By Benson Muite

This year Season of KDE has several projects focusing on the accessibility and sustainability goals. There are three projects focused on accessibility, three on sustainability and three additional projects in other areas.

The sustainability projects had fifteen excellent applicants for just three projects, so selecting mentees was challenging. The time mentee applicants invested in applying is much appreciated, and any applicants who have not been selected are encouraged to continue contributing to KDE and open source. It is possible to make smaller contributions to KDE projects that allow possible mentors to see your work and then mentor you informally.

The projects and their mentees that were officially selected for SoK are listed below.

Sustainability Projects

These projects are related to the Blauer Engel (Blue Angel) for FOSS project, a certification for environmentally friendly open source software. The Blauer Engel project is part of the Global Ecolabelling Network, a non-profit organization that certifies eco-friendliness of products within a particular class, and thus allows users to make informed choices.

• Preparation of KDE apps for Blue Angel eco-certification
• Mentor: Joseph P. De Veaugh-Geiss
• Mentee: Rudraksh Karpe
• Improve KDE Eco Test emulation tool
• Mentors: Karanjot Singh, Emmanuel Charruau, and Joseph P. De Veaugh-Geiss
• Mentee: Mohammed Ibrahim
• Measurement of energy consumption with Selenium
• Mentors: Emmanuel Charruau and Harald Sitter
• Mentee: Nitin Tejuja

Accessibility Projects

These projects aim to allow eveybody to use KDE software and KDE websites by improving their accessibility.

• Rishi Kumar will be working on the accessibility and UI testing of Tokodon. This is based on theAT-SPI/Selenium bridge created by Harald Sitter.
• Mentor: Carl Schwan
• Mentee: Rishi Kumar
• Improving the accessibility of KDE’s websites
• Mentor: Paul Brown and Aniqa Khokhar
• Mentee: Victoria Chen
• Plasma accessibility widget
• Mentor: Fushan Wen
• Mentee: Brent Mackey

Additional Projects

• Automate Flatpak checks in GitLab Invent CI
• Mentors: Timothée Ravier and Aleix Pol
• Mentee: Neelaksh Singh
• Brannon Aw will be working on improving the annotation tools in Spectacle (KDE's screenshot app). They will be adding features such as cropping, an eraser tool, and so on. Spectacle: Improving the annotation tools.
• Mentor: Bharadwaj Raju
• Mentee: Brannon Aw
• Plasma: Better holiday support in the digital clock widget.
• Mentor: Fushan Wen
• Mentee: Ruoqing He
• Théophile Gilgien will be working improving Audiotube. He will be working on multiple small features like KRunner integration, ability to play favorite songs as a playlist and more!
• Mentor: Carl Schwan, Devin Lin & Jonah Brüchert
• Mentee: Théophile Gilgien
• Arpit Jain wil be working on the new epub reader, Arianna, which is based on epub.js and QtWebEngine. His knowledge of web-based technologies will be helpful to achieve his goals of syncing the application color scheme to the webengine content, adding settings and adding a table of content.
• Mentor: Carl Schwan
• Mentee: Arpit Jain

Good Luck and have Fun!

KDE thanks the mentors and mentees for improving the KDE ecosystem and wishes them a good experience. The KDE community looks forward to learning about the mentees progress through their blog posts.

Akademy 2023 will be held at the University of Macedonia (UoM) in Thessaloniki, Greece, from Saturday the 15th to Friday the 21st of July.

Akademy 2023 will be a hybrid event, combining on-site and remote sessions, and will include talks, workshops, Birds of a Feather (BoF) meetups, training and coding sessions. The conference is expected to draw hundreds of attendees from the global KDE community to discuss and plan the future of the community and its technologies. Many participants from the broad Free and Open Source software community, local organizations and software companies will also attend. The call for papers will open soon, and the registrations shortly after. We will soon update Akademy's website, in the meanwhile follow us on Twitter and Mastodon to keep up to date with Akademy’s news.

About Thessaloniki

Thessaloniki was founded in 315 BC and has a population of over 800,000. It is Greece's second major economic, industrial, commercial and transportation hub. It is renowned for its rich history, festivals, and events, and is considered to be Greece's cultural capital.

About the University of Macedonia (UoM)

The University of Macedonia is a modern state university that provides education in a wide range of disciplinary fields. UoM’s Department of Applied Informatics makes software, especially free software, the main focus of a large part of the university's studies and research. The university is located only a short walk from the centre of the city, close to cafés, restaurants, and other historical and cultural spots.

