KDE 4.10 Released, Fastest KDE Ever

KDE 4.10 Released, Fastest KDE Ever
KDE's Aaron Seigo Starts Weekly Hangout On Google+
Krita 2.6 Released, Offers Better Photoshop Compatibility
$25 Version Of Raspberry Pi Now Available In Europe
Video Guide On Building KDE

Posted: 05 Feb 2013 10:27 PM PST

The KDE team has announced the 4.10 releases of KDE Plasma Workspaces, Applications and Development Platform. It brings many improvements, features and polishes the UI even further, which already is one of the most polished, stable and mature desktop environments.

With this releae the Qt Quick framework has been deployed in many Plasma Workspace components. In general, consistency, stability and ease of use have been improved considerably.

For developers it is now easier to build widgets, entirely new Plasma Workspace layouts and other custom enhancements. Since the wallpaper engine has been updated to QML, it is easier to write animated wallpapers. From security point of view, the new QML-based screen locker makes Workspaces more secure.

KDE's saner Global Menu integration
With 4.10 KDE users can experience a much more sane global-menu like implementation without interrupting their workflow.

The new KDE appmenu enables a common menu for multiple applications running simultaneously. It has an option to display a top screen menubar—hidden by default—that appears when the mouse is moved near the top edge of the screen. The menubar follows the window focus so it can be used in multiscreen environments. There is also an option for the menu to be displayed as a sub-menu of a button in the window decoration. The menu can be displayed on the screen wherever the user wants it.

Better semantic search across desktop
KDE 4.10 introduces a new indexer, which makes indexing faster and more robust. One major improvements is that it first quickly indexes the basic information of new files (name and mimetype) so the files are available at once, and then delays full data extraction until the system is idle so you won't experience 'slow' system when it's indexing files. Unlike Ubuntu KDE continues to give users more power over their systems and search is no exception. Users can now disable indexing of Audio, Images, Documents, Video's and Source Code. The search and storage user interface and Backup have seen improvements as well. The introduction of the Tags KIO slave allows users to browse their files by tags from any KDE application.

Dolphin, the best file managers ever
There has been an impressive number of performance enhancements. Loading folders, both with and without previews, is significantly faster and requires less memory while using all available processor cores to be as fast as possible. Minor improvements were made to search, drag and drop and other areas. Dolphin also benefits from the improvements in the KDE semantic storage and search backend, reducing the resources needed for metadata handling.

Transferring files to and from a phone or other mobile device has become easier with support for MTP devices, which show up in the Places panel. The size of Panel icons can now be changed, and other usability and accessibility options have been added.

A detailed review of KDE 4.10 is coming soon. If you are a KDE user, you must join the KDE community on Google+.

KDE's Aaron Seigo Starts Weekly Hangout On Google+

Posted: 05 Feb 2013 12:39 AM PST

Great news for KDE users. Aason Seigo, the KDE project lead, is starting a weekly Google+ Hangout. Seigo 'tested' the first hangout and it went well, except for some initial glitches caused by Pulse Audio.

The success of this Hangout encouraged him to continue his live cast on Google+ (which will be recorded and available on YouTube) under the name "The Luminosity of Free Software".

The Hangout won't be exclusively about or for KDE. Seigo explains:

You may notice that there is no "KDE" in the title (or my name, either :) and that's intentional. I want to be able to discuss larger issues in Free software, and this gives me more freedom to do so. The show will be a reflection of my interests and those who watch and participate, so there will be a good amount of discussion that relates to or is relevant for KDE, it just won't be exclusively about it.

Seigo is sticking to a simple format for his regular Hangout:

The format is going to be pretty simple: I'll open with a short (2-5 minute) reflection on Free software, followed by two (maybe sometimes three) prepared segments of about five-minutes each on technology and community happenings and then open it up to your questions. The goal is 45-60 minutes of content in all. That means I'll only come with fifteen minutes of prepared content ... the rest is up to!

The time of the next Hangout will be announced on his blog. You can join the active KDE Community on Google+ to stay updated with KDE related news and discussion.

Krita 2.6 Released, Offers Better Photoshop Compatibility

Posted: 04 Feb 2013 11:50 PM PST

Boudewijn Rempt has announced the release of Krita 2.6, the latest version of the full-featured end-to-end digital painting application.

Krita 2.6 adds many performance improvements, but also new support for OpenColorIO, a color management system used by movie studios and applications like Blender, which means that Krita now fits into a movie/vfx studio workflow.

What's Krita?
Krita is the full-featured free digital painting studio for artists who want to create professional work from start to end. Krita is used by comic book artists, illustrators, concept artists, matte and texture painters and in the digital VFX industry.

