I've found myself falling in love all over again with various KDE apps as I use their KDE4 incarnations. One of those apps is Gwenview, by Aurélien Gâteau. In KDE4 one of the common goals shared by various development teams was to improve the look, feel and usability of our apps. Did Aurélien succeed? Now it certainly looks better. But is it as functional? As easy to use?

An IT research company made the prediction that by the year 2012, more than 3/4 of all software will be open source. Due to the ease with which open source software is developed and the rise in programmers and Internet communities, proprietary software will quickly dissipate.

With the recent release of version 4.0, the KDE open source project has garnered a lot of international attention. One of KDE's lead developers, and best known personality, Aaron J Seigo is in Australia to speak at this year's Linux.conf.au on his vision for better desktop computing. Computerworld spoke with Seigo, a native of Calgary, Canada, about his view of the world and how a little bit of innovation will permanently change how people interact with software.

On Friday, January 18th, Aaron Seigo, President of the KDE e.V. gave the keynote at the KDE 4.0 Release Event in Mountain View, California about KDE 4, presenting KDE to the world and the world to KDE. Aaron started with an introduction to KDE 4, beginning with the history of the project and expressing how far KDE has come in the last 11 years. Then, Aaron explored what KDE is, and what the community is based on - freedom and openness. Freedom to do work, have fun, and connect with others. Further, Aaron moved on to KDE 4, and discussed the near-future plans and ideas. The vision of KDE 4 is based upon three principles: beauty, accessibility, and functionality. He ventured into the many areas that KDE has improved upon, and pointed to the roadmap for the KDE 4 cycle.

The KDE Community is thrilled to announce the immediate availability of KDE 4.0. This significant release marks both the end of the long and intensive development cycle leading up to KDE 4.0 and the beginning of the KDE 4 era. Be sure to also check out the KDE 4.0 Visual Guide.

"...In 1998, some of the people in the free software community began using the term "open source software" instead of "free software" to describe what they do. The term "open source" quickly became associated with a different approach, a different philosophy, different values, and even a different criterion for which licenses are acceptable. The Free Software movement and the Open Source movement are today separate movements with different views and goals, although we can and do work together on some practical projects..."

Filelight bills itself as a program that “creates an interactive map of concentric segmented-rings that helps visualise disk usage on your computer”. In essence, it’s a graphical program that helps you look at and understand how much space different files and directories are taking up on your hard drive.

I’ve been using Ubuntu (or a derivative) for two years now. But then I noticed the new cool kid: PCLinuxOS. It naturally runs KDE, as opposed to being a derivative like Kubuntu. But then I started to notice PCLOS falls short in some areas where Kubuntu shines. So how does it all break down?