About Akademy

For most of the year, KDE, one of the largest free and open software communities in the world, works online communicating over email, instant messaging, video-conferencing, forums and mailing lists. Akademy provides all KDE contributors with the opportunity to meet in person to foster social bonds, work on concrete technology issues, discuss new ideas, and reinforce the innovative, dynamic culture of KDE. Akademy brings together artists, designers, developers, translators, users, writers, sponsors and many other types of KDE contributors to celebrate the achievements of the past year and help determine the direction for the next year. Hands-on sessions offer the opportunity for intense work bringing those plans to reality. The KDE community also welcomes companies building on KDE technology to Akademy, as well as those that are looking for opportunities.

Dot Categories: Community and Events

By Benson Muite

Season of KDE is an opportunity to contribute to KDE, while at the same time improving your skills with guidance from experienced mentors.

Apart from code, software projects require artwork, translations, documentation, community management, and funds acquired through fundraising campaigns. With Season of KDE, you too can get the chance to hone your skills in one or more of these areas over a 12-week period. Participation is open to people of all ages with an interest in learning about open source.

Finding a Project

The first place to look for projects is on the KDE SoK page. If a project listed there interests you, contact the mentor. If you are looking for something different, other open source projects are hosted on KDE's development platform. To find interesting projects, you can list them by:

• the number of stars
• how they are trending

You can also try out applications listed on the KDE applications website and see if you can find something in the application that needs improving. If you are a programmer, have a look at the bugs listed for that application. Once you have found a project you find interesting, and have ideas for improvements, contact the project leads to see if they might be supportive of your ideas and, if you find at least one mentor, post your idea on the KDE SoK wiki before the 15th of January 2023.

Timeline Date Event 15 Dec 2022 Start of Season of KDE 15 Jan 2023 Deadline for Participant and Mentor Applications 22 Jan 2023 Projects Announced 24 Jan 2023 Start of Work 15 Apr 2023 End of Work 20 Apr 2023 Results Announced 20 May 2023 Certificates Issued 1 Jun 2023 Merchandise and SWAG Sent Out by Courier

Past SoKs

If you would like to know more about SoK projects and learn what to expect, check out SoK 2022 and read some of the outcomes from last year. While much of the work is focused on programming, projects in all areas related to the KDE ecosystem are welcome.

You too make KDE possible! Check out our End of Year Fundraiser!

We’re happy to announce that Linux App Summit 2023 will take place in Brno, Czech Republic on April 21–23, 2023. For 2023 Linux App Summit (LAS) will again be held as a hybrid event, allowing attendees and speakers to join virtually or in person at our venue in Brno. Linux App Summit (LAS) is a conference focused on building a Linux application ecosystem. LAS aims to encourage the creation of quality applications, seek opportunities for compensation for FOSS developers, and foster a thriving market for the Linux operating system. Everyone is invited to attend! Companies, journalists, and individuals who are interested in learning more about the Linux desktop application space and growing their user base are especially welcome. The call for papers and registration will be open soon. Please check linuxappsummit.org for more updates in the upcoming weeks.

About Brno

Brno, the second-largest city in the Czech Republic, is a technological hub in Central Europe and the wider region. Several universities specializing in Information Technology give Brno a large source of IT talent and as a result, many companies have opened research and development facilities in the city. With around 90,000 students residing in the area, Brno is a vibrant university city and home to many museums, theatres, festivals, and cultural events. It is a member of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network and in 2017 was designated as a "City of Music". Alongside the urban areas, visitors will find traditional Moravian folklore preserved in some districts and can experience traditional Moravian costumes, wines, folk music, and dance.
View of Brno. SchiDD, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

There are lots of sights to see in Brno! Some of the most popular attractions are:

• Špilberk Castle
• Cathedral of St. Peter and Paul
• Veveří Castle
• Villa Tugendhat

We hope to see you in Brno!

About the Linux App Summit

The Linux App Summit is co-organized by GNOME and KDE. It brings the global Linux community together to learn, collaborate, and help grow the Linux application ecosystem. Through talks, panels, and Q&A sessions, we encourage attendees to share ideas, make connections, and join our goal of building a common app ecosystem. Previous iterations of the Linux App Summit have been held in the United States in Portland, Oregon, and Denver, Colorado, as well as in Barcelona, Spain, and Rovereto, Italy.
Attendees at LAS 2022.

