KDE announces the immediate availability of the KDE Software Compilation 4.4 on 9th feb 2010, "Caikaku", bringing an innovative collection of applications to Free Software users. Major new technologies have been introduced, including social networking and online collaboration features, a new netbook-oriented interface and infrastructural innovations such as the KAuth authentication framework.

A microprocessor does more than just blindly run whatever instructions are loaded into its front end, without regard for where those instructions came from. Microprocessors are in fact "aware" of the OS, and they provide direct hardware support for enforcing divisions between components of the hardware/software stack that I described in the previous article.

Earlier, the KDE team had announced the availability of version 4.4 of the popular desktop environment, KDE. I’d been running the RC2 version of KDE 4.4 since it was made available. And today I’ve upgraded to the release version. Here are some screenshots:

GNU/Linux has never been short of audio and video players, but they live in a world of multiple codecs, chief culprit amongst them being MP3, AAC, WMA and (Adobe) Flash. I say "culprits" because they are not free and open codecs. They are encumbered by patents; most websites with embedded audio/video use them and most of the people who view them are also using other patented software: Windows.

I’ve been following the development of this for some time, being a longtime Fluxbox enthusiast, and a relatively recent Linux Mint convert. This combines two of my favorite things in the Linux world, Fluxbox and Mint!

According to the official announcement:

his release has been built with the emphasis on a lightweight and yet fully functional desktop centered on the Fluxbox window manager. Even though we strive to provide out-of-the-box readiness for all your hardware and common computing tasks, Linux Mint Fluxbox CE is easily configurable to run on lower-spec hardware with the tools needed for doing so readily available.

The Linux Mint team announced the final release of Linux Mint 8 "Helena" KDE Community Edition. Based on Kubuntu 9.10, Linux 2.6.31, KDE 4.3.4 and Xorg 7.4, Linux Mint 8 KDE CE boasts improved OEM installation, as well as "ignore updates" and multiple software selection features. The first (RC1) release candidate of the Ubuntu 9.10-based Linux Mint 8 arrived in November.

It's almost time for Fedora 13 feature freeze and we hardly expect any new last minute additions. With most accepted Fedora 13 features highlighted on Fedora Project Wiki we decided to provide a comprehensive preview of the Linux distribution.