The new KDE://radio podcast site keeps you informed and on the leading edge of KDE4 development. It holds at the moment 7 interviews which were recorded at the KDE Four Core developer meeting and deal with the new liveui framework, Akonadi PIM Storage Service, the Human Interface Guidelines, and more.
All the podcasts were really great, and I really enjoyed Celeste Paul’s in particular. Usability thinking throughout has never been KDE’s strong point (although it’s not as bad as some people make out) and Celeste seems to have a pretty good handle on what the problems are and how to go about solving them.
One thing I was impressed with was that she talked at length about not shoe-horning a set of guidelines on developers but trying to help them as much as possible. Of course, at some point some guidelines will need to be laid down for what applications get into KDE but developers will need help to bring them up to scratch. Certainly, I don’t think KDE will have a usability police force though, nor will functionality be removed in any way. It’s just about better organisation and documenting.
Here’s the direct link for the folder containing the interviews:
http://radio.kde.org/pub/konqcast/
These are useful if you want an insight of what is about to happen with the whole revamp of KDE in its 4th version. And even though Aaron Seigo (the interviewer and also a KDE developer) didn’t edit the audio, most of the podcasts will be interesting once you skip the initial chit chat. Oh and by the way, don’t listen to that Phonon interview too loud, Aaron will scare you to death at some point.
yes, an audio engineer and i am not. i did leave some beginnings and ends in on purpose though since they were a bit funny at times
oh, and if you’re having problems getting to the audio right now, there was a dns problem mucking things up for some people. it should be sorted out soon enough, but just to forewarn in case you do run into problems.
I previously noticed a dearth of articles/blogs/PR on how KDE4 was progressing (I’m always interested, but I don’t even use KDE, so I couldn’t be bothered to join the mailing lists or sit on IRC). Hopefully this podcast series will ramp up the momentum toward the first previews. Mockups and/or screenshots are always a good way of getting people interested, too. It’s been a while since I’ve happened across mockups of Plasma and other GUI-related technologies.
Now off to listen to these…
I hope KDE guys release the next version of KDE (4.0) more or less at the same time Vista is released. This will steal some thunder from Microsoft and give a boost to the Linux cause. But if Vista release date is extended infinitely, then they should release KDE v4.0 maybe in the beginning of next year.
Either way, I am really excited about KDE 4.0 and look forward to a very good experience using it.
> I hope KDE guys release the next version of KDE (4.0)
> more or less at the same time Vista is released. This
> will steal some thunder from Microsoft and give a boost
> to the Linux cause. But if Vista release date is
> extended infinitely, then they should release KDE v4.0
> maybe in the beginning of next year.
I think it should be released when it’s ready.
Yep, agreed. No need to hurry. Releasing too fast will surely lead to problems. Also I doubt that when KDE 4 is released, people will suddently move from Windows to Linux …
>Also I doubt that when KDE 4 is released, people will suddently move from Windows to Linux …
That’s ok, they won’t have to for Kde 4…it will run on Windows, so when Vista comes out and it’s laden with more DRM and hidden anti-piracy features, people might say… I like KDE 4, I’ll stick with it and just use Linux.