Nailing the perfect software design is tricky. It is all too easy to confuse simplicity of aesthetics with simplicity of functionality. A piece of software can be deceptively plain looking – Google search for instance, but it can do a hell of a lot. On the other hand, you may have something with a huge…
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Plasma Activities — virtual desktops — remind me of word processor styles. Both improve work-flow, yet few ever use them. In fact, often they are scornfully dismissed by people who have no understanding of them whatsoever. This perversity only makes acceptance of these features more difficult, especially in the case of Activities, which can be…
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Over the years, my experience with KDE can best be described as a rollercoaster – on ice, with rocket thrusters. KDE3.5 was a great release, followed by a somewhat mellow, emotionally curbed KDE4, which took years blossoming, and then when it finally gained solid form, it was replaced with KDE5, or rather, Plasma 5. Since 2014,…
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The end is near. I mean, 2016 has less than a month left on its credit. We should now step back and contemplate. Which distribution merits our highest regard, most excitement, best praise, prolonged use? However, before we can declare the final result, we need to do it step by step. First, Plasma. Overall, Year 2016…
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Is KDE’s Neon a new Linux distribution? Is it a showcase? Is it a test bed? Neon (“tech preview”) User Edition launches today and we got Jonathan Riddell, Neon’s front runner, to explain what all the fuss is about.
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The end of the year best-distro nomination is approaching fast. But before that, let’s narrow it down a bit and focus on what KDE and Plasma had to offer the Linux user in 2015. Undoubtedly, it was a very tough year, with some really awesome distributions released in the spring, some rather awful editions coming…
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Thanks mainly to Orca, Linux accessibility has always centered on GNOME. During the fourth release series, KDE has started to close the gap, but its efforts have gone largely unnoticed, perhaps because its accessibility tools are scattered across the desktop, and remain works in progress rather than a mature general solution.
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The Kdenlive video editor is simple for beginners, but also powerful enough for those that need to go that extra mile. Distributed under a Free Software license, it is available for GNU/Linux, MacOS X, and as a live DVD for Windows users.
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Services expand KDE’s Dolphin’s capabilities and allow you to create DVDs, run root commands, and convert audio and video files right from within your file manager.
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Brushes are a central concept in Krita. Unfortunately, Krita’s documentation is incomplete and outdated, so here is a summary of how they work.
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Screen edges are one of the simple yet powerful options introduced in the KDE fourth release series. Screen Edges refer to hotspots on the edge of the screen, each of which is programmable with one of sixteen options and activated by moving the cursor or a window towards them.
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Krita, KDE’s answer to Photoshop and GIMP, comes with over 120 brushes. These brushes imitate media ranging from pens and pencils to water colors and acrylics, and textures from bristly to wet. However, if these are not enough, you can find dozens of additional brushes online, including ones designed for GIMP and some basic ones…
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