Free Software Linux

So it's been almost three months since 2.6.25 (87 days to be exact, I think), making this a longer-than-usual release cycle. Or maybe it just feels that way, and we're always getting close to three months these days.

KDE hackers have been working on polishing the new features, desktop integration, and documenting and translating the packages. Several bugfixing sessions have been held and squashed bugs in the beta software. Testing and feedback on this release is appreciated and needed to make the final KDE 4.1 release in late July 2008 a splash.

The CollabNet-sponsored Subversion open source community today announced the general availability of Subversion® 1.5, the world’s leading Software Configuration Management (SCM) tool for managing software development and maintenance across distributed teams.

Just a quick note to say that the second most popular web browser out there and one of the most used bits of open source on the desktop, Firefox has had version 3.0 go gold.

You think, text-console programs look boring? Then run them in an environment that looks more interesting. AKFAvatar can be used as a wrapper for text-console programs. It can be used to make simple demos and much more… Version 0.15.1 is out since sunday.

Linux music player application Banshee has just been updated to version 1.0. The new version features significant performance improvements, plus a host of brand new features, including Video, a new Play Queue feature, Shuffle and improved support for third-party media devices and Last.fm.

KDE 4.0.5 comes with several bugfixes, performance improvements and translation updates. KDE continues to release updates for the 4.0 desktop on a monthly basis. KDE 4.1, which will bring large improvements to the KDE desktop and applications will be released in July this year.

Pat Volkerding and the Slackware team released the latest version of Slackware Linux, 12.1, on May 2. Even though it is a "point one" release, the list of new features reads like what other distributions would consider a major new version. Slackware 12.1 features the latest KDE 3.5.9, Xfce 4.4.2, and a number of improvements, especially to udev.

Earlier this month, we released the single, largest release of Qt since the 4.0.0 release two years ago. Qt 4.4.0 is the result of 10 months of hard work by the Trolls, including numerous distractions. read more

The KDE Project is proud to announce the first beta release of KDE 4.1. Beta 1 is aimed at testers, community members and enthusiasts in order to identify bugs and regressions, so that 4.1 can fully replace KDE 3 for end users. KDE 4.1 beta 1 is available as binary packages for a wide range of platforms, and as source packages. KDE 4.1 is due for final release in July 2008. Highlights: Plasma grows up, Kontact returns, applications grow, refinement throughout the frameworks. read more

The work of the past half year - also thanks to the open movie project "Big Buck Bunny" - has resulted in a greatly improved feature set, now released as Blender 2.46, the "Bunny release"!

In this issue of Free Software Magazine Terry Hancock interviews the amazing engineers involved in the OpenHardware project. Gavin Baker casts doubts on the effectiveness of the GPL In today's web-oriented world where applications are less and less "desktop". Scott Nesbitt's article on Prism, which helps people to bring web applications to the desktop couldn't be more timely. read more

Red Hat is on top of the business Linux world and it has no intentions of coming down. Its newest release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), version 5.2, is designed to make sure that it stays on top.

The free software RAW photo converter Rawstudio released version 1.0 in April, marking the culmination of two years of work. This release carries on the Rawstudio tradition of providing a lightweight, dependable tool for photographers.

Firefox 3 Release Candidate has been released. It includes only minor performance, UI, and compatibility tweaks. If no issues are found with the release candidate, it will become the final release.