Learn more by visiting linuxappsummit.org.

You Make KDE Possible

KDE's End of Year Fundraiser is officially live! Your donations will help us reach our goals, support our community, fund our events, and show the world how everybody can benefit from KDE software.

Today we have the ambitious goal of raising 20,000€ for KDE. Your donation allows KDE to continue developing the spectacular Plasma desktop and all the apps you need for education, productivity, and creative work. Here are some of the things we have managed to do over the last year thanks to the generosity of donors:

Reaching the World

• We have welcomed 2785+ people worldwide who have contributed code, art, translations and more.
• We added/maintained support for 40+ languages for apps and frameworks.
• We organized and attended 18 community events/sprints.

Building the Products

• We hosted 1000+ projects and repositories.
• We continued developing 260+ applications and addons.
• We pushed out 11+ updates for KDE's Plasma desktop and related environments, such as Plasma Mobile and Plasma Big Screen and applications.
• We supported 12 hardware platforms.
• We continued to develop 83 frameworks.

The work of KDE is made possible thanks to the contributions from KDE Community members, donors and corporations that support us. Every individual counts, and every commitment, large or small, is a commitment to Free Software. Head to the KDE's End of Year fundraiser page and donate now.

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

 

By Adam Szopa

KDE is ready with three new Community Goals, and you’re invited to the kick-off meeting!

Join the new Goal Champions on Monday, November 28th at 17:00 CET (16:00 UTC) for a kick-off meeting. We will talk about the new Goals, the initial short-term plans, and the ways you can contribute. The meeting will be hosted on our BBB instance and will be open to all.

In case you missed the announcement at Akademy, the new Goals are:

• KDE for All - Boosting Accessibility: This is not the first time a proposal about accessibility has been submitted, but this year the community decided it’s time to act. The author of the proposal - and now brand new Goal Champion - Carl is well known in the community for his work on KDE websites, NeoChat and more. He notes that making KDE software accessible will require cooperation from many parts of the community, from designers to library developers, and will even entail tweaking the underlying Qt toolkit. Testing will also be more challenging, as we will need to ensure that everybody’s accessibility requirements are met.
• Sustainable Software: KDE software is many things: free, beautiful, performant, customizable… The list goes on. But how about all that and environmentally sustainable too? This is the question that Cornelius, our new Champion, will answer while working with the community towards this Goal. This topic of course is not new to him, as he helped set up funding for KDE Eco, KDE’s incursion into research to produce more energy-efficient software. Cornelius plans to help continue certifying KDE apps (like KDE’s PDF reader Okular!), set up testing for measuring the environmental impact of our software, and improving its efficiency where needed.
• Automate and systematize internal processes: Every year the number of KDE apps grows, and at the same time we acquire more users and more hardware partners. This is of course fantastic, but at some point relying solely on volunteer efforts for critical parts of delivering quality software to everyone ceases to be scalable. Nate, our first two-time Champion, will not let die of success and will work to automate processes, change our culture on quality assurance and involve more people where responsibility lies on a single person.

Our previous Goals, Consistency, All about the Apps, and Wayland; are not forgotten! We will continue to focus on them moving forward. However, the selection of the new Goals indicate where the Community wants to go next, and it’s now time for the Champions to leverage the support of the community and the KDE e.V to deliver on those ideas.

Want to know more? The new Champions will meet you on November 28th at 17:00 CET (16:00 UTC) to discuss the Goals, so be sure to mark your calendars and see you at the meeting!

By Johnny Jazeix

Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is a global, online event that focuses on bringing new contributors into open source software development. Like every year, KDE applied and aimed to integrate more and more developers. In 2022, KDE's participation in GSoC covered nine projects to improve KDE, of which six were successfully completed.

Snehit Sah worked on adding Spaces Support to NeoChat. Spaces is a Matrix tool that allows you to discover new rooms by exploring areas, and is also a way to organize your rooms by categories. The code is still not merged to the main branch.

Spaces in NeoChat

Suhaas Joshi worked on permission management for Flatpak and Snap applications in Discover. This allows you to change the permissions granted to an application (e.g. file system, network, and so on) and also makes it easier to review them. The code is in two separate repositories, one for Flatpak applications which is ready to be used, and one for Snap applications which is still work in progress.

