Raiden's Realm: The KDE taskbar is an integral part of the KDE window manager and an integrated tool that will give you access to a wide variety of things that will make your experience in KDE so much easier. So let's look at the taskbar and go over each part of it.

FOSSwire: Here’s a really simple but very effective tip for speeding up the time it takes for KDE to start up.

Also: Sharp Fonts On A KDE Desktop

dot.kde.org; The two days of the KOffice ODF sprint were very productive. Most time was spent on group discussions, and designing specific parts of KOffice in smaller groups. Of course, code was written as well, and for an overview of what happened, read on!

Raiden's Realm: Welcome to part 7 of our series on the KDE 3.5 Control Center. Today we'll be covering the "Regional and Accessibility" section. This section serves two basic purposes that are useful for everyone using KDE on a regular basis.

dot.kde.org: In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: The KOffice ODF weekend sprint takes place in Berlin. KTuberling, the much-loved "potato man" game, is saved for inclusion in kdegames for KDE 4, with the start of porting to SVG and other general improvements. Rewrite of KPoker replaces the previous implementation. Xinerama improvements in the KWin window manager.

Also: KDE 4: systemsettings and general configuration

dot.kde.org: The day before the real start of the KOffice meeting in Berlin, most developers had already arrived. After checking in and having dinner, they started hacking away at the KDAB office. Read on to learn about how this went and the plans the developers have for KOffice 2 and the coming weekend!

Beranger: I do not intend to be rude and inconsiderate for the hard work of an entire team, but if KDE 4.0 will release end-October, it will be a big stain on the image of the KDE project. The current 3.90.1 is still what I would call "a proof of concept", for not saying it's a joke.

dot.kde.org: The KDE Community is happy to announce the immediate availability of the first alpha release of the KDE Desktop Environment, version 4.0. This release is a basis for the integration of powerful new technologies that will be included in KDE 4.

Raiden's Realm: One of the first questions that any new user to Linux is going to ask is, "So how do I get my email?" The answer is simple. Kmail.

liquidat: In the discussions around the last commit digest the question if there will be a common, firefox-like search bar for all applications anytime soon which all applications can share. It will not make it into KDE 4 for certain reasons, but might be a possibility for KDE 4.1.

dot.kde.org: We are here today to talk about the Strigi project - the indexing and search technology of KDE 4 - and to interview Flavio Castelli, a key developer of Strigi.

dot.kde.org: In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Atlantik, KFouleggs, Klickety, KPoker, Kenolaba, KAsteroids, KSnake, KSokoban, KJumpingCube and KTron move to playground/games. KDE 3.90.1 (KDE Alpha 1) is tagged to be released.

Raiden's Realm: Welcome to part 6 of our series on the KDE 3.5 Control Center. Today we'll be covering the Power Control section of the Control Center. This area is most important to laptop users.

On May 1st, the KDE games developer community held its monthly IRC meeting. This time the major topic was discussing which games would stay in the kdegames module for KDE 4 and which ones would have to be removed because they don't meet our self-imposed quality standards.

OpenSync is a syncing framework. It syncs data. The scope of OpenSync doesn't encompass application management, retrieving doodles (what would they sync with?), keeping accurate device backups, etc. These fall squarely in the device-specific handling category -- I'm not going to claim that KPilot does any of these well, though, except for retrieving doodles because Joerg wrote that code.

The KDE desktop environment for Linux has a handy graphics tool for capturing screenshots called KSnapshot. This utility lets you make screenshots in any of 4 different capture modes and allows you to save the results as JPEG, PNG or XPM files.

A few days ago I tried Kubuntu just to have a change in scenery. I also did it to test the KDE 4 Windows manager. to say the least I was not impressed. For the past 2 years I have used Gnome as my windows manager for Ubuntu. I decided to test out the KDE 4 windows manager to see if the hype was accurate. In my opinion it isn’t.

Yesterday, we did the kdegames review. We succeeded in having a common point of view about which games should be keep and move, how hard it can be. Here the results:

Improved KDE3 games kept for KDE4.0:

- knetwalk
- kgoldrunner
- kolf
- katomic
- konquest
- kpat
- kspaceduel
- lskat
- kbattleship
- kblackbox
- klines
- kreversi
- kbounce
- kmahjongg
- ksame

One of the pleasant problems with Linux Distros is the huge number of applications available. For Ubuntu Ultimate Edition (and others) there can be so many applications in a Kmenu section that it covers the entire desktop like this:

One of the more overlooked, but very useful features of KDE is its text editors. In a full standard install of KDE there are 3 of them. Kate, Kedit, and Kwrite. Each has its advantages, disadvantages, and general uses. Let's look at each of these and what each one offers the end user in terms of features, usability, and functionality.