FOSDEM 2010

So, on a more personal note, FOSDEM was pretty cool. Not without its flaws however - my demo of the upcoming KDE release was a huge disaster. 3 days before the conference my laptop broke down. John Layt lent his laptop to me but besides the max resolution of 640x480 on the beamer unfortunately the software installation wasn't very stable nor complete. Result: half the stuff I wanted to show didn't work properly. I had some screenshots and stuff I prepared for the release announcement and feature guide, but guess what: I had them on another USB stick. Bah.


The KDE devroom got really crowded a few times, next time we'll ask for a bigger one like we had last year...

So that wasn't great. What was great was meeting many old friends and hanging around the booth. And making some new ones in the openSuse camp I had dinner with Saturday evening. Nice and interesting food (waterzooi), beer, and interesting sharing of thoughts and ideas. A few things to follow up on - will do that later this week...


As usual I took a pic of the food ;-)

On a different note, Jeff just shared this with us: Camping out with KDE. Nice overview of Camp KDE!

Oh, for those waiting for a certain release, be patient - it should be out in about an hour ;-)

YESS!!!! we're finally done!

So, with the amazing new website online, the time has come for the release of the latest and greatest Workspaces, Applications and Development Platform!

Which means: it's time to party! I'll be at the dutch release party in Culemborg, feel free to join! With over 25 parties all around the world, I think this is the biggest party we've ever thrown for a new release :D

I'm so proud of all you! Not only the developers but also the translators, documentation writers, bug reporters and triagers, forum members and of course the promo- and web developers for the great work you all did. A very big thank you and many many hugs!

If YOU want to help us spread the word, that'd be great! Tag everything with KDE44, tweet, dent, blog and digg here and here (new site), reddit here and here (new site), check our Linkedin group, our KDE forum, watch us on Youtube and blip.tv and share the news on Facebook.

Special tip: Fanfare has been working like crazy on screencastshttp://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/02/camping-out-with-kde.html, worth watching!

Social Media Offensive - and more BUZZ

Hi all,

We're almost there - the release team hasn't slept in days, the www team just went crazy (troy promised to blog about that) and the promo team is running around like the devil's on their heels.

Yes, the next major release of the KDE workspaces, applications and our development platform is just hours away.

And we now need you all to make a big splash. Of course we've been preparing things - but to really make this an event the whole IT world is aware of (and it should be), you all need to help out. Blog, dent, tweet. Digg, reddit, bookmark. Post pictures on flickr, screencasts on youtube or blip.tv. And submit the news to as many news sites as you can - especially the local news sites. The announcement is translated so make use of that (unfortunately, the feature guide is not, but feel free to summarize it of course).

And use KDE44 as tag, please, so things can easily be found!

You will be able to follow the buzz on the revamped buzz.kde.org and of course on our fresh homepage kde.org!

Lydia posted an email about the web stuff we'll be doing, help out if you can!

Exciting times, all, let's make this one rock like we've never rocked before!

Me wants Kivio!

Hi all,

This is just a quick "anyone up to it?" question: about 6 months ago Sven blogged about the state of Kivio. It consists currently of about 223 lines of code and is working, but a few crucial things are missing like stencil support.

I used to use Kivio in the KOffice 1.x days and liked its simplicity (but missed the lack of stencil sets). Now someone even offered to create stencil sets - however, currently Kivio can't even load them. The topic of Kivio just came up on the dutch Mandrivaclub forum, which reminded me I wanted to write about it...

As Kivio is a potentially great tool for office workers but also for many FOSS teams, I was hoping that by bringing this app to the attention someone might be interested in picking it up... Currently Kivio in SVN hasn't seen (human) activity in over 6 months which means it is open for anyone to take charge...

So, anyone feels up to the challenge? Considering the size of the codebase and the support you can expect from the KOffice people, I can guarantee you'll have fun and you'll make a difference. And I will trow in some beer, or whatever beverage has your preference.

Edit: How to get involved in writing that app? Short: announce you want to help on Kivio on the koffice-devel mailinglist.
Long:
Announce you want to help on Kivio on the koffice-devel mailinglist.
Set up a KDE development environment (techbase.kde.org)
check out the code of Kivio from svn (http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/koffice/kivio/, find out how to use svn on techbase.kde.org (here)
get crackin' ;-)