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The KDE project has ceased using the GNU Autotools for developing KDE v4, adopting CMake, a cross-platform make tool which is "much easier to learn, handle and maintain" than the Autotools. Developer Alexander Neundorf explains why, and how, here. Scribus is also switching.
Trolltech has announced that a technology preview of Qt 4.2 has been released. New features include the new Graphics View widget, replacing for QCanvas, new desktop integration features including a Cleanlooks widget style based on that used by GNOME, GLib support and a desktop services class enabling the launch of URLs and mail applications, a text completion class, CSS-style stylesheets for widgets, a special font combo box, and D-BUS support (see intro). Reference docs are here. Blog comments by Aaron Seigo and Lars Knoll. Downloads (under a non-commercial licence) here.
Version 1.6 of KNetStats, a KDE network monitor which displays information about the transfer rate of any network interface in a system tray icon, has been released. This release is said to be "more user-friendly", and attempts to detect some things and start without using a configuration dialog. There are some screenshots on the home page; links to downloads here. Requires KDE 3.3.
Kubuntu developer Jonathan Riddell has appeared on the UbuntuOS "podcast", discussing plans for the upcoming Edgy release (due late this year). The OGG file can be downloaded here and here (100Mb); Riddell appears 1hr 10mins in.
Version 0.6.1-stable of KPowersave, the KDE front-end for the powersave daemon, providing battery monitoring, suspend and standby triggers and other related features for KDE (and GNOME), has been released. This version has a number of bug fixes (three of them specifically affecting SUSE), and updates four of the translations (changelog here). Screenshots here, downloads (source and a number of distribution binaries) on the KDE Apps page.
Version 1.0 of Protoeditor, a KDE-based editor for debugging PHP scripts interactively, has been released. Changes include a new manual, an improved icon set, a new "run to cursor" command, the automatic saving of opened files before debugging or running, and minor bug fixes. Screenshots here, downloads (source only) here. Requires KDE 3.3; supports debuggers DBG, Xdebug and Gubed (see homepage for details).
Version 0.8.5 of kdesvn, a KDE client for the source control system Subversion, has been released. This version adds Punjabi and Catalan translations and fixes a bug by which the app sometimes failed to display new items in the repository. Screenshots here, downloads (source and FC4/FC5 RPM binaries) here. Requires KDE 3.4.
Version 3.9.1 of eric3, an IDE for Python and Ruby written in Python with PyQt and QScintilla, has been released. This version includes a configuration option for wrapping long lines in the editor and removes the unused Mercurial support, and fixes various bugs. Screenshots here; source downloads at SourceForge here; see the eric3 home page for requirements list.
Trolltech today announced that it has released version 4.1.4 of its GUI toolkit, Qt, and of its embedded applications platform Qtopia Core. Major changes include support for new compilers and new platforms; there is a fairly large number of bug fixes and minor improvements affecting a variety of classes on all platforms (changelog here). Open source downloads for Windows here, X11 here and Mac OS X here; Qt Script for Applications source is here. (Note: this does not affect users of the present version of KDE.)
Version 1.0 of KObelisk, a Qt4 application which "connects to the Asterisk PBX and gives information to the user about incoming calls", with additional features such as "calllists, ringtones or a callback function", has been released. No changelog has been provided. Screenshots here, downloads (source and TGZ binary) at KDE Apps.
Version 0.5.2 of Dolphin, a file manager for KDE with a configurable navigation bar, has been released. This version adds a Spanish translation and a number of bug fixes. Screenshots here, source download here: dolphin-0.5.2.tar.gz (no binaries as yet).
Version 1.11 of PC-BSD, a desktop adaptation of FreeBSD, has been released. This version updates the port collection (to 12th June versions), includes KDE 3.5.3, installs more video drivers and cleans up fonts (for full list, see changelog). Updates can be done using the PBI updater from the updates page, or with the "Online Update" utility; ISO and VMWare image downloads available here.
The schedule for LugRadio Live 2006 has been published, and it includes a half-hour presentation by Jonathan Riddell on KDE 4 and Ubuntu Dapper on Sunday 23rd July. The event itself is to be held at the Wolverhampton University Student Union on Wulfruna Street, Wolverhampton (England) (travel details here), on Sat 22nd and Sun 23rd July. Tickets £5 (£3 concessions; in advance on home page by PayPal or full price by cash at the door). Other speakers include Sarah Ewen (Sony; PlayStation), Michael Lamb (Microsoft; Security), Michael Meeks and Ted Haegar (Novell), Simon Phipps (Sun; "The Zen of Free"), Mark Shuttleworth and Scott James Remnant (Canonical/Ubuntu), Martin Vogel and Bill Thompson (BBC), Ian Lynch (ODF), Gareth Bowker (FSF; on GPL3), Bastian Nocera (Red Hat) and Richard Moore (IBM). There is also to be a live recording of a LugRadio show (don't come just to hear this; last year's had very little on-topic content).
