Calligra 2.4 Beta 6 Is Out, Kubuntu Gets PPA

A few days ago it was announced over on the Calligra homepage that a new beta of version 2.4 was reseased to the wild. As you probaly know, Calligra is the full office suite that is part of the KDE applications and community. Calligra was forked from KOffice a little over a year ago, and effectively replaces it.

Consisting of many office and graphics applications (nine in all!) Calligra aims to be a very robust set of applications, wrapped in a unique and customizeable desktop concept. If you need a refresher on Calligra and the applications that make it up, along with screenshots, click here. This beta is a bugfix release and is set to be the second to last before RC1 is finalized. It is currently the 6th beta to be released.

Users of Kubuntu's 11.10 current release, and the upcomming 12.04 LTS release can install Calligra and give it a spin. 12.04 testers can find Calligra in the main Kubuntu repositories, while users of the current 11.10 version can add the following PPA to their software sources:

ppa:kubuntu-ppa/beta

Which ever version you choose to install Calligra on, simply add the package "calligra", minus the quotes of course.

With Calligra being heavily considered for inclusion into the DVD release of Kubuntu's upcoming long -term support version, any help we as the Kubuntu community can give in testing Calligra out is I'm sure very much appreciated. Along those lines, expect a full review from The Blue Mint in the upcoming days.

If you download Calligra, try it out and let us know what you think!

When Unity Meets KDE: Video Spotlight

Today's video spotlight is a very polished and well-edited one by Youtube user GhindaUcigasa who aims to show us what happens when Ubuntu's Unity Shell meets KDE. It's an interesting concept, to be sure.

Since watching it, I couldn't help but think how much better Unity appeared to belong in Qt4 / KDE-land. The video does not show what all had to be done to pull off such a look and feel. One might argue that combining the design principals of Unity with the power and flexibility of KDE might be an option worth considering. Perhaps he / she will provide a how-to video at a later date. In the meantime, what do you think? Would you try a Unity-like interface in Kubuntu were it available? 

Netrunner Aims To Bring A Unified Ubuntu And KDE Experience

Recently we received word of a new release of a Linux distribution based on Kubuntu called Netrunner. Currently ranked  97th on Distrowatch, Netrunner targets users looking for an OS that is:

...built on Kubuntu with default integration of Gnome and Wine. Our focus is on new users as well as “power-users” at the same time, making KDE the ideal choice. Our aim is to make it as comfortable for the new user while still offering all the options (and even lots of additional add-ons) to enable the user to explore the power of FLOSS possibilities. Power-up where others dumb-down. Lots of add-ons, codecs, customizations, etc. The choice is Yours No pre-installed lock-ins, like cloud services, etc.

One thing that's clear: The polarity of Ubuntu's Unity DE has many people looking for alternative Linux variants, while retaining the tried-and-true Ubuntu / Debian base.

As you might have guessed, there are a number of alternative applications that replace some of their native KDE counterparts, as well as Qt-based alternatives from those found in vanilla KDE / Kubuntu, while still running the KDE Plasma Desktop. These include  Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird, the The Qmmp Multimedia Player, Transmission BitTorrent Client, Clementine Music Player, Pigeon Messaging Client, The Gimp, and WINE. It also comes standard with Flash enabled.

Adding all of the included software, codecs, and Firefox add-ons raises the .iso size to 1.2GB, which is becoming less and less of an issue all the time, though it might still be an issue for some.

Of course all of the included applications are available via the standard (K)Ubuntu repositories in Kubuntu. However it's clear that the developers of Netrunner are looking to take what is in their eyes a "best of breed" approach to the default software selection instead of Kubuntu's largely stock approach in presenting the KDE experience. It's also clear that users of Netrunner do prefer the KDE Plasma Desktop over Ubuntu's Unity (or Gnome 3) counterpart.

You can check out Netrunner's current release, codenamed Dryland, here. Let us know your thoughts on this unique distribution. If there's interest, we'll do a full review in the upcoming weeks.

Showing Plasma Wigits

The Winamp-inspired Qmmp music player

As we get ready to wrap up 2011, why not spend a bit of time with some fine folks from the KDE Community? If you have never done so, check out the KDE And The Masters Of The Universe Podcast. I know, I know, another podcast. But hey, this is a KDE All-Star podcast.

In the 2011 wrap-up episode, join Guillermo Amaral, Paul Adams, Lydia Pintscher, and Leo Franchi as they discuss KDE in 2011 as well as the future. It's a unique perspective to learn insights and opinions (positive and negative and all points in-between!) from "behind the scenes" from these predominant KDE members and contributors. You'll also find yourself laughing along the way as, like most in the KDE Community, these guys like to have fun!

Check the podcast out by listening or downloading from here.

What are your high points (or low points) for KDE this past year?

"I'm Linux" Commercial Shows Linux Is Everywhere

It's always good to rally the troops once in a while. And maybe open a few eyes along the way to the fact that Linux is all of us, and by extension, everywhere. This entered our Twitter feed thanks to @2uselinux, and we thought we'd share with you.

Really, the Linux community should do more of this type of thing. Enjoy!