“Heather, Heather, Heather; what did you do now!” and both me &
Fenris
started laughing with Till, as we’re discussing about the thunderbird snap during the conference dinner.
Yup, this is from UbuCon Asia, my
First conference
First flight journey
First travel out of my state
First solo travel out of my state
First solo stay at a hotel
Huhhh, a lot of first timers! I can’t think actually where to start with…
I met so many people out there, got so many mentors! Thanks
Till
, for introducing me with so many mentors! I met
Guruprasad sir
(the launchpad guru 😄),
Kierthana mam
and
Dimple didi
(both are the documentation gurus). A lot of suggestions, tips, guides from them! Thanks a lot 🥹! BTW, How can I forget my OG
Bhavani
bhaiyaa!
My second Akademy and has ended just yesterday. It was an amazing and productive time again!
Apart from familiar faces I know from last year’s Akademy or the Plasma sprint last year in Augsburg, I met plenty of new faces.
Some of which I of course had contact in KDE before, but only in the digital world.
One of the best parts was again the day trip with the KDE Community. While it was a bit rainy, we for sure made the best of it and saw the beautiful city of “Rothenburg ob der Tauber”. The view from the town hall tower was very beautiful:
The talks were also quite interesting and highlighted how many facades the KDE Community has. Apart from the lightning talks being great again, the “QML in Qt6” talk was quite valuable, because I did not manage to follow up closely on the latest improvements. The talks and BOFs related to the KDE goals were also quite beneficial in getting a good impression in what direction we want to go.
Since we had so many interesting talks, it was not possible to join all of them. What I will follow up on later are the talks “Pythonizing Qt” and “C++, Rust and Qt: Easier than you think”.
Albert Astals Cid and I gave a lightning talk together about JSON linting (my part) and QML linting (his part). We were only able to touch the surface in the given time, but had some productive discussions and follow-up questions afterward. I will create a post about the JSON validation/JSON schema topic in the future, since I am still working on some aspects of this.
It has been great again to also do some hacking together and discuss ideas in-person. I will miss being able to say “Let’s discuss this at Akademy?” on merge requests ;). I did quite a bit of hacking on KRunner, linting/formatting related tooling and also Clazy. This can also be seen on my GitLab history that has turned a bit more blue and thus active:
What was a great improvement over the last Akademy were the chicken noises to make sure people stay within the time of their talk!
To better improve on that, we should maybe get some real chicken next year 🥚🐣🐔. The talks on how to apply for funding in KDE might contain useful info when working towards this ;)
PS: My life-long profile picture on GitHub/GitLab is of the super cute chicken I had 🥰.
Our 5th annual Awards are open for nominations and our 2024 judges are waiting for your nominations! Hannah Foxwell, Jonathan Riddell, and Nicole Tandy will be selecting winners for 12 categories. ?
The OpenUK Awards 2024 are open for nominations until Sunday, September 15.. Our 5th Awards again celebrate the UK’s leadership and global collaboration in open technology!
Up to 3 shortlisted nominees will be selected in each category by early October and each nominee will be given one place at the Oscars of Open Source, the black tie Awards Ceremony and Gala Dinner for our 5th Awards held at the House of Lords on 28 November, thanks to the sponsorship of Lord Wei.
Today, we bring you a report on the brand-new release of the Maui Project.
We are excited to announce the latest release of MauiKit version 4.0.0, our comprehensive user interface toolkit specifically designed for convergent interfaces, the complying frameworks, and an in-house developed set of convergent applications.
Built on the solid foundations of Qt Quick Controls, QML, and the power and stability of C++, MauiKit empowers developers to create adaptable and seamless user interfaces across a range of devices, and with this release, we have finally migrated to Qt6 and made available the documentation for the frameworks.
Join us on this journey as we unveil the potential of MauiKit 4 for building convergent interfaces, and finally discover the possibilities offered by the enhanced Maui App stack.
Community
To follow the Maui Project’s development or to just say hi, you can join us on our Telegram group @mauiproject
All of the Maui repositories have the newly released branches and tags. You can get the sources right from the Maui group: https://invent.kde.org/maui
Qt6
With this version bump the Maui team has finalized the migration over to Qt6, which implies more stability and better performance coming from Qt upgraded QQC engine; but also means that some features have been removed or did not make the cut and still need more time to be brought back in posterior releases.