Version 1.2 of the XML editor tX, formerly called Teddy, has been released. This version adds Qt4 support, a new German translations, the use of double instead of single quotes in attribute values and the ../> convention when closing elements without subelements, a new help tab, and new menu icons, some original and some from art.gnome.org. There is a screenshot or two on the homepage; downloads (Windows ZIP, Mac OS X PPC binary, linux source) here.
Version 2.23 of Beesoft Commander, a Qt-based Norton Commander-like file-manager and FTP client, has been released. Changes include a new "wipe" feature for securely deleting files (i.e. removing data rather than just designating the space as free), and the ability to stop the deletion process at any time. Screenshots are on the home page; downloads (source and TGZ binaries) here. Requires Qt 3.
Version 0.8 of Scythia (home page in French), a Qt4-based FTP tool, has been released. It adds transfer mode and proxy options, and an "open with ..." menu command; there are also improvements to the tray icon and to the connection dialog (the changelog is all in French, even on KDE Apps). Downloads (Windows and Linux tgz binary and sources) here.
Version 0.7.0 of Smb4K, a SMB/CIFS share browser for KDE, has been released. This version features a very long list of changes, but they include mandatory use of Samba 3, a redesigned main window, synchronisation of a local copy with a remote one (and vice versa) and a much-improved handbook. Full announcement with changelog here. Screenshots here, downloads (source, with unsupported binary packages) here. Requires KDE 3.2.
Qt Centre - The Ultimate Qt Community site - froglogic Releases Qt/GUI/Web Testing Tool Squish 3.0
The new version of this GUI test tool has been released, including versions for web applications and Tk, the latter supporting mixed Tk/Qt apps using froglogic's own Tq technology. The new release features improved documentation and Qt 4 support, "portable and robust" drag & drop support, binary packages, and a whole lot more (see here). Details and prices for the Qt edition can be found here.
Version 0.6.3 of KSquirrel, a graphic viewer for KDE which uses OpenGL, has been released. This version adds categories, fixes a bug affecting the reloading of libraries from disk, and has improvements to the interface, among which are that "now KSquirrel can look like GQview". The application supports 41 image formats, the largest of any such app for KDE according to the announcement. Screenshots here, downloads (and installation instructions, source only) here. Requires OpenGL, GLU and Qt/KDE 3.3 and KSquirrel's own libraries.
A new beta version (4.0.1563-2) of Google Earth, "a free-of-charge, downloadable virtual globe program" based on satellite imagery, aerial photography and GIS, which uses Qt 3 for its GUI, has been released. Downloads of stable and beta versions (free but not open source) here. (Only the beta works on Linux.)
Version 3.00 of VariCAD, a commercial 2D/3D CAD app for Windows and Linux which apparently uses Qt (which version I can't find), has been released. The new version is said to have fewer dependencies than older releases and can be run on a greater number of distributions. A free download is available, but the package itself is $499 for either the Windows or the Linux version ($99 for students).
Version 0.4.1 of KNemo (KDE Network Monitor), a KDE system-tray applet similar to the one found in Windows which displays an icon for every network interface found, has been released. This version includes a new Hungarian and an updated Russian translation, a timer to periodically store statistics, the ability to configure where to store statistics and how often to monitor interfaces. Screenshots and source download at KDE Apps; contributed SUSE 10.1 RPM here.
A new development version of Gambas, the Visual Basic-like development environment for Linux with a KDE front-end, has been released. There is a substantial list of changes including a new Workspace control, the help system using a static version of the Gambas wiki and major changes to the Draw class (full changelog here). Screenshots here, downloads here. Stable version remains 1.0.16.
A new test version of Knoda, a KDE front end for various databases (DBase, Firebird, Access, MySQL, Paradox, Postgres, SQLite and ODBC), has been released. This version includes a new driver "dbase", which works "out of the box", although the old xbase driver can still be used. There are also improvements to the Postgres driver, the date widget, CSV import and export dialogs, and various bug fixes. Screenshots here, source downloads and requirements details here. Requires KDE 3.2.
Riverbank Computing has announced that version 4 of its Python-Qt binding has been released. This is a major new release which supports Qt4, and can be installed alongside version 3. Full changelog here, docs here, class reference here. A bug fix update of SIP, the basis for PyQt, has also been released, with two changes (changelog here).
