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December 5, 2012. Today KDE released updates for its Workspaces, Applications, and Development Platform. These updates are the last in a series of monthly stabilization updates to the 4.9 series. 4.9.4 updates bring many bugfixes and translation updates on top of the latest edition in the 4.9 series and are recommended updates for everyone running 4.9.3 or earlier versions. As the release only contains bugfixes and translation updates, it will be a safe and pleasant update for everyone.

Google turned heads this summer when it released its Nexus 7 tablet. Together with Asus, the company produced a solid Android tablet that offered an affordable price tag, nice design and smooth performance to rival the Amazon Kindle Fire HD. But can the company do it again with a 10-inch version to take on the reigning leader, the Apple iPad? The answer is mostly yes.

Microsoft and Google have both come out with their own large-size tablets to take on the iPad. So which of the three is the best? We took the fourth-generation iPad, the Google Nexus 10 and the Microsoft Surface and put them through the paces to determine which tablet is the best for everyday tasks. We did the same a few weeks ago with small-size tablets and determined that the iPad mini was the clear champ, and you can read more about that here.

The cheapest Android tablet I've ever seen costs $20, with a $2 per month unlimited data plan, and I'm holding it right now. It might not just change the tablet market. It might change the world. The Ubislate 7ci, also known as the Aakash2, is the latest gadget from Datawind, a Canadian company that's spent seven years trying to find the ideal market for some really neat data-optimization technology. On devices like the PocketSurfer and PocketSurfer 2, Datawind showed that it can display desktop Web pages quickly with low-cost devices on super-low-bandwidth networks like 2G GPRS. But it never gained major market traction in the Western world, especially as 3G and 4G networks have spread.

... Project Sputnik, as it was called, proved popular and Dell decided to release the creation as a product; the XPS 13 Developer Edition is now available in the US and Canada, and will be available from early next year in other markets, Dell said.

The $1,549 Dell XPS 13 comes preloaded with Ubuntu 12.04, the long-term support version of the open-source OS. The XPS 13 features a Core i7 processor, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. The Windows version of the same device costs $1,499; Dell initially expected the Ubuntu version to sell for a little bit less than its Microsoft counterpart.

More than five years after it began selling PCs with Ubuntu Linux preinstalled in the United States, Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) has compiled a lackluster record in the eyes of many Linux advocates when it comes to promoting open source alternatives to Windows. Yet as a Canonical employee recently pointed out, Dell is now offering a $70 markdown on one laptop model when customers purchase it with Ubuntu instead of a Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) OS. Is this a mistake, or a sign of changes to come on Dell’s part?

Yesterday we pushed a small but significant clean-up to a feature set we've been working on for a couple of years now which is perhaps one of the more interesting things we're doing in Plasma: the idea of "one code base, multiple form factors." The idea is that whether your application is running as a widget on the desktop, docked in a panel, running full screen as part of a mediacenter, running in a touch based environment or as a regular ol' app-in-a-window, much of the code can be shared. We often put the non-graphical bits into shared libraries, and traditional we've built multiple front ends that are optimized for different form factors and input methods which use these libraries.

Not being the sort who rest much, we're already at work on Plasma Active Four. We met up on irc to firm up our plans. You can read the minutes here, thanks to Thomas who took the time to summarize the multi-hour session.

We are moving to a devel workflow in which we aim to have an "always-releasable" master branch. All development will happen in branches, something we essentially do already, but we will now also have an integration branch so we can bring the various branches together for testing before merging them when ready, branch by branch, into master. We have been working towards for some time, adjusting our habits one step at a time. This will only cover the plasma-mobile, share-like-connect and plasma-active-maliit repositories for now, but my hope is that as Frameworks 5 arrives we'll be able to broaden this to the bigger shared repositories such as kde-workspace.

After several months of concerted team work, we have put the final wrapping on the next major release of Plasma Active. The last two weeks were spent testing on both ARM- and Intel-based devices to identify and fix show-stopper defects. It was time well spent, resulting in a polished release that shines as a successor to Plasma Active Two.

... We also have some people who have joined us that haven't been involved in upstream KDE very much but who are involved in Free software and use KDE technologies in various ways. One example of this is the Lernstick initiative which brings Free software (and KDE! :) to students around Switzerland in the form of a handy, self-contained USB stick.

