Month: April 2009

Amarok 2 in Kubuntu Jaunty

Due to not so perfectly alligned release cycles, not wanting to ship a beta version and a few more good reasons Kubuntu Jaunty was released with Amarok 2.0.2. This version is still missing a few features that some users consider vital. We have made huge improvements in Amarok 2.1 beta 1, our latest release, and of course more improvements have been made since then in SVN.

Improvements and features include but are not limited to:

  • improved context view
  • customizable playlist
  • replaygain support
  • improved podcasting support
  • and more

For more please read the 2.1 beta 1 release notes.

So for everyone who wants to have some of the most loved features back: you can upgrade to Amarok 2.1 beta 1 with packages from the kubuntu-experimental PPA. Be aware that this PPA contains very experimental stuff that can break your system from time to time so you might want to consider deactivating the repository after you installed Amarok.

Please don’t forget to report bugs you find in the beta version at bugs.kde.org so we have a chance to fix them for the final version.

UserBase Competition

UserBase, the KDE user wiki, is really growing nicely but certain areas are still lacking quality content. To get those into shape we decided to start a little competition. We will announce a certain part of the wiki that needs love every two weeks and then start working on it together. The top contributors will get a beer at Akademy (or another drink of their choosing at an event they attend). This is a perfect way for you to get involved in KDE and a lot of people will be thankful to find the information prepared for them in the wiki.

KOffice will be the first project for our competition. What needs to be done? Easy! These blogposts need to be transfered to the Hints, Tips and Tutorials section of the Krita page on UserBase. Of course if you feel like giving the rest of the KOffice pages some attention that is appreciated as well.

Don’t forget to log in when editing pages so we know who gets to drink the beer 😉
Any more questions? Ask away in #kde-www on freenode or send an email to community-wg@kde.org.

Oh and of course I already have the next project lined up but I’ll keep that one to myself for now and will announce it together with the winners of the first round 😉 Let me know if you have a project you’d like to see in round 3!

Amarok projects for GSoC 2009

Just like all the other cool KDE projects Amarok did of course also get their share of excellent students for GSoC this year.

  • Teo Mrnjavac will make the playlist rock after having worked on tagging during last year’s Season of KDE.
  • Sven Krohlas will give us some unit testing goodness to find all those nasty bugs before a user gets to see them.
  • Alejandro Wainzinger will make sure our media device support will make people happy.

I am sure you’ll do awesome work! I hope I can soon add the names of those who are going to take part in Season of KDE (and another super cool thingy we arranged which I can’t yet talk about) to this list.

Thanks to Google for running GSoC and making this possible.

Announcing Season of KDE 2009

Accepted students for Google Summer of Code 2009 have been announced and we are very very happy with the ones we have chosen to work with us this summer. Congratulations to all of you!

Just like in previous years, we have been overwhelmed by the number of very good proposals we received for KDE. Unfortunately we were not able to accept all excellent students as the number of slots is of course limited. We would, however, like to offer every student who would like to work on his project outside of GSoC the opportunity to do so. We are happy to announce Season of KDE 2009. Last year SoK students did an awesome job and some of them have even been accepted for GSoC this year. We will provide you with a mentor and we can manage to do something about the T-shirt as well!

So students: please don’t forget that not being accepted for GSoC doesn’t mean you are not qualified/cool/good enough to work with us. It most likely just means we would have loved to accept you but couldn’t.

If you feel passionate about your proposal and would like to work on it outside of GSoC with a mentor by your side please contact us at kde-soc-mentor@kde.org and we will work out the details together.