Today we break ground. Today we launch the first of what will be many fundraisers for specific projects. Our goal is to get funds directly into the hands of the people who make the software.

Up until now, when KDE has run a fundraiser, or received donations, the proceedings have gone to KDE as a whole. We use the money to fund operational costs, such as office rent, server maintenance, and salaries; and to pay for travel expenses for community members, event costs, and so on. This has worked well and helps the KDE Community and common project to flourish.

But the fundraiser starting today is very different. For the first time KDE is running a fundraiser for a specific project: today we have the ambitious goal of raising 15,000€ for the Kdenlive team. The funds will be given to contributors to help Kdenlive take the next step in the development of KDE's advanced, free and open video-editing application. For the record, on the cards for upcoming releases are nested timelines, a new effects panel, and improving the overall performance of Kdenlive, making it faster, more responsive, and even more fun to work with.

The advantages for the Kdenlive team members are many, but mainly there is no need for them to worry about setting up and managing bank accounts, or, indeed, a whole foundation. KDE's financial, legal, promotional, and admin teams are there for Jean Baptiste, Julius, Camille, Farid, Massimo, and Eugen, and are helping make the process as streamlined and painless as possible.

There are also immense advantages for the KDE Community as a whole. This event will set the basis for similar future fundraisers for all KDE projects. Our aim is that contributors be able to work on their Free Software projects with the peace of mind that comes from having their financial needs covered.

Want to help? Head over to the Kdenlive fundraiser page and donate now.

Want to help more? Join KDE and contribute to building the future of KDE.

By Joseph P. De Veaugh-Geiss

On 20-21 August KDE's Promo team held a two-day Sprint in Saumur, France. I was fortunate to be able to attend along with 7 other participants and contribute to discussions about a range of topics. To give a taste, here I will focus on two of the topics discussed: a KDE-for promotional campaign and diversity initiatives at KDE.

Planning the KDE-for website.

KDE-for is an idea that existed prior to the Sprint. A KDE-for-kids website even exists, but we wanted to see how far we could take the idea. Our brainstorming generated numerous proposals, including KDE-for-creators, KDE-for-developers, KDE-for-researchers, KDE-for-teachers, KDE-for-students, KDE-for-gamers, KDE-for-activists, and so on. Each potential for-group gives us the opportunity to connect KDE products with end users and highlight the many communities within and around KDE. It also provides a place to showcase flagship apps while raising awareness about the sometimes lesser known ones complimenting them.

One of the issues with the idea is what to do when there are software gaps. Should KDE-for also promote non-KDE software when it fulfills a useful but missing function for a particular target group? KDE software is excellent bar none, but we may not offer everything to meet every group's needs. Personally I am for doing so -- when the source project supports it, of course. User autonomy and choice within a rich software eco-system are, for me, one of the undeniable strengths of FOSS. Although attempting a complete list of software options would not be helpful, why not support other FOSS developers and give users a curated list about excellent FOSS applications that may be useful to them? We are all on the same team after all!

We worked ... and we ate!

Another topic which came up and one that I am interested in regarding the KDE Eco project is how to promote diversity within KDE. Unfortunately, I must admit that I know far too little about promoting diversity, a gap I need to address. As they say: One cannot expect diversity just to happen, one needs to cultivate it.

So I was happy to learn that over the past few years KDE Promo has been pushing a KDE networks initiative to build international communities. At the moment the networks include India, China, Brazil, and USA. One discussion at the Sprint centered around creating an additional Europe network -- or Europe:Spain, Europe:Germany, etc. networks -- to remove any implication of a default network. KDE is a world-wide community and it only makes sense that our internal and external structures reflect that. Another discussion was about expanding these networks, for instance, to Africa and Singapore and South Korea, among others. Perhaps you, the reader, can help build these networks where you live?

