An anonymous reader writes: "I'm a huge OS X/Gnome fan, but still highly respect the KDE project. I still try and keep up with it's developments and recently came across this posting on KDELook which proposed a totally new GUI design for KDE, which I think could be quite easily adopted in other environments as well. A rolling Slashdot discussion I think would help keep the open-source innovation going. Thoughts?" Update: 11/27 20:12 GMT by T : Amended to give credit where due, which in this case is to the anonymous submitter :)

e8johan asks: "I recently found the BusyBox project that combines tiny versions of many common UNIX utilities into a single small executable. It provides minimalist replacements for most of the utilities you usually find in GNU fileutils, shellutils, etc. The utilities in BusyBox generally have fewer options than their full-featured GNU cousins; however, the options that are included provide the expected functionality and behave very much like their GNU counterparts. As I look through the list of products and projects using BusyBox I find that most installers use it (RH, Slackware, Mandrake, Gentoo, etc.) As the footprint of this is very small, I came to wonder, are there any other smaller versions of common linux software. I found TinyX and the small linux project but I lack a proper desktop. Does anyone has a small desktop solution (like KDE or Gnome) to recommend. What I'm looking for is a proper desktop solution with common configurations tools, standardized IPC and common look-and-feel, not just another window manager."

Isle writes "Trolltech has today released Qt 3.1. Qt is the C++ library behind KDE and this release means that the road is paved for the KDE 3.1 RC4 monday to become final. Here is a list of major new features. Among those are Qt Script for Applications, better integration with Mofit and an improved build system."

Paladin128 writes "The KDE Project today issued two security advisories which affect KDE versions 2.1 through KDE 3.0.4 (and also through KDE 3.1 RC3). The first advisory concerns the rlogin:// service and, for affected KDE 2.x systems, the telnet:// service. The second advisory concerns the LISa and resLISa network browsing applications. Binary packages for KDE 3.0.5 should be available by early next week (check the KDE 3.0.5 Info Page); in the interim it is recommended to disable the affected services or upgrade from the source code or patches. Read more here."

krog asks: "I've recently signed a contract with a local middle school to replace their aged Apple /// cluster with a roomful of IBM Aptivas running Linux 7.3. Now surely I will be installing such ease-of-use tools as KDE3, Gnome, and screen, but I am looking for suggestions of other software to install. Anyone know of any good text editors/BASIC interpreters/shells/etc suitable for eight-year-old children?"

Andreas(R) writes "Red Hat Software has revealed that future versions of the distribution will hide the differences between command-line user interfaces, creating a 'more unified shell prompt experience'. 'I don't mind if they rebrand and unify the GNOME and KDE interfaces,' said one Linux longhair. 'Frankly, I rarely use GUIs. But when they start messing with my CLI, then it's personal. I'm not going to sit here and let Red Hat infect my beloved tcsh with those annoying quirks from bash." Ah, nothing like satire that only a small group will truly grok. *grin*

highwaytohell writes "Sirtaj Singh Kang is a KDE developer and an official spokesman for KDE in Australia. In this interview conducted by the Sydney Morning Herald he talks about how the KDE project manages to maintain its hierarchy, where he sees KDE in the future, Linux portability issues and the relationship between Trolltech and KDE developers. The article gives a good insight into how maintainers and developers work to maintain one of the more popular window managers for Linux. Certainly worth a read."

mingthemerciless asks: "The company I work for is developing accessible solutions for the visually impaired. Right now we are working on (yet another?)a screen reader for windows, but a linux version is on the drawing board...Linux screen readers like Speakup and Emacspeak either are console only or create virtual desktops. Is it viable to have a 'what you hear is what is on the screen' screenreader like JAWS on the current Linux desktop environments Like GNOME 2.0 or KDE 3.0?"

Mr. Smoove writes "Despite the quick-off-the-mark review from Newsforge this morning, the Xandros 1.0 desktop is finally here! No free download so you'll have to shell out US$99 for it but you do get an enhanced (?) version of KDE 2.2 and built-in Cross-Over Plugin and Office! Finally a decent challenger to Lycoris and also what Lindows should have been..." There's also an interview with a Xandros executive.

