrátil, introduced us to C++ Coroutines, a new feature in C++ 20. He explained how coroutines can be used with certain Qt operations, such as DBus calls, network replies, and so on.
Then Massimo Stella presented Kdenlive, KDE's advanced video-editing software. In his talk, he covered the Kdenlive's new features, such as the "smart" subtitler, the zoom bars in the timeline, and same-track transitions.
Meanwhile, in room 2, Kevin Ottens, in his presentation "KF6 the Architecture Overview - Time to Slice Things Up Yet Again", talked about how the KF5 offer was originally structured and how it has led to some issues over time. He then explained an idea that could help improve things while moving to KF6.
Back in room 1, Paul Brown and Aniqa Khokhar explained to attendees how they can take advantage of the Promo team in "Promo as a Service", and how KDE members could improve the visibility of their projects.
Meanwhile, in room 2, David Edmundson was delivering "Wayland for Qt application developers". In his talk, he explored what Wayland means for Qt application developers, and some common traps and pitfalls and how to avoid them.
During the last session in room 1, Cornelius Schumacher explained in "Towards sustainable computing" what the impact computing had on our environment and talked about strategies KDE could adopt to become more efficient, and how developers could create apps that used less energy.
Finally, in room 2, Alexander Saoutkin used his talk "ARM Memory Tagging Extension - Fighting Memory Unsafety with Hardware" to explore the threats posed by memory unsafety in C++ programs and some new tools that help minimize them.
Although it is not the best way to watch the talks, if you are in a hurry to watch a specific session, there is a raw and unedited recording of the talks on YouTube:
- Talks Day 2 - Room 1 - Session 1 (Morning)
- Talks Day 2 - Room 1 - Session 2 (Evening)
- Talks Day 2 - Room 2
Meanwhile, our video editors are hard at work cutting and improving the footage, and we will have high quality videos of the talks up and available soon.