KDE 4.1

The full release plan and the feature plan for KDE 4.1 have been published, with the official release date July 29th, 2008.

I'm not interested in migrating from KDE 3.x to KDE 4.0, but I'm anxiously waiting for KDE 4.1. Finally, we have a release date. More info at http://smallr.net/KDE4_1-release-sched.

Nokia buys Trolltech: something to worry about?

You probably know by now: Nokia is buying Trolltech [1]. I didn't talk about this yesterday, besides releasing a "crap" shout as I read the news for the first time. I read a lot, specially from folks from Nokia, Trolltech and KDE. I'm somewhat confident that this might not be as bad as it first seemed. Still, I have two major issues with this aquisition:

• Nokia actively lobbies in favour of Software Patents. This might not be an issue for now, but a culture clash might happen soon. Gladfully, QT is licensed with GPLv3, but yet, this can be a showstopper for both FreeQT and KDE.
• Nokia have a no Ogg, pro DRM position regarding HTML5. If they somewhat forces this to Trolltech (instead of doing the right thing, supporting Ogg, rejecting DRM), once again this can be a showstopper.
  

What this really means, in fact, is that this two issues concern me and a lot of others - and that they should be answered before this aquisition ends... or else there's some uneasyness Trolltech and Nokia will have to deal with.

[1] - http://www.nokia.com/A4136001?newsid=1185531

Geeks, Girlfriend, KDE, Mac and stuff

It's great, yet odd, to have a geek girlfriend. It's awsome to know that she likes Linux so much, even if she got a Mac (a decision she regrets, BTW). It's preety cool that she likes KDE, and it's awsome to have someone showing you you're not wrong thinking that KDE (or Linux in general) is better than Mac OS in terms of usability (even if the overall oppinion is otherwise). It's great to hear her saying "damn, why the hell there aren't good Mac OS programs like there are for Linux?" and knowing she's truthful when she says so - to the point of wanting to install KDE, or at least Konqueror, in her Mac. It turns scary, 'tho, when you read what is she doing to achieve her objective: she effectively not only tried to use KDE 4 (way too buggy nowadays, are you crazy?), but she tried it on a Mac (my hero!). Don't get me wrong - KDE 4 is AWSOME, and I can't wait for it to be released. But NOW? It's impossible to work with it yet!

Of course that I have to defend my manhood (hehe ;-)) when she is obvious mocking me in that blog post, so, I have to say that while I find preety joyful and funny to see a Mac owner wanting to turn it into a PC to use it with a real Operating System and Desktop Environment, what's really funny is to see the vices Mac OS already made her have: how would you react when you see someone panicking while using your laptop with Debian and KDE, after copying some stuff from a pen drive to the hard disk, and then wanting to unmount the pen... and, after some seconds of puzzlement, she tells "How the hell do I unmount the pen? Move it to trash?" :-D