The Road to KDE 4: Konsole Gets an Overhaul

Again, after a delay , we return to bring you updates on the state of Konsole, KDE's UNIX terminal program. Konsole has been a staple of KDE since KDE 1.0, as has been showing signs of a little bit of clutter and wear. So, Robert Knight ,the authority in charge has stepped in to clean up the program's code, and more than anything else, fix a cluttered and difficult interface.

When the KDE 4 development series commenced, Robert Knight took over maintainership of Konsole. The end result is a Konsole for KDE 4 that is visually very similar, functionally improved and with a settings system you can actually stomach. The screenshot shows that the main window has not changed too much. .The once-intimidating settings menu now becomes very simple. It may look like the configuration options are gone, but they are still all available in a sanely organized fashion.

And lastly, the appearance people will appreciate this dialog: its implementation is effective and its use becomes obvious. Additionally, Robert has implemented style previews in an intuitive manner. As you mouse over the style, the Konsole window in the background automatically applies that style in an active preview. So you can very rapidly look through and appreciate the styles just by hovering over the list.Side-by-side comparisons aside, Konsole also offers a number of other improvements. Among them, split-view mode, faster scrolling (thanks to a smarter line redrawing scheme), hotkeys and more.

Torvalds releases version 2.6.22-rc1 of the Linux kernel

Sunday May 13, 2007 (04:05 PM GMT)

Linus Torvalds has announced the first release candidate for version 2.6.22 of the Linux kernel, noting that the changelog itself for this release is just too big to put on the mailing list.

According to the kernel-meister himself:

Ok, the merge window has closed, and 2.6.22-rc1 is out there.

The diffstat and shortlogs are way too big to fit under the kernel mailing list limits, and the changes are all over the place. Almost seven thousand files changed, and that's not double-counting the files that got moved around.

Architecture updates, drivers, filesystems, networking, security, build scripts, reorganizations, cleanups.. You name it, it's there.

You want a new firewire stack? We've got it. New wireless networking infrastructure? Check. New infiniband drivers? Digital video drivers? A totally new CPU architecture (blackfin)? Check, check, check.

That said, I think (and certainly hope) that this will not be nearly as painful as the big fundamental timer changes for 2.6.21, and while there are some pretty core changes there (like the new SLUB allocator, which hopefully will end up replacing both SLAB and SLOB), it feels pretty solid, and not as scary as ripping the carpet from under the timer infrastructure.

So give it a good testing. We'll see how the regression tracking ends up working, but in order to actually track that, we want people actively testing -rc1 and making good reports!

Finally, Smart City project inked

Sunday, May 13, 2007
16:09 IST

Thiruvananthapuram: The much-awaited Rs.15 billion ($350 million)-Smart City project between the Kerala government and Dubai Internet City (DIC), aimed to put Kerala on the global IT map, was inked here Sunday.

The project was signed Sunday, nearly three years after it was first mooted. It is different from the one proposed by the previous Oommen Chandy government and comes a few days before Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan completes his first year in office.

The agreement was inked by Ahmad Bi Byat, executive chairman of Tecom Investment, and Lizzie Jacob, chief secretary of Kerala.

Smart City, to be set up in Kochi, is a joint venture company of Tecom Investments and Sama Dubai.

Top officials of DIC arrived in a charter flight around 1 p.m. and drove straight to the state-owned Mascot Hotel to sign the agreement. They will leave in the evening.

"This is a historic ceremony and a happy occasion for me. This has materialised after long discussions and would be mutually beneficial and economically a boost for Kerala. More importantly this would strengthen the relationship between Kerala and Middle East," said a beaming Achuthanandan.

The development is seen as a moral victory for Achuthanandan as he had earlier opposed the terms for the project worked out by the then Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) government.

The agreement with DIC does not include transfer of the Infopark campus at Kochi, which had been agreed upon by Chandy.

While the former chief minister had agreed to sell 236 acres of land at a cost of Rs.260 million (Rs.26 crore) and given DIC full ownership, Achuthanandan made them agree to 246 acres of land at a cost of Rs.1.06 billion (Rs.106 crore), which would be given on lease for 99 years.

Further, Chandy had agreed to 33,000 new jobs being created by Smart City, but Achuthanandan got them increased to 90,000.

Ahmad Bi Byat said Smart City would be home to the best companies of India and abroad.

"This project would certainly put Kerala on the global IT map. It would just not be the IT sector alone that would benefit but others too," said Byat.

The project would have 8.8 million square feet of building of which 70 percent would be for IT and IT enabled services.

Later speaking to reporters, Achuthanandan said the master plan of the project would be ready in a year and the construction would begin soon after. Only then would they be able to know the exact project investment.

A close aide of Achuthanandan told IANS that despite rewriting the agreements on seven different occasions, the real pressure on DIC came last month when the chief minister began to take steps to float a global tender for the project.

"When the file for that was ready, the DIC officials announced the clearing of the project last month," said the aide.

State Congress president said they were happy that the Left government had signed the agreement for the project initiated by them.

"They were saying first that DIC is nothing but a real estate company, and see today the agreement has been signed. Tomorrow, Chandy would be speaking to the press on this," he said.

Fedora Core 7

After Breaking all the boundaries of Open Source Software. "Fedora Core 7" is going to Shake The World. Be ready for FEDORA CORE 7 in this May.

Q1. What do you think about "Fedora Core 7" ? Will it break the record of "Fedora Core 6" ?

Q2. Will the users like us & its developers can make it the world biggest project "Fedora Project" ? Slaming other paid software companies.

Please support Open Source Software (OSS).

It is our voice
It is our freedom
It is our infinite thinking
Its Our "FEDORA CORE"

Respect it !!