Category: kde

As KDE-LightDM prepares for heading into extragear, I'm busy tying up all the loose ends and final bits of polish on the product. One of the final items left is working on making it easy for modders and hackers to build their own themes and make these really easy to install for all users.

In recent weeks, I've had two people contact me with regards to making their own themes which is really encouraging.

Stoica-Marcu Andrei (FlowRiser) has developed a login manager theme that looks like the login theme that mimics the video game "League Of Legends". As an old person I don't really know what that is, but I do know it looks very nice. The still screenshot shot does not do it justice, there's things animating and moving and there's sound and all sorts.

Whilst this obviously isn't to everyone's taste and won't ever be shipped with KDE-LightDM, it's really encouraging to see someone take the flexibility the QML-powered theme engine provides and make something really unique with it beyond anything I had imagined. It also helps to confirm a lot of design decisions I made along the way.

There's also been some interest from KDE's graphic artist Nuno Pinheiro, working on some interesting ideas.

This requires the git-latest version of KDE-LightDM, as well as some manual installation for now.

In the long term I hope to have a category on kde-look, or equivalent.

Contact me (d_ed) in #kde-lightdm on Freenode if you're interested.

With the second RC of KDE4.2 just released, now is a really important time to get involved in testing KDE 4.10.

During this release, due to changes based on feedback, two areas of KDE have undergone a significant change between Release Candidate 1 and 2. This isn't typical, so to ensure the final release goes as smoothly as possible an extra release candidate is going to be created. This will delay the KDE 4.10 release, but it does help ensure that KDE 4.10 is the best ever.

As part of the KDE quality team, it's now our task to make sure these changed areas still get the same level of coverage and testing. To help with this we've arranged a series of checklists covering all the items in the two modified areas.

Once you have RC2 installed, it would really help us if as many people as possible go through the checklists to check for any regressions.

• Changes to Dolphin
• Changes to PIM

As usual you can help test all the areas of KDE that have changed between KDE 4.9 and 4.10, or simply by using the release early and reporting back with any problems.

Thanks to everyone who has worked hard in testing so far. During the release phase is when developers are most attentitive to bug reports, and it really does make a difference.

LightDM-KDE version 0.3.1 has been released.

Fixes

• Fixed user avatars not appearing (working around a bug in AccountsService)
• Fixed translations not loading correctly

Source code can be found at http://download.kde.org/unstable/lightdm-kde/src/lightdm-kde-0.3.1.tar.bz2.mirrorlist, and will be in your distribution shortly.

Not the most exciting changelog ever, but that doesn't mean work isn't happening. 0.4 promises several new features including; live config-previews, even better PAM support, theme installer and a lot more.

If you want to get involved, email me!
(my address is at the top of every source file I've edited)

KDE Telepathy 0.5.2 codename "we already have it" has just been released.

This brings a whole tonne of festive bugfixes. What better present could you ask for?

Since 0.5.1 we have fixed the following:

• Potential Freeze when declining contact request (311548)
• Connection Errors when using WICD (303498)
• "Connecting…" indicator keeps spinning forever on login (307758)
• Make Presence plasmoid icons plasma themeable (302993)
• No notification sound when a new message comes in in an active chat window (310946)
• Crash in Accounts KCM (307302)
• Correctly align right-to-length languages (305045)
• Deadlock between Amarok and KDED when starting (310826)
• Sometimes initial selected item in contact list has the wrong foreground colour (310081)
• Crash in Ktp-Log Viewer (310552)
• Deadlock in auth-handler (310505)
• Previous and Next conversation links are shown twice (309828)
• Fix colours in Contact List view (308802)
• SIP advanced configuration: 'Transport' is always reset to 'auto' (309180)
• Speedups in the ktp-debugger (308204)
• Flip video stream of preview in call interfaces (so it's like a mirror) (308976)
• Kwallet interaction fixes (1) (308079)
• Kwallet interaction fixes (2) (308973)
• Handle Enter key as well as Return to send message (308895)
• Contact list did not update to style changes immediately (308820)
• Mobile icon is not hidden when user goes offline (308217)
• Quick Chat applet doesn't scroll to the bottom when new messages come in (298392)

Source packages are available here, and should be in your distribution shortly.

Bored over the Christmas holidays? Want to get involved in KTp? Find out more on our wiki. We are doing a lot of changes under the hood for 0.6, there's lots of activity and it's a great time to get involved in all the cool things we're up to.

The KDE Quality Team is designed to, amongst other things, manage the release tesing for KDE and move towards having a structured approach rather than just releasing some code, and seeing what happens.

This means keeping clear instructions on how to install the latest betas, promoting testing and trying to do the testing more effectively.

What's being done

• Making easy instructions on how to get the latest release
• Making and running "release checklists" for various components of KDE to ensure everything still works as it should
• Making a list of changed areas, and putting an emphasis on testing these
• Running bug days, with bug reporting tutorials to improve the usefulness of the bug reports

As a developer how can I help/benefit from this?

If you have refactored a large area of code, or introduced a new feature, please add it to the to-test list (http://community.kde.org/Getinvolved/Quality/Beta/4.10/AreasToTest) along with instructions of how to get to test it. Use end-user terminology, and keep things deliberately vague to encourage users to spot bugs in areas that you (as a developer) haven't thought about.

Be on top of the bugzilla lists. KDE only works if all developers are on top of triaging their own products, confirming bugs, closing duplicates and invalid bugs and of course, fixing them 🙂

As a distro packager, how can I help?

Make sure our wiki page of "how to get the latest beta" (http://community.kde.org/Getinvolved/Quality/Beta/4.10/Installing) is up to date with clear instructions. A link to the relevant release page is enough. It's a wiki for a reason, edit away 🙂

Help co-ordinate

You may have noticed we're running a bit behind this release. We really need to step it up, both now and for future releases. It's a new-ish team, and I've ended up being ridiculously busy.

