Chris Peterman's Spring MP351 page

Presentations

Learning

• KDE 4: As usual I'm goofing off in who knows how many different projects in the open source world. One I continue to try and get involved with more and more is KDE and especially the upcoming KDE 4, which is set to be released around October 23rd
  • Solid: Solid is the new hardware backend for KDE4. Aiming to replace HAL and make it easier to link the Desktop to the underlying hardware. solid.kde.org
  • Phonon: Phonon is the new multimedia framework for KDE4. It aims to abstract away the differences in the various multimedia backs (Xine, GStreamer, MPlayer, etc) so that you can write an application once and not have to worry about the backend. phonon.kde.org
  • Decibel: Decibel is KDE4's implementation of the Freedesktop.org Telepathy project. Aiming to coordinate every and all types of communication together, be it VoIP, email, IRC, IM, or whatever else. decibel.kde.org
  • Plasma: Along with all the behind the scenes fun, KDE4 is aiming to revolutionize the Desktop. Plasma will mean a fundamental shift in the concept of the desktop. Things will flow together. Think Vista's Widgets on steroids. plasma.kde.org
  • Kross: Another fun thing on the backend is Kross. Already in use by KOffice, Kross allows for any application to be scripted with (at the moment) Python, Ruby, and Javascript, yet the programmer only has to write for Kross. Kross takes care of the rest. kross.dipe.org
  • DBus: Though not as revolutionary as the other things, KDE4 will mark the end of KDE's venerable interprocess communication system known as DCOP. Replacing it will be Freedesktop.org's DBus system, already in use with GNOME.
  • Qt4: Not exactly a KDE thing, but KDE is to Qt as GNOME is to GTK. KDE4 will use Qt4, which has been out for a while now.
  There is a lot more info available at KDE's Techbase