On a personal note, I am drawn to KDE and FOSS in general because Free Software can meet the needs of communities in ways that non-Free Software never can. With proprietary software, there is no guarantee that users have a say in the direction of software development. Moreover, it is arrogant to assume that what works for one community automatically transfers to another. Free Software entails that communities can influence technology so it truly works for them and their users ... for creators in Japan, for teachers in Taiwan, for activists in Africa. The KDE-for campaign and the expansion of KDE Networks will help communities make KDE software the best software it can be. And I am proud to be a part of it.

And, of course, in France we ate -- but not only that, we cooked! Our local host invited us to his garden with family and friends and made us Fouée in a wood-fired oven. All in all the Sprint was a great opportunity to push many important topics forward while having a wonderful time together. I look forward to the next one!

After two years of virtual conferences, the in-person on-site version of Akademy is finally back! This year you will be able to attend Akademy, meet KDE community members face-to-face, get to know the vibrant city of Barcelona, and enjoy interesting and intriguing talks, panels and keynotes. That said, even if you can't make it to Barcelona, you can still attend Akademy online as well. Let's see what this year's schedule has in store for you: Akademy will officially kick off with a Welcome event on Friday, September 30th, followed by several talks on Saturday, October 1st and Sunday, October 2nd and from Monday, October 3rd to Friday, October 7th there will be BoFs ("Birds of a Feather" sessions), workshops, meetings and training sessions.

Conference

The talks on Saturday will cover everything from KDE's official Goals, to Plasma products and gaming devices. Nate Graham will discuss his 7-step plan to spread KDE software and take over the world. Aleix Pol Gonzalez will walk us through the process of creating a new Plasma product. And David Edmundson will talk about Steam Deck, one of the most interesting and exciting KDE success stories of recent times. On Sunday, we'll be hearing about app development, Plasma integration in distros, and AI-powered KDE environments, among many other things. Nicolas Fella will kick off the day by showing us how launching applications can be trickier than it first seems and the pitfalls you have to look out for. We'll be hearing all about the future of the backends of KDE software and what the 6th generation of KDE Frameworks has in store for us. And Aditya Mehra will explore OpenVoiceOS and will explain how we are incorporating KDE into devices and powering them with AI-driven voice recognition technologies. And that is not all! Stay tuned for the announcement of our two keynote speakers coming soon, here, on the Dot.

BoFs, Workshops, and Hacking

During the week following the conference part of the event, KDE community members will attend BoFs and will meet up with colleagues with similar interests to work elbow-to-elbow, social distancing permitting, on their projects. They will also attend workshops, meetings and training sessions until the closing of the event on the 7th of October. With a program so full of exciting talks and activities, how could you miss it? Register now and check out the full schedule.

Dot Categories: Community and Events

Spanish manufacturer (and KDE patron) Slimbook has just released their new KDE-themed Slimbook ultrabook.

The KDE Slimbook 4 comes with a Ryzen 5700U processor and KDE's full-featured Plasma desktop running on KDE Neon. It also comes with dozens of Open Source programs and utilities pre-installed and access to hundreds more.

The KDE Slimbook 4's AMD Ryzen 5700U processor is one of the most efficient CPUs for portable computers in the range. With its 8 GPU cores and 16 threads, it can run your whole office from home and on the go, render 3D animations, compile your code and serve up the entertainment for you during down time.

The Slimbook starts Plasma by default on Wayland, the state-of-the-art display server. With Wayland, you can enjoy the advantages of crisp fonts and images, framerates adapted to each of your displays, and all the touchpad gestures implemented in Plasma 5.25.

Talking of displays, the USB-C port, apart from allowing charging, comes with video output, letting you link up another external monitor. Another nifty detail is the backlit black keyboard with the Noto Sans monographed keys, the same font used on the Plasma desktop.

Remember that with every purchase, KDE receives a donation from Slimbook and KDE Community members get a generous discount!

Check out here complete details, specs and benchmarks.

The summer sun is here and new apps come with it -- unless you live in the southern hemisphere, in which case, congratulations! You got past the winter solstice, and it's all longer days and new app releases from here onwards.

LabPlot 2.9.0

New worksheet elements to annotate curve data point and to show images
on the worksheet.