We have a number of ways to get involved in the managing side of KDE Quality:

• Redesigning the landing wiki page to be more graphic, easy to navigate and inviting
• Updating our list of changed areas in 4.10 that need extensive testing
• Co-ordinate with the kde-promo team to include testing instructions on the release notes
• Hang around our IRC channel #kde-quality to help answer testers questions

It's a real work in progress, but we're already showing real results both in terms of bugs reported, and bugs fixed.

Join our mailing list [https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-testing] or find us in #kde-quality.

As usual KDE is running the testing program throughout the beta period
of KDE 4.10. It's a great way to get involved in KDE.

How do I get the latest release?

The latest release for testing can be found on our wiki page http://community.kde.org/Getinvolved/Quality/Beta/4.10/Installing
we try and keep this up to date with the latest information from your distribution.

I've got the latest beta, what should I do?

When you have the latest beta, have a play with the new release and report any bug to http://bugs.kde.org and select "File a bug".

Bug reporting is an essential part of the testing process, it's especially important to catch regressions, which is when a new bug is accidentally introduced when something is changed. KDE developers only have limited hardware and our own workflow, we really do need you to help test and see if you find any bugs we've missed. All bugs are looked at, even if they cannot be immediately fixed and reacted upon.

If you are playing with the release, it is especially helpful if you try using the areas of KDE that either contain new features or have undergone significant changes "under the hood". We have a list of the areas that you should spend some of your time testing on our wiki http://community.kde.org/Getinvolved/Quality/Beta/4.10/AreasToTest. We also have various checklists that should be completed before the release http://community.kde.org/Getinvolved/Quality/Beta/4.10/Plasma

Today we are releasing 0.5.1 of KDE Telepathy, the first patch release in our 0.5 series.

We have fixed over 14 bugs since release, including:

Skype no longer appears in the list of available protocols if it is not available

Fixed issues when KWallet is disabled

Log viewer crashes fixed

Loading logs for facebook users

Fixed log viewer not showing names in group chats

Added an indication that an account is connecting in the presence applet

Presence applet autohides if the user has no telepathy accounts

Presence applet fits in smaller panels correctly

A full list can be found here

Many thanks to the entire KTp team, as well as to all the testers and bug reporters who helped in this release.

Source code is available here and it should be in distributions shortly.

Find out more about getting involved in KTp here

The aim of the extra mile project is put some energy into fixing the little annoyances in KDE, the small bugs and UI issues which get in the way of the user.

We've been working on areas all over KDE, I've outlined some of my favourite changes I've been working on over this past week.

Redoing the Network Manager Authorisation Prompts

This prompt is for when you need to re-enter a password for your wifi connection. The main issue is that the layout cut short, but it is also lacking clear context as to what the dialog is asking. Important text and instructions should be put in the window and not only in the windor title. A bit of text and an icon shape everything up nicely.

Improving the Akonadi KCM

Padding and margins are one the most important tools to a designer, uneven and misaligned spacing can quickly make a really good piece of technology look unfinished.

Improving Kate dialogs

Aurélien Gâteau made some changes in the kate dialogs, updating icons to reflect the actions and updated the tooltips to give a appropriate description of the actions each one does.

Get Involved

There's still lots more to be done, and it's a great opportunity to get involved in KDE or even just getting more familiar with a different area of KDE.

There are two ways to get involved in the extra mile project. We need people to go through applications, dialogs and workflows spotting areas where we can improve by opening extramile bugs, as well as going through this list and getting things fixed.

Find out more about the project on the wiki page, or join us in our IRC channel #kde-quality on Freenode.

When dealing with bug reports, getting bugs that you can't reproduce is one of the worst situations to be in. Without the right information it's impossible to progress. Knowing where the bug is is 90% of bug fixing, if we are unable to reproduce something it's frustrating for everyone involved.

This week two bug reporters have stood out as being absolutely fantastic. So much so, they deserve a shout out on PlanetKDE.

Mohammad Al-Rashed, when he encountered a bug we could not reproduce, not only managed to find out it was reproducable if KWallet was disabled, but recorded and sent us a video of it happening. With this extra information, the bug was fixed within a day.

I also had a bug in LightDM that I couldn't shake. The bug only appeared in OpenSuse, and caused the entire KCM to crash. Weirdly, it never crashed when launched from kcmshell, but would crash every time it was invoked from System Settings.

I challenge anyone reading this could have a guess as to what would cause that, I certainly couldn't. Without being able to reproduce this I had absolutely no hope of fixing this.

Alin Marin Elena kindly went to the effort of giving me SSH access to a machine he set up specifically to reproduce this bug. That night I was able to work out what caused the crash, and another developer Hrvoje Senjan managed to trace it to the specific compile flag being used in the Suse packages that caused this bug to manifest itself.

The moral of all this is if you're waiting on a developer to fix a bug, be proactive and go beyond the call of duty to help supply all the information needed to fix it.

LightDM-KDE 0.3 released

I have just released version 0.3 of LightDM-KDE, the new alternate KDE login manager. LightDM-KDE is set to be the new default login manager in the next release of Kubuntu.

This release brings many bug fixes including:

• No flickering between the greeter and KDE splash screens
• Better keyboard navigation
• Last user to log in is remembered and automatically selected
• Background images can be scaled either keeping the aspect ratio, or stretched
• Translations have been included
• Many more fixes...

A special thank you goes to Nuno Bento, Ralf Jung and Michael Zanetti for their contributions this release cycle.

Downloads are available at here or in Kubuntu repositories shortly.