MauiKit 4 Frameworks & Apps
Currently, there are over 10 frameworks, with two new ones recently introduced. They all, for the most part, have been fully documented, and although, the KDE doxygen agent has some minor issues when publishing some parts, you can find the documentation online at https://api.kde.org/mauikit/ (and if you find missing parts, confusing bits, or overall sections to improve – you can open a ticket at any of the framework repos and it shall be fixed shortly after)
A script element has been removed to ensure Planet works properly. Please find it in the original post.
Core & Others
MauiKit Core controls also include the Mauikit Style, which along with the core controls has been revised and improved in the migration. New features have been introduced and some minor changes in the API have been made.
A good way to test the new changes made visually is via the MauiDemo application, when building MauiKit from the source, just add the -DBUILD_DEMO=ON flag and then launch it as MauiDemo4
All of the other frameworks have also been fully ported and reviewed, and some features are absent – for example, for ImageTools the image editor is missing for Android due to KQuickImageEditor problems.
Comic book support is missing in MauiKit-Documents, due to a big pending refactoring.
Finally, TextEditor new backend rendering engine migration is yet to be started.
Most of these pending issues will be tackled in the next releases bit by bit.
More details can be found in the previous blog posts:
MauiKit-Archiver is a new framework, and it was created to share components and code between different applications that were duplicating the same code: Index, Arca, and Shelf.
The same goes for MauiKit-Git, which will help unify the code base for implementations made in Index, Bonsai, and Strike, so all of those apps can benefit from a single cohesive and curated code base in the form of a framework.
Archiver is pending to be documented, and Git is pending to be finished for its first stable release.
I have now finished porting all the Maui Apps and MauiKit frameworks to Qt6.
A script element has been removed to ensure Planet works properly. Please find it in the original post.
Known Issues
MauiKit-Documents comic book support is stalled until the next release due to heavy refactoring under Android.
MauiKit-ImageTools under Android does not include the image editor, since KQuickImageEditor is not working correctly under Android
Clip is not working under Android due to issues with the libavformat not finding openssl.so when packaging the APK, this is still under review
MauiKit-Git is still being worked on, and due to this Bonsai is not included on this stable release as it is being ported over to MauiKit-Git
@maui_project looking good. after the port to qt6 the next goal is to put out a stable version of Maui Shell with a tight integration to the app ecosystem and the HIG #mauikitpic.twitter.com/BkR9ecTzMT
A script element has been removed to ensure Planet works properly. Please find it in the original post.
Maui Shell
Although Maui Shell has been ported over to Qt6 and is working with the latest MauiKit4, a lot of pending issues are still present and being worked on. The next release will be dedicated fully on Maui Shell and all of its subprojects, such as Maui Settings, Maui Core, CaskServer, etc.
That’s it for now. Until the next blog post, that will be a bit closer to the 4.0.1 stable release.
After years and years of working together on KPhotoAlbum, a considerable part of the devs team (Johannes and me ;-) finally met in-person, at Akademy in Würzburg!
It was a very nice and pleasurable meeting, with lots of information around KDE, e.g. community goals, where we stand with Qt 5 and 6 and where we want to go, programming, sustainability and so on. Thoroughly nice and friendly people (esp. the two of us of course ;-), with whom one could have nice and productive conversations. If you can, go to Akademy – it's worth it!
Also, we hopefully again could emphasize – in person – the importance a Qt6/KF6 port of Marble for KPhotoAlbum and also KGeoTag. We now actively work on porting KPA to Qt6/KF6, but we need Marble to be able to finally release it. But we're confident everything will work out.
The KDE community has charted its course for the coming years, focusing on three interconnected paths that converge on a single point: community. These paths aim to improve user experience, support developers, and foster community growth.
This goal focuses on improving the application development process. By making it easier for developers to create applications, KDE hopes to attract more contributors and deliver better software for both first-party and third-party applications. A notable task within this goal is enhancing the experience of building KDE apps with languages beyond C++, such as Rust or Python.
KDE has a diverse users base with unique input needs: artists using complex monitor and drawing tablet setups; gamers with controllers, fancy mice, and handhelds; users requiring accessibility features or using a language optimally types with complex input methods; students with laptops, 2-in-1s, and tablets — and more! While KDE has made significant progress in supporting these diverse sources of input over the years, there are still gaps to be addressed. This goal aims to close those gaps and deliver a truly seamless input experience for everyone.
Champions: Gernot Schiller, Jakob Petsovits and Joshua Goins
KDE’s growth depends on new contributors, but a lack of fresh involvement in key projects like Plasma, Kdenlive, Krita, GCompris, and others is a concern. This goal focuses on formalizing and enhancing recruitment processes, not just for individuals but also for institutions. Ensuring that bringing in new talent becomes a continuous and community-wide priority, vital for KDE's long-term sustainability.