LabPlot is KDE's open source and cross-platform data visualization and analysis software. It is accessible to everyone, and Labplot 2.9 adds a bunch of new features, such as new worksheet elements to annotate curve data points and to show images on the worksheet.

You can also now plot the data against multiple and different axes. A new visualization type, box plot provides a quick summary of the basic statistical properties of the data set, and a collection of multiple well-known color maps and a feature that allows for conditional formatting of the data in the spreadsheet let's you obtain insights into the structure of your data and its statistical properties directly in the spreadsheet.

We added Hilbert transform to the set of analysis functions and LabPlot can now import and export more formats, having added MATLAB, SAS, Stata and SPSS to the list.

Labplot can be downloaded with your Linux distro package manager, through Snapcraft, Flatpak, as well as for Mac and Windows.

Haruna 0.8

KDE's Haruna video player.

Haruna is the KDE video player with YouTube integration. This new release has support for global menus, can be configured to pause playback when minimised and save the time position when shutdown. It also adds a "recent files" menu option, and useful actions to load the last file, restart playback and jump to your "watch later" list.

Install on Linux.
Download from Flathub

GCompris 2.4

GCompris provides kids with more than 100 fun educational activities.

Our educational activities app, GCompris, has made a number of new releases over the last few months and, among other things, has managed to reduce the space it takes up on disk by 30%. GCompris has also added new voices in Norwegian Nynorsk and Malayalam, and new, updated images makes it look prettier than ever.

You can find packages of this new version for GNU/Linux, Windows, Raspberry Pi and macOS on the download
page. It's also available from the Android Play store, the F-Droid repository and the Windows store.

Digikam 7.6

Digikam's new Flow View plugin.

DigiKam 7.6 has made their AppImage slicker by using ICU for full Unicode support and Qt 5.15 and libraw.

There's a new Flow View Plugin which uses the masonry layout. Masonry is a grid layout based on columns, but, unlike other grid layouts, it doesn’t have fixed height rows. Basically, Masonry layout optimizes the use of space inside the canvas by reducing any unnecessary gaps. Without this type of layout, certain restrictions are required to maintain the structure of layout, as with the main icon-view in digiKam album window. This kind of layout is used by the Pinterest social network for example.

DigiKam 7.6.0 source code tarball, Linux 64 bits AppImage bundles, macOS Intel package, and Windows 64 bits installers can be downloaded from this repository.

KStars 3.5.9

KStars

KStars is probably the most feature-rich free astronomy software around and the 3.5.9
release adds some exciting new features.

HiPS (Hierarchical Progressive Surveys) is a technology that provides progressive high resolution images of the sky at different zoom levels. KStars fully supports online HiPS where data is downloaded from online servers and cached to be displayed on the Sky Map.

A new simplified and powerful Mosaic Planner directly integrates in the Sky Map and greatly benefits from HiPS overlay to make your target-framing spot on. Toggle the Mosaic View from the toolbar, and select your equipment and the mosaic configuration. You can also use it as a very simple tool to frame a single 1 x 1 tile.

KStars also adds the ability to refocus after a meridian flip is complete. This is very useful for some optical train setups where the focuser might shift the duration the flip.

KStars can be installed on Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux.

RKWard 0.7.4

RKWard.

RKWard is KDE's R app for statistics and has improved the first use experience in its latest versions. RKWard devs have done that by reworking the "Welcome to RKWard" page entirely: it now serves as a "dashboard" with some of the most important tasks, including, among other things, several new options for importing data from other programs. Several unnecessary dialogs that used to greet new users have been removed.

Beyond this, almost all plugins now support a preview, helping you see results faster, and to send only intended output to the output window.

Download RKWard for macOS, Windows and Linux.