Debian has updated the Qt 4.1 packages for both its testing (Etch) and unstable (Sid) versions. Both now have 4.1.3 on all platforms except Motorola 68K and s390, which have 4.1.2 (for Etch see this search result, and for Sid see this one). Sarge (the current stable release) seems to entirely lack Qt 4 packages.
amaroK is now Amarok - Amarok Blog
Mark Kretschmann writes about the results of the recent K3M multimedia meeting in the Netherlands; among the changes is that "amaroK" is now simply "Amarok" (capital A rather than K, for anyone listening to rather than reading this). The reasons given are the continual misspellings (particularly when the name starts a sentence) which "hurt name branding", and the capital K implying that the app is KDE-specific, when it "is intended to be a software for all desktops". The comments at Mr Kretschmann's blog at the moment all approve of the change.
Version 1.8 of ManDVD (no home page linked), an application to "simply create DVD Vidéo", has been released. Screenshots, downloads and requirements list (this includes Qt 3) is at KDE Apps.
Riverbank Computing has announced version 4.4.4 of SIP, its library for producing Python bindings for C and C++ libraries. This is a bug-fix release (changelog here), but is required for PyQt 4.
Version 1.2.0 of KLatexFormula (no home page link given), a KDE app designed to produce an image (for saving or dragging and dropping) from a LaTeX formula, has been released. The usual three screenshots are on the KDE Apps page, along with a source download and build/install instructions. Requires Qt/KDE 3.1, LaTeX and ImageMagick.
Version 0.5r9 of Klik, a system of installable images (similar to the Mac's disk images) for Linux, has been released. The latest change is that software is being categorised in a hierarchy and can be ordered in each category by popularity as well as by name. Download instructions on the main Klik website, on which locations for application downloads can also be found.
Version 0.4.0 of QSvn, a multi-platform Subversion client which uses Qt 4, has been released. This version has a number of new features including HTTPS access support - for full list see KDE Apps. Screenshots here; downloads (source and Windows installer) here.
Novell/SUSE has closed the old Supplementary repositories, opening up new KDE repositories at the OpenSUSE site. The KDE/Qt3 downloads can be found here, and there is a KDE4 repository which right now contains KDE libraries, CMake (the build tool for KDE 4, replacing the autotools), and Qt 4 (updated to 4.1.3). (Hat tip: Stephan Binner.)
Version 0.12.0 of Kopete, the KDE multi-protocol chat client, has been released. Among the changes is Yahoo file transfer support, many new Jabber capabilities supported, "support for Adium style chatwindow themes", the handling of status messages no longer being tied to the online status, and "Get Hot New Stuff" being reactivated. (I can't find the full changelog.) Screenshots here, downloads (source only, so far) here. This is expected to be the last release for KDE 3; development focus is now moving to Kopete 1.0 for KDE 4. Requires KDE 3.3 or later (emoticons will not work on 3.3 however).
Version 1.3.3.2 of Scribus, the Qt-based open-source desktop publishing (DTP) application, has been released. According to the changelog, the team "has announced previously there there will be substantial core code changes in the next 1.3.4 and 1.3.5 releases, so the team has branched 1.3.3 to provide a stable usable development version". This version contains new translations (Greek and Dzongkha), compatibility changes for Qt 3.3.6, stability fixes for Windows, and a fix for compatibility with Adobe Reader 7. Screenshots here, downloads: Windows 2000/XP, MacOS X, Source, RPMS & Debs, Debian Repository w/Instructions.
Kubuntu Dapper Drake, and by extension the same version of Ubuntu, has been released. This version features the "Ubiquity Desktop Installer", enabling the installation of the OS from the live CD (similar to Mandrake One), improved X display configuration, improved East Asian Language support, Netboot installation, optional kernels tuned for servers including one geared for systems with 8 or more processors, turn-key LAMP installation, and a whole lot more (see the announcement). The release can be downloaded as an ISO, ordered for free through Shipit, or upgraded from a previous release using APT or Adept (you will probably find it on a cover disk fairly soon - not on Linux Format though, which is due out today). This release features KDE 3.5.2 (but 3.5.3 is available via APT; see here); 256Mb is recommended for a desktop install.
KDE 3.5.3 has been released; in a change to the usual practice of including only bug-fixes in maintainance releases, this release features "well-tested new functionality". Start-up times have been shortened, new features have appeared in Akregator, KMail and KAlarm, and "over 800 minor issues fixed with the aid of Coverity (full changelog here). Information on downloading and compiling here; the release is source only, although there is information on where to find binaries for some distributions (currently Arch, Kubuntu, Red Hat, Fedora and SUSE).