Champions: Aniqa Khokhar, Johnny Jazeix and Paul Brown
Join us!
Your voice, your code, and your ideas are what will shape the KDE of tomorrow — whether you're a user, developer, or contributor. Let’s go on this journey together and make these goals a reality!
Join the Matrix room and keep an eye on the website for the latest KDE Goals updates.
In April we had the combined goals sprint, where a fine group of KDE people working on things around Automation & Systematization, Sustainable Software, and Accessibility got together. It was a nice cross-over of the KDE goals, taking advantage of having people in one room for a weekend to directly discuss topics of the goals and interactions between them. David, Albert, Nate, Nico, and Volker wrote about their impressions from the sprint.
So what happened regarding the Sustainable Software goal at the sprint and where are we today with these topics? There are some more detailed notes of the sprint. Here is a summary of some key topics with an update on current progress.
Kick-Off for the Opt-Green project
The Opt-Green project is the second funded project of the KDE Eco team. The first one was the Blue Angel for Free Software project, where we worked on creating material helping Free Software projects to assess and meet the criteria for the Blue Angel certification for resource and energy-efficient software products.
The Opt Green project is about promotion of extending the operating life of hardware with Free Software to reduce electronic waste. It's funded for two years by the German Federal Environment Agency and the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection and is running from April 2024 to March 2026.
Joseph introduced the project, why it's important, how the environment is suffering from software-induced hardware obsolescence, and how Free Software in general and KDE specifically can help with fighting it. The approach of the project is to go beyond our typical audience and introduce people who are environmentally aware but not necessary very technical to the idea of running sustainable, up-to-date Free Software on their computers, even devices they may think are no longer usable due to lack of vendor support. In many cases this is a perfectly fine solution, and it's surprisingly attractive to a number of people who care about sustainability but haven't really been introduced to Free Software yet.
Where we are today
The project is in full swing. The project has already been present at quite a number of events to motivate people to install Free Software on their (old) devices and support them in how to do it. See for example the report about the Academy of Games for upcoming 9th graders in Hannover, Germany.
Revamping the KDE Eco website
We had a great session putting together ideas and concepts about how we could improve the KDE Eco website. From brainstorming ideas to sketching a wireframe as a group, we discussed and agreed on a direction of how to present what we are doing in the KDE Eco team.
The key idea is to focus on three main audiences (end users, advocates, and developers) and present specific material targeted at these groups. This nicely matches what we already have, e.g., the KDE Eco handbook for how to fulfill the Blue Angel criteria for developers, or the material being produced for events reaching out to end users, and while giving it a much more focused presentation.
Where we are today
The first iteration of the new design is now live on eco.kde.org. There is more to come, but it already gives an impression where this is going. Anita created a wonderful set of design elements which will help to shape the visual identity of KDE Eco going forward.
Surveying end users about their attitude to hardware reuse
Making use of old hardware by installing sustainable free software on it is a wide field. There are many different variations of devices and what users do with them also varies a lot. What are the factors that might encourage users to reuse old hardware, what is holding them back?
To get a bit more reliable answers to these questions we came up with a concept for a user survey which can be used at events where we present the Opt Green project. This includes questions about what hardware people have and what is holding them back from installing new software on it.
Where we are today
The concept has been implemented with an online survey on KDE's survey service. It's available in English and German and is being used at the events where the Opt Green project is present.
Sustainable AI
One of the big hype topics of the last two years has been Generative AI and the Large Language Models which are behind this technology. They promise to bring revolutionary new features, much closer to how humans interact in natural language, but they also come with new challenges and concerns.
One of the big questions is how this new technology affects our digital freedoms. How does it relate to Free Software? How does licensing and openness work? How does it fit KDE's values? Where does it make sense to use its technology? What are the ethical implications? What are the implications in terms of sustainability?
We had a discussion around the possible idea of adopting something like Nextcloud's Ethical AI rating in KDE as well. This would make it more transparent to users how use of AI features affects their freedoms and gives them a choice to use what they consider to be satisfactory.
Where we are today
This is still pretty much an open question. The field is moving fast, there are legal questions around copyright and other aspects still to be answered. Local models are becoming more and more an option. But what openness means in AI has become very blurry. KDE still has to find a position here.
soumyatheman
@soumyatheman:matrix.org
GSoC
