Lots of dancing and drinking afterwards at the after parties (plural :) and when I eventually got up mid-morning I had a couple hundred emails waiting for me, way too many of which required my attention. I ended up unexpectedly in a few online meetings which altered my expected schedule significantly. Oh well, tomorrow's another day ... on which I have two more presentations to give.
In that same time, The Dot got a great new look and KDE 4.2 was released.
Exciting times indeed!
Where do we go from here? I think we have a lot of work to do to improve processes still, something that will only improve if enough people openly analyze what our processes are, identify challenges, and problem solve. Distributions have a lot of work left here, as right now audio via PulseAudio is experiencing the same problems and for the same reasons as KDE 4.0. That is something that distributions, by examining both their communication and version inclusion strategies, can fix. Upstreams need the room to innovate and that requires making releases in the process of doing so, and distributions can make it possible to both get those "bleeding edge" releases to people who can and will engage in testing without it endangering their work (and our shared reputations) and the "more boring" releases that are "retail ready" to people who rely on our work for day to day productivity.
For 2009 my personal agenda for KDE includes:
- Education: how can we take Plasma and the rest of KDE and provide the most useful system possible without creating a separate silo of code that people won't work on, let alone test.
- Management: kiosktool isn't ported to KDE4. Kiosk itself is still there in KDE4 and works just fine, but the tool isn't. We can also do a lot better than kiosktool in KDE3. I do wonder why these tools bit rot so. I hear that Sabayon doesn't work in Ubuntu either. In both cases distros played a big role in the creation of these tools and then they got abandoned, despite these tools being critical to so much of our user base.
- Marketing: repositioning the KDE brand is really important as we continue to grow to be able to accurately get the message of what KDE is out there. I'd hoped we'd have this done by 4.2.0's release, but now that the release is out maybe we can find the time and attention in our promo community to finish the work.
- Socializing our software: we need to open doorways to the community via our software. There are many ways to do it, we just need to make it happen.
- Plasmaliciousness: continue to make Plasma rock ever harder and do ever more with ever greater elegance.
What are you working on?
5 comments:
If I was aseigo - and (un)fortunately I'm not :) - I should add "Integration" on my agenda.
Plasma, Nepomuk, Akonadi, KWin are all great pieces of software just taken alone, but I think that _together_ they can make KDE a true revolutionary desktop.
I know that you already put some effort on KWin-Plasma integration (the activity-virtual desktop affinity, which is an experimental feature in 4.2), and I read something in the past about Plasma-Nepomuk integration, to publish via Nepomuk the context/activity the user is in.
IMHO this is the way to follow. I particularly like the idea of context/activity based desktop, where each activity has its own plasmoids, windows, contacts, places (I mean Dolphin places panel).
In the recent times I didn't seen anything more about this kind of "deep integration" between KDE components. Is it a task you consider less important (e.g. wrt the Plasma-Jolie integration, which btw I consider another big step forward)?
Are there some technical difficulties?
Anyway, a big THANK to you and all KDE devs.
You are doing a great work and I'm sure that in the following months we will see a huge positive user response (also by THE user, mr. Torvalds :) ).
I have to agree with baxeico.
Polish and integration is where KDE should shine.
The virtual desktop/activity distinction is just one very obvious example.
Integration and polish is something where KDE4 could outdo every other desktop (even more).
For example: I want a global "busy" setting (maybe in Kopete or somewhere) and then I don't want to be bothered by notification etc. from all my running apps.
But I am sure something like that will appear eventually (or even something better because KDE devs are way better visionaries than me)
Aaron, were there talks in Jamaica about more integration between KDE apps?
Kiosk tool is really, really needed if kde4 is to be deployed in academic and business settings.
If we can by for now editing files, that's what we will have to do, but having a gui ready for KIOSK will weigh very heavily in the minds of any admin evaluating kde4 for deployment.
I don't think sufficient time has been given to the manageability of the desktop, which by the way, should be a cross-desktop endeavor. I need one central place to lock down not just kde apps, but some of their gnome counterparts. Here's to hoping that this isn't forgotten and that you guys make it happen at the upcoming guakademy in Spain.
Excelente trabajo que han hecho con kde 4.2, esta genial, sigan adelante con este gran proyecto
Our IT department has decided we are going to deploy Kubuntu in our schools. I am currently researching in preparation for the deployment of 100 machines and soon a thin client configuration. I am writing here because I have noticed recent discussion on kde4 and kiosk.
Personally, I had attempted to use a KDE Kiosk GUI Tool for my son's computer but it does not seem to stop his ability to drastically modify his plasma desktop. While I am hopefully the he will grow out of it when he turns 3, I am more concerned about what would happen to the settings of machines in the hands of teenage students.
I have found a great deal of information available for KDE3 but not much specifically for kde4, plasma and kiosk. Am I just misusing the GUI Kiosk Admin tool? Is there a way to make plasma settings immutable through configuration files? If you have any guidance or resources you can direct me towards it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you! - Josh
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