Basic permission for Flatpaks

This year we had two projects to improve digiKam. The first one is from Quoc Hung Tran who worked on a new plugin to process Optical Character Recognition (OCR). The code has been merged and allows you to extract text from images and store the output inside the EXIF data or within a separate file. The plugin is also used to organize scanned text images with contents.

The second project is from Phuoc Khanh LE who worked on improving the Image Quality Sorter algorithms. The code has already been merged into digiKam and improves sorting images by quality using multiple criteria, for example, noise, exposure and compression.

For GCompris, KDE's educational software suite, Samarth Raj worked on adding activities for for using the 10's complements to add numbers. The activity will be split into three activities. One was finished during GSoC, the other two are still work in progress.

GCompris activity mockup

Two students worked on the painting application Krita. Xu Che worked on adding pixel-perfect ellipses in Krita. The work is still in progress and, once it is done, it will be merged. This will allow pixel artists to use Krita effectively.

Pixel-perfect ovals for Krita

Meanwhile, Reinold Rojas worked on exporting Krita images to SVG. The project provides more options to share files with Inkscape, and will help create translatable images with text for Krita Manual without knowledge of Inkscape. The code is still work in progress.

GSoC has again provided our nine contributors the opportunity to exercise their programming skills in real-world projects, allowing them to improve not only their code, but also their communication skills. We would like to thank all the mentors without whom these opportunities would not have been possible. We would also like to extend our appreciation to all the coders who invested their energy and passion into these two months of coding.

From the notes by Aniqa Khokhar, Jonathan Esk-Riddell, and Paul Brown

Akademy 2022 was held in Barcelona from the 1st to the 7th of October. As usual, the weekend of Saturday 1st of October and Sunday 2nd of October was dedicated to talks, panels and presentations. Community members and guests laid out for attendees what had been going on within KDE's projects (and adjacent projects), the state of the art, and where things were headed.

Read on to find out in detail what went on during the conference phase of Akademy 2022:

Day 1 - Saturday, Oct. 1st

At 10 o'clock sharp, Aleix Pol, President of KDE, opened this year's Akademy before an audience jittering with excitement. The attendees were animated with good reason: this was the first major in-person event for the KDE Community in two years. Old friends were seeing each other after a long time, and we were also meeting many new friends that we had only ever talked to online.

During his introduction, Aleix remarked on how important this year's event was for the community, and especially for him, as Barcelona is Aleix's home town, and the Universitat Politécnica de Barcelona, the venue where activities were being held, his alma mater. After informing everyone about the logistics of the event, Aleix introduced the first keynote speakers: Volker Hilsheimer and Pedro Bessa from Qt Company.

Volker and Pedro kicked off the talks proper with Volker introducing what is in store for us regarding Qt6.5 and beyond. Pedro laid out the new plans Qt Company has to upgrade the engagement with the Qt community, including KDE developers and contributors.

Then it was time to talk about KDE's goals, the projects that become a top priority for the community for two years. The goals were started in 2017 program, and the first three goals set in that year covered improving the usability and productivity for basic software, enhancing privacy in KDE software, and streamlining the onboarding of new contributors. The second set of goals started in 2019 and finished now, with this Akademy. They covered solving visual inconsistencies in KDE's software and its components, promoting apps, and improving the implementation of Wayland in Plasma.

The goals voted on by the community this year cover the areas of accessibility, sustainability and ways of making internal KDE processes and workflows more efficient. Adam Szopa, KDE's Project Coordinator, will be going into detail about what each team intends to do and how they will carry things through in a separate article which will appear here next week. It is pretty clear that in the same way prior goals helped give the community focus and improved KDE and its software, these will do the same.

After lunch, the talks were split into two tracks and, in track one Tomaz Canabrava discussed Konsole, KDE's powerful terminal emulator, and what the future held for the project. Meanwhile, in room 2, Nate Graham covered his traditional Konquering the World - Are we there yet? in which he updates attendees on the progress KDE is making in tech markets and user adoption.

Later, Devin Lin and other Plasma Mobile contributors told audiences all about the progress KDE's mobile platform has made throughout the year. In room 2, a panel made up of Joseph De Veaugh-Geiss, Nicolas Fella (via videoconference), Karanjot Singh (in a pre-recorded video), and Lydia Pintscher informed the audience about the progress made by KDE Eco and what were the next steps for the project.