Bugfixes */

• The creators of the Krita painting app have fixed some crashes in version 5.0.6.
• Ruqola 1.7.2, KDE's Rocket.chat app, adds a Windows testing build and can be downloaded as Linux packages and from Flathub. Incidently Rocket.chat announced that they would add bridging to Matrix so they can talk to the rest of KDE's chat rooms.
• The Tellico project, creators of KDE's collection manager app, has released version3.4.4 and mended a bug that stops a nasty potential data loss when using emojis.
• Okteta 0.26.9 comes with more translations and fixes that help Okteta remember settings values. Grab Okteta from your distro's Linux package manager, FlatHub, Snapcraft or as a testing Windows build.
• KDE's diff tool for comparing files, resolved a major performance regression in handling Windows style line endings in version 1.9.5.
• RSIBreak 0.12.15, KDE's wellbeing app that helps prevent repetitive strain injuries from overusing your keyboard and mouse, adds an option to suppress breaks while full-screen windows are visible.

Pre-release betas

• Making its way closer to release, isoimagewriter has published a build for Windows.

Dot Categories: Applications

By Adam Szopa

I'm super excited to finally announce the start of the submission process for the brand new KDE Goals!

KDE sets goals that help the community focus on important things that need to get done in collaboration across many teams. Over the years, the community has set goals to tackle issues with usability, made it easier for new contributors to start working on KDE projects, implemented new tech that will serve us for years to come, and much more.

KDE Goals set a direction for the community and help concentrate efforts in areas deemed important by the KDE community itself. Every couple of years, new goals are selected to reflect the communities current priorities.

Jonathan Riddell and Niccolò Venerandi explain their ideas for the KDE goals during Akademy 2019.

To submit a new goal proposal, you can use the dedicated workboard and shape the future direction of the KDE community.

This stage in the process lasts until July 16th, but don’t wait until the last moment! Submit early, and use the remaining time to listen to the feedback, refine and update your proposal. Only submissions with good descriptions will move to the next stage: the community vote.

To make things easier, we provide a template ticket that you have to copy and fill out with your content. This way, none of the important parts of a good proposal will be skipped, and there will be consistency between the different proposals.

You will need an account to create a new proposal, and then use the arrow in the “Not ready for voting” column to create a new task. Don’t forget to copy the description from the template!

Remember, by submitting a Goal proposal, you are also submitting yourself as the Goal’s Champion! A Goal Champion the face of the goal and the motivator of the initiative, but not necessarily the one that implements most of the tasks. After all, this is a community goal, so a good champion will motivate others to join in and help achieve amazing things.

If you want to learn more about the whole process, see the wiki for more details.

Don’t wait! Submit your proposal and, who knows? Perhaps your idea will be announced as one of the new goals during Akademy 2022!

Akademy 2022 will be a hybrid event, in Barcelona and online that will be held from Saturday 1st to Friday 7th October. The Call for Participation is still open! Submit your talk ideas and abstracts as the deadline has been extended until the 19th June.

Why talk at #Akademy2022?

Akademy attracts people from all over the world, not only from the global KDE Community, but also from companies, Free Software developers and pundits from other projects, public institutions, and more. We all meet together to discuss and plan the future of the Community and its technology. You will meet people that are receptive to your ideas and will help you with their skills and experience.

How do you get started?

You do not have to worry about details or a presentation right now. Just think of an idea and submit some basic details about your talk. You can edit your abstract after the initial submission.

All topics relevant to the KDE Community are welcome. Here are a few ideas to get you started on your talk:

• What KDE projects have you contributed to? Tell us about your work, and get feedback and support!
• Where do you think should KDE go next?
• How has KDE software impacted you/people you know in real life?
• Are there particular problems with KDE you think you can give us some insight on? How would you solve it?
• How can we improve KDE for people with disabilities?
• How can we increase the participation of women in our community?
• How can we accelerate full support on Wayland?
• What is next for Plasma mobile?
• What is the current state of the project you are working on?
• Have you used any KDE applications in ingenious ways or created something great with them? Tell us about your work!

These are just some ideas to get the ball rolling. However, you can submit a proposal on any topic as long as you can make it relevant to KDE. For more ideas for talks, check out the videos from previous years: 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, and 2015.

For more details and information visit our Call for Participation page.

Dot Categories: Community and Events