Why Krita?
It's open source. Period.

Krita has several features that are unique or a first among free software painting applications: support for colorspaces other than RGB, like CMYK, support for HDR painting, painting assistants, a perspective grid. The Krita developers are keen to support the artistic community that has grown around Krita.

Better Photoshop compatibility
Compatibility with the Photoshop file format has improved, and Krita is now able to save layered images in the PSD format, both in RGB as in CMYK mode, which is important for illustrators delivering their work as well as for desktop publishers, using for instance the Scribus application.

Better keyboard shortcuts
Keyboard interaction has been improved with the addition of new shortcuts and easy zoom and rotation handling from the keyboard, following the "blender"style numeric keypad triangle. Quick switching with layers is possible using the Page Up and Page Down keys, and the user can now create shortcuts for deleting, duplicating and selecting layers.

More brushes
The default set of brush presets has been updated by Timothée Giet to use the new precision setting. The textured painting option for the pixel brush engine has been improved, artists can create livelier, more organic brush strokes by blending the effect of a pattern in with their brush stroke. Of course, it's also still possible to use a pattern as the color source for your brush stroke.

The textured brush option is available for the pixel brush. To make it easier to select patterns, the pattern selector has a scrollable preview.The dulling mode of the smudge brush has been improved and is smoother than ever.

Other improvements
The integration of the OpenColorIO color management system is important for film and vfx work. In this release OpenColorIO is fully integrated through the Lut docker. This docker makes it possible to select OpenColorIO
configurations (or use the configuration set systemwide).

While the existing ICCbased color management system for print and web work has been improved and made faster, especially for HDR images, support for blackpoint compensation has been added.

The OpenGL canvas now performs better, too. A large set of templates for digital imaging work has been added, courtesy of Simon Legrand from Digital Domain.

Integration of the Vc library improves the speed of painting as well as the speed of working with many layers. Vc is a library that provides an easy way to make use of the vectorization features of modern CPU's, such as AVX.

Interoperability using the Freedesktop standard file format OpenRaster has been improved with support for the layerstack draft.

Bugs, bugs & bugs
In this release the Krita team has focused on improving performance and fixing existing bugs, so Krita 2.6 has received hundreds of bug fixes, usability, performance and interoperability improvements.

How to get Krita?
Krita is available for GNU/Linux based systems in main repos. There are test builds for Windows as well.

$25 Version Of Raspberry Pi Now Available In Europe

Posted: 05 Feb 2013 09:29 AM PST

The famous credit-sized computer board Raspberry Pi just got its cousin called the A model, and it's only $25. The downside? It's available just in Europe at the moment, the Raspberry Pi Foundation saying that it will become available worldwide 'soon' enough.

What does this trimmed down version of the already cheap Raspberry Pi offer? It comes with 256mb RAM, the same 700 MHz ARM1176JZF-S core (ARM11 family) CPU, only one USB port and no RJ-45 Ethernet socket. But it uses 30% less power than its cousin, and it's 25 instead of 35 dollars. So the specs are justified with the price.

If you are in US, you can get it too, but there will be some delay:

RS customers outside Europe (Allied in the US) can order a Model A now, but there will be a short delay in processing their order because we're waiting on some paperwork before the Pis can be shipped. Farnell customers outside Europe (Newark in the US) will see Model A appear on their local sites when this paperwork has been filled.

So, if you live in Europe, you could grab this model and tell us if it's really worth buying it (compared to the B model). In my opinion, the $10 difference is justified, at least for me.

Video Guide On Building KDE

Posted: 05 Feb 2013 04:34 AM PST

There are many aspiring developers who want to help the growth of KDE, but they don't know how to build KDE from scratch. It's not just about make and make install. It's harder than that. I have seen many cases where an aspiring developer would seek info on how to build KDE and he would be point to some Wiki or othe guide which can be extremely technical in nature and less 'tutorial. Finally KDE lead Aaron Aaron Seigo has started a series of video tutorials on Youtube showing building process of KDE.

Aaron explains the reason behind starting this series:

Last week I heard it not once, not twice but three times in three different conversations with three different people that building KDE software and getting involved was mysterious and perceived as difficult. We have documentation on the KDE wikis for this, but I admit that it can take time to read through everything and find the shortest path from point A (e.g. a machine with Linux installed) to point B (building software from git.kde.org).

This tutorial was requested during last week's Luminosity of Free Software podcast on Google Plus. Currently this tutorial has two videos and explains building kde from source code hosted at git.kde.org. In the third video of this series Aaron Seigo will explain how we can get KDE identity account and how to customize build environment.