Mandriva Linux 2008.1

Mandriva SA has announced the release of Mandriva Linux 2008.1, officially labelled as "2008 Spring": "Mandriva, the leading European Linux distributor, today announces the launch of Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring, the major new release of Mandriva Linux, featuring hundreds of improvements which make for a quicker and more powerful distribution that is easier to use than ever. Changes include: a new parental control utility; the Elisa multimedia center; easy support for synchronizing many mobile devices with the GNOME and KDE environments; the Codeina framework; the PulseAudio audio framework has been adopted by default; significant improvements to the Mandriva software installation tools; customized support for the popular ASUS Eee PC; KDE 4.0.2 available in repositories." Read the rest of the press release for further details. Download the installation DVD or live CD images from Mandriva mirrors or via BitTorrent: mandriva-linux-one-2008-spring-KDE-int-cdrom-i586.iso (697MB, MD5, torrent), mandriva-linux-one-2008-spring-GNOME-int-cdrom-i586.iso (645MB, MD5, torrent).

KDE 4.0.3 and Kubuntu Packages Are Now Available

The third maintenance release of KDE4 was released a few minutes ago, as the KDE Community announced.

KDE 4.0.3 brings you a lot of bug fixes, performance improvements and many updated translations for most of its components. It is already translated into 48 languages and more are coming soon.

What's new in KDE 4.0.3:

• Konqueror browser has the following new improvements:

- Scrolling optimisations in KHTML, KDE's HTML rendering engine
- Improved handling of dialog windows in KWin, KDE's window manager
- Various rendering improvements in Okular, KDE's document viewer

• The Extragear package, which contains a handful of mature applications, was introduced in this release. Let's have a quick look at the programs inside the Extragear package:

- KColoredit - An editor for color palette files that supports KDE and Gimp color palette formats;
- KFax - A desktop fax viewer;
- KGrab - A more advanced screenshot taking tool;
- KGraphviewer - A GraphViz dot graph viewer for KDE;
- KIconedit - A drawing program for icon graphics;
- KMldonkey - A graphical client for the EDonkey network;
- KPovmodeler - A 3D modeler;
- Libksane - An image-scanning library;
- RSIbreak - A program that saves you from getting RSI by enforcing breaks;
- Gopher KIO slave - A plugin that adds support for the Gopher protocol to all KDE applications.

• A suite of high-quality educational software, such as Marble, Kalzium, Kmplot and Parley.

The next maintenance release of KDE4, KDE 4.0.4, will be released at the end of April, including more updates and bugfixes. This summer, KDE 4.1 will be available worldwide and will be based on Qt 4.4, with all its performance and functionality improvements.

Now, let's take a look at the release schedule for the KDE 4 maintenance releases:

• January - KDE 4.0.1
• February - KDE 4.0.2
• March - KDE 4.0.3
• April - KDE 4.0.4
• May - KDE 4.0.5
• June - KDE 4.0.6
• July - KDE 4.1.0
• August - KDE 4.1.1

...and a closer one at the KDE 4.1 release schedule:

• March 31st, 2008: Soft Feature Freeze
• April 22nd, 2008: Hard Feature Freeze
• April 22nd, 2008: Tag KDE 4.1 Alpha 1
• April 29th, 2008: Release KDE 4.1 Alpha 1
• May 20th, 2008: Message Freeze.
• May 20th, 2008: Tag KDE 4.1 Beta 1
• May 27th, 2008: Release KDE 4.1 Beta 1
• June 17th, 2008: Tag KDE 4.1 Beta 2
• June 24th, 2008: Release KDE 4.1 Beta 2
• July 8th, 2008: Artwork Freeze
• July 8th, 2008: Tag KDE 4.1 RC 1
• July 15th, 2008: Release KDE 4.1 RC 1
• July 22nd, 2008: Tag KDE 4.1.0
• July 29th, 2008: Release KDE 4.1

How to install or upgrade?

• If you want to install KDE 4.0 on your Ubuntu PC and don't know how to do it, we wrote for you a step-by-step tutorial about this. Get it from here!

• If you have a computer powered by Kubuntu 7.10, then follow the instruction below to upgrade to KDE 4.0.3:

- Open the Software Sources application, go to the "Third-Party Software" tab, click the 'Add' button and paste the following line:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-members-kde4/ubuntu gutsy main

- Click OK and close the Software Sources window. Reload the information about new software.

- Open a terminal and type:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

- When the upgrade is over, reboot your computer and you'll have KDE 4.0.3!

PUD GNU/Linux 0.4.8.6 LXDE Edition

Pin-Shiun Chen just announced a special version of PUD GNU/Linux, an Ubuntu-based mini distribution based on the newest LXDE 0.3: "This edition of live CD is made for the Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment (LXDE), including the newest LXDE 0.3, installer and Ubuntu 8.04 packages. LXDE tries hard to get maximal usability from minimal resource usage, and provide a usable desktop for low end machines. Main Features: LXDE desktop - This live CD is based on PUD, except the full-featured live CD, it also included the newest LXDE 0.3 and pre-configured to provide an easy to use, lightweight and fast desktop. Multi-Language Support - English, both Simplified and Traditional Chinese are fully supported by LXDE live CD." Read the complete release note for more information. Download: pud-0.4.8.6-lxde.iso (259MB, MD5).

Bluewhite64 Linux 12.1 RC1

The current development tree of Bluewhite64 Linux 12.1, an unofficial port of Slackware Linux to the 64-bit processor architecture, reached the first release candidate status: "This is Bluewhite64 12.1-rc1, though there is still some more minor work to do. No ISO for this RC, perhaps the RC2 will have one, I'm waiting for the 2.6.25 Linux kernel to integrate it as a test26.s kernel. Please help test! And if we're missing anything major, please let me know at arny at bluewhite64 dot com or post to the forum. Thank You!" Read the full changelog for further information. Those who are interested in creating a DVD ISO image can follow the news link to read this How To.