What a crazy year it's been for our little Vivaldi tablet project. Lots of ups with Plasma Active developing by leaps and bounds, with version 3 coming out this month and many of our efforts starting to improve our other form factors such as Desktop, and so much learning with regards to the state of the hardware world in Asia. With our chosen hardware, we dealt with the completely typical (for the industry segment) GPL violating company which we negotiated with to change that ... only to have them simultaneously renig at the last minute and, while introducing a new revision of the board not only break our prior work but noticeably decrease in build quality. This was a massive, massive set back for us.

Desktop Linux has had four years of upheaval. Since 2008, KDE, GNOME, and Unity have all faced vocal criticism from users, creating an opportunity for other desktops like Xfce, LXDE, Mate and Cinnamon to gain popularity. But, in all the discussion, one question has never been discussed: how did KDE, the first desktop environment to suffer a revolt, manage to live through the experience and continue to prosper?

There's an interesting paradox in many social cooperations that is readily observable in open, participation-driven creative projects (for which open source software is often held up as the poster child): nobody will do it for you. In F/OSS, that assumption translates to things like "nobody will write the patch for you" or "nobody will fix that bug for you". It turns out that this is the only safe assumption to hold. But that idea flies in the face of reality: tens of thousands of bugs are fixed in Free software code bases around the world every year; huge numbers of features are added to free software code bases on a regular basis. Yet most of the people who use Free software did not perform any of the work that went into it, and those of us who do put effort into it are never responsible for more than a tiny, tiny fraction of the global result. So obviously people will and do make things for us. I have DVDs full of the stuff; I use it on all the computing devices I own every single day. You probably do as well.

PS: A little update on Vivaldi

The foreman in the Apple v. Samsung trial has now done an interview with Bloomberg News, giving him an opportunity to answer some of the criticisms of the verdict. It's a video on YouTube, titled "Apple Jury Foreman: Here's How We Reached a Verdict", and while he answers the criticisms, he describes how the jury, under his instructions, decided that the Samsung prior art didn't invalidate an Apple patent. In doing so, I think he has revealed the biggest mistake of all made by the jury, one so large I don't believe it can be ignored. At a minimum, Apple shouldn't want to win like this. His aha moment, as he calls it, and assuming what he says on the video is accurate, was based on a misunderstanding of what constitutes prior art.

In discussing the first patent on the list, he says they got into a discussion about the prior art that was presented at trial. Here's why they discounted it:

(CNN) -- It's hard to say exactly what percentage of desktop and laptop computers run Apple OS X, but it's clear that the operating system has made slow but steady gains at chipping away at that the sizable lead Microsoft established in the '90s with its Windows operating system. Some figures put the number at about 6 to 7 percent of the desktop market. But one thing's for sure: OS X has been more successful than Linux, the open source operating system that has found a home on data-center servers but is still a rarity on desktops and laptops. Linux may have seen a surge last year, but it still hasn't seen the sort of growth OS X has, nor the growth that Linux supporters have long hoped for.

Project Neon provides daily builds of KDE modules for Kubuntu. It is an easy way to get the latest code without having to build the entire KDE-Git/SVN tree and maintain the checkout. Project Neon is unstable, but it installs alongside stable packages. It is suitable for contributors such as new developers, translators, usability designers, documenters, promoters, and bug triagers. With Project Neon, people can experiment freely without risk to a working KDE environment.

Project Neon is especially useful for reporting bugs. With its daily builds, bugs can be reported in the most timely manner. The more time that elapses between when a bug is introduced and when it is reported, the more difficult it gets to find it and fix it. With Project Neon, a bug can be reported on the same day that it is introduced.

Sometimes the only way to get a straight answer from a company on a thorny topic is through its government filings.

In an annual report that it submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday afternoon, Microsoft finally conceded something that has been rather obvious to anyone with a rudimentary understanding of the personal computer industry and Microsoft’s historical role in it. On page 14 of the document, Microsoft acknowledges that its Surface family of tablet computers could weaken support for Windows among Microsoft’s partners in the PC industry, known as original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs for short.

We’re preparing Kubuntu 12.10, the Quantal Quetzal, for distribution in October 2012. With this Alpha pre-release, you can see what we are trying out in preparation for our next version. We have some interesting things happening, so read on for highlights and information.

Today KDE released the second release candidate for its Workspaces, Applications, and Development Platform. With API, dependency and feature freezes in place, the KDE team's focus is now on fixing bugs and other polishing. Highlights of 4.9 will include: Read More here ...

and Announcement Here

Linux: Not everyone hates Ubuntu's Unity, but there are a few things you might miss from Ubuntu's old interface—like it's easy-to-navigate dropdown menu for applicatoins and settings. ClassicMenu Indicator puts that classic menu back in your menu bar.