In the tradition of 10 years, the Chemnitzer Linux-Tage were held on the first March weekend. The Chemnitzer Linux-Tage is an event for everybody all around Linux and Open Source. In the same way as last year, Kubuntu was represented by Kubuntu-de.org. This meant that the visitors were able to see Kubuntu first hand.

           

More than 2400 visitors, 750 online-listeners, 87 presentations, 58 exhibitors, 13 workshops and many, many volunteers participated. A unique program was offered to all of them.

kubuntu-de.org in conversation with Tobias König

Tobias König is a Computer Science student and one of the core developers of Akonadi, one of the innovative technologies that will be implemented in KDE4. Akonadi will be a platform independent innovative storage solution for personal data. In this interview, Tobias König shares his impressions about the integration into the KDE desktop environment and Akonadi's development and features.

kubuntu-de.org: You are deeply integrated into the development of KDE. What kinds of things do you spend time on when you do not work on that?

Tobias König: I study Computer Science at the HTW Dresden while I am not busy with developing KDE. I also work as a freelancer for credativ GmbH.

Apachelogger interviewed by kubuntu-de.org

Harald Sitter, also known as apachelogger, was promoted to Kubuntu MOTU not too long ago. He also works as a volunteer project manager for the Amarok project. We spoke with him about Amarok 2 and what can be expected from KDE 4 in Kubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron.

kubuntu-de.org: Can you briefly describe who you are and in which areas of Kubuntu you are participate?
Harald: My name is Harald Sitter. I am a 19 years old Austrian citizen. I am one of the Kubuntu MOTUs who are responsible for the maintenance of the biggest packets archive for Ubuntu.

kubuntu-de.org: What is the meaning of MOTU? For which projects are you active?
Harald: MOTU is an abbreviation for Master Of The Universe (these are the VIPs ;-). Additionally, I am the project manager of Amarok and also work on KDE.

A Vision Becomes Reality

Today, the KDE developers have as planned the first stable version of KDE 4.0 released. This release marks the start of the KDE 4 era. The desktop environment was given groundbreaking changes and improvements. More about this will be mentioned later in this article. The Kubuntu developers have made available packages for the releases 7.04 Gutsy Gibbons and 8.04 Hardy Heron.

After years of intensive development and with several month delay, the dream of the KDE community has become reality: KDE 4.0 has finally been released. The demands put on the entirely redesigned desktop are very high: All in all a revolution in the desktop area has been aimed for. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to expect too much from the newly released Version 4.0 due to the fact that several exciting features for the desktop environment have not been fully implemented yet. Therefore, it must be stressed that KDE 4.0 is not KDE 4 as the developer Stephan Binner aka beineri writes in his blog, but it is rather the beginning of a yearlong continuing set of release cycle interations.

Saturday morning, the second annual FrOSCon commenced. FrOSCon is a conference that takes place at the Fachhochschule (Polytechnic College) Bonn-Rhein-Sieg in St. Augustin near Bonn. Obviously, after the success at the latest exhibitions, it would have been unacceptable not to represent Kubuntu with its own booth. Consequently, early in the morning, the first of us gathered in order to build up the booth. Fortunately, we were located right next to KDE and Amorak. This gave us the opportunity to jointly present the highlights from the Qt community. Another group we welcomed in our section of the building was the musical project Jad. Hence, our presentation was accompanied by nice background music, taking into account one or the other erratic feedback.

The surroundings of the exhibition location has apparently quite a lot of Open Source Software users. Two of our volunteers are living close to it and therefore we had very good contacts to the event organisers. Many thanks to Thomas Erdmann (datten) and Sven Herfs (motti) for the contributions before and during the exhibition.

This weekend, for the second time, the FrOSCon, a conference for Free and Open Source Software, is taking place in St. Augustin, near Bonn during this weekend. The German speaking Kubuntu community will be represented there, as we were at the lastest similar events. Due to our numerous volunteers, we are happy to be able to give guest of the FrOSCon an insight of the opportunities of Kubuntu. Our booth is right next to the ones of KDE and Amorak. More about the FrOSCon and our participation will be provided at this website in the very near future.

Our webcam is available at http://webcam.kubuntu-de.org.

The LinuxTag took place in Berlin this year. It is the leading conference and exhibition for Free Software, Linux, and Open Source. This years premiere was organised in partnership with the "Messe Berlin" (Berlin's exhibition organisation).

In building 12, our members from the German speaking Kubuntu community shared a booth together with the Ubuntu and Edubuntu communities as well as the Linux4Afrika project. We presented to the visitors probably the best KDE based linux distribution. The audience was very diverse. Some people had never even seen Linux before. On the other hand, we met very advanced users that were particularly interested in the in development and details of Kubuntu. This meant that the booth was very well visited. The interest in Kubuntu was so high that not only our, but also Canonical's Feisty CDs had been distributed by Friday afternoon. After that, we had no choice, but to distribute Edgy CDs with a printed notice helping the recipients to find the website for the upgrade to Feisty. Nevertheless, they were taken with pleasure by the visitors.

The announcement of a releaseplan for KDE 4 silenced all the previous discussions wether or not the completely new KDE will appear. KDE 4 is based on Qt4 and all applications have to be ported to it. The release of KDE 4.0 is planned for October 2007. kubuntu-de.org held an interview with Jonathan Riddell, project lead of kubuntu about KDE 4 and future kubuntu releases.