Gentu writes "Great news from our favorite windowing system: [Hewlett-Packard] engineers committed a new extension to XFree86, called RandR. XFree86 4.3 (to be released in late 2002/early 2003), will have the ability to truly resize (not via the pseudo-resize CNTRL+[+/-] command), rotate, reflect and change the refresh rate of each screen of an X display on the fly. And KDE seems to be the first desktop environment to add support for the RandR extension."

Moritz Moeller - Her writes "As most of you desktop users already know, the KDE Project recently released KDE 3.1beta2, which will be the final development release before KDE 3.1. The good news is, KDE 3.1 is scheduled for release in just a few weeks. The following page gives a nice overview about what is coming with many screenshots. It will certainly be the best KDE ever."

An anonymous reader writes "Timothy Butler published a nice clean-up on the misinformations that were published by dep on Linux and Main. Most of what that has been alleged by Linux and Main turns out to be wrong. Especially, the KDE League has no obligation to disclose financial information. On dot.kde.org, Mathias Kalle Dallheimer, KDE e.V. president, explains that the KDE e.V would authorize the KDE League to disclose its books to the KDE e.V members. However, the KDE e.V is not the only member of the KDE League. Other members would have to approve this."

RH-Gimp writes "OSNews has put together a long and informative interview with Havoc Pennington and Owen Taylor from Red Hat. They discuss about the KDE issues, the UI on Red Hat 8.0, the future of the Linux desktop and XFree and other interesting stuff."

pantropik writes "OSNews has been giving quite a bit of bandwidth to Red Hat's newest offering lately. This article, which generated quite a bit of controversy in the comments section, detailed a new user's 'frustrations' with the new release. The latest article, written by yours truly, is rather lengthy, explaining such things as adding 3D drivers, missing MP3 functionality, DVD decoding, using APT with RHL, and customizing Red Hat's modified KDE. At the end, I wrap up with my impression -- as a simple user -- of this 'crippled' KDE implementation. Of course, you can also check out this story, which takes a look at RH 8.0 from 'Joe and Jane User's' perspective."

OrangeSpyderMan writes "Here is a further piece by Dennis E. Powell ("DEP"), the other is an editorial, submitted simply by "staff". They make interesting reading, and add a lot of info to the story previously reported Of particular insterest is an apparent clarification of the tax status of the league, which, if anything, serves to complicate a little further the true role of the league, as the editorial goes on to explain. Basically the "staff" appear to wonder if it wouldn't have been more productive to give the $170,000 that the League appears to have collected (or be owed) directly to the KDE project."

An anonymous reader writes "The corporate status of the KDE League, Inc., was revoked earlier this year by the Delaware Secretary of State when it failed to file necessary papers and pay fees, according to this report in Linux and Main. In addition, the organization seems to have overlooked financial disclosures that are supposed to be made public under federal law. And asked about it, the KDE League's chairman, Andreas Pour, refused to comment." Update: You can read a statement from Andreas here that explains what's going on. Thanks to Thomas Zander for the update.

desau writes "The good folks over at KDE have released the second beta of 3.1. Binary packages are available for most major distributions, save one."

Ivan writes "Lunar Linux 1.0 was released today. It's a source based distribution, with gcc 3.2 and the latest versions of packages such as Mozilla 1.1, OpenOffice.org 1.0.1 and GNOME 2 and KDE 3. From the about page on their website: 'In the beginning Lunar was a fork of Sorcerer GNU Linux (SGL). The fork occurred in late January to early February of 2002 and was originally made up of a small group of people who wanted to collaboratively develop and extend the Sorcerer technology.' Download the ISOs here."

An anonymous reader writes "Neal Walfield announced the first release of RMGPT, which is (or rather, aspires to one day be) a complete, portable implementation of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 threads also known as POSIX threads. With this new pthreads library, it will soon be possible to run complex software packages on the Hurd, including the GNOME and KDE desktops, the OpenOffice suite, and the Mozilla web browser. Find more information here, including the humorous meaning behind RMGPT, and insight into a future Hurd release..."

Vicegrip writes "In an article on leaked release notes on Redhat 8.0 CNet also revealed that Bernhard Rosenkraenzer, known here on Slashdot as berorh, has quit over objections he has on what Redhat is doing to KDE in the new release. Bero says that the new version of KDE in Redhat 8.0 is going to be crippleware. I know I always found Bero's comments here on Slashdot helpful and insightful. His worries about what Redhat is doing to KDE for 8.0 have me rather concerned and thinking of switching distributions."