After a short break, David Edmundson took to the stage in room 1 and told us all about the success of the Steam Deck, how the people at Valve were surprised at how popular KDE's Plasma desktop had become among users, and how they were using it in unexpected numbers and ways. David also revealed that the Steam Deck had already sold more than a million units and was still going strong. In room 2, David Cahalane tackled the difficult issue of accessibility and explained how improving it for KDE Plasma and apps would help more users adopt KDE, not only because it would facilitate the usage of the software itself, but also because it would make the desktop and apps compliant with accessibility rules in public institutions and companies across the world.

Back in room 1, Aleix explained how KDE's Plasma had transcended the concept of desktop, as it was now moving into the territory of mobile and smart household appliances, like phones, cars and TVs. In Room 2, Harald Sitter talked about Bugs and how frustrating it is when the system keeps crashing, how to identify the causes, and what tools were available to solve the issues.

For the final talk of the day, in room 1 Lina Ceballos of FSFE told us about the Reuse project. The Reuse project intends to relieve much of the confusion and tediousness of licensing software online. At the same time in room 2, both Nicolas Fella and Alexander Lohnau remotely had a discussion on getting applications ready for KDE Frameworks 6. They discussed the current status of KF6 and why it is better to port now.

Day 2 - Sunday, Oct. 2nd

The next morning, Hector Martín, the hacker that opened the Kinect, Play Station and Wii to the open source world, told us about his new project in his keynote "Asahi Linux - One chip, no docs, and lots of fun". Hector explained that the new M1 and M2 Macintosh machines built by Apple are made to run a variety of operating systems, but how the company does not provide any kind of indication on how that is done. Good job reverse engineering is what Hector and his team do best and now Linux (and Plasma) can easily live on the new ARM-based machines.

Afterwards, first David Redondo and later Aleix Pol tackled the topic of Wayland in two different talks. Wayland is a hot topic for developers, since it will allow Plasma and KDE apps to evolve, improve their performance, and work more safely and reliably.

Following a caffeinated and baked goods respite, again the talks were split over two locations. In room 1 Nicolas Fella, live from his studio, explained what really happens when you launch an app; while, in room 2, Neil Gompa told us about how the Fedora distro implements Plasma on Fedora, the advantages of Kinoite and the future of Fedora and KDE on mobile.

Later on, Aditya Mehra ran us through OpenVoiceOS, an operating system with a voice-enabled AI at its core. In room 2, Volker Krause explained how push notifications, used profusely in proprietary software, could be implemented using FLOSS.

After lunch, KDE's Board sat down with attendees and presented their yearly report, informing the community about what work had been carried out and how resources had been used. This was followed by presentations prepared by each of the active working groups: the Advisory Board, the Community Working Group, the Financial Working Group, the Fundraising Working Group, the KDE Free Qt Working Group, and the Sysadmin Working Group.

While this was going on, Shyamnath Premnadh was presenting his talk on how C++ and Python can thrive together in room 2.

Following a brief coffee break, it was time for the lightning talks, and Volker Krause kicked things off by talking about what was happening with KDE Frameworks 6. Volker was followed by Lydia Pintscher, who talked about the new fundraisers for specific projects. Later, Albert Astals presented the KDE Security team, and Harald Sitter gave us advice on how to remain healthy and sane, while writing healthy and sane code.

As the event drew to close, it was time to show appreciation for our sponsors and host. Shells, KDAB, Canonical, MBition, QT Company, the Fedora Project, Collabora, openSUSE, Viking, Slimbook, Codethink, syslinbit, and GitLab took turns to explain their involvement with KDE and why they decided to support Akademy. PINE64 also received a round of applause for their support.

Finally, there was a round of applause for the Akademy Team, the members of Barcelona Free Software community, in particular Albert Astals, and all the other volunteers that organized the event and helped us enjoy our days with the KDE community in Barcelona.

The last act of the day was announcing the traditional Akademy awards. This year the award for the Best Application went to Jasem Mutlaq for his work on the phenomenal KStars astronomical program. The Non-Application Contribution Award went to Harald Sitter for his work on debugging and improving KDE's code across the board. Finally, the Jury Award went to Aniqa Khokhar for her work setting up the KDE Network across the world.

As the rest of the event, this part was a bit special, as the awardees of 2020 and 2021 joined the awardees of 2022 on the stage, as they had not had the chance to physically receive their award before now.

And with that, the conference part of the event was officially closed and KDE community members prepared themselves for a week of BoFs, meetings and hacking sessions.