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KDE 4.7 releases provide many new features and improved stability and performance.

The Dutch government has recently attracted Microsoft's anger by launching an actionplan to adopt open standards, and concretely OpenDocument Format by April 2008 in the national government. Open Standards will become mandatory and Free Software will be preferred. As the Minister of State, Frank Heemskerk, argued, this plan is not to exclude any company, but to stimulate information exchange, vendor independence and choice for various software products that implement open standards. he Ministry of Economical Affairs has published an English version of the plan on its site today.

Government, state and regional agencies, authorities and services may also publish in other formats, but they must always publish in one of these formats. The decree is retroactive, and by 2014 all documents published prior to this decree must have been converted and made available in one of the three formats.

Last weekend members of the KDE-Edu team met in Paris for a meeting about the KDE Education project. Members got to know each other and started vivid discussions about their free and open source educational applications, life in general, as well as the future and vision of the Educational module, which is part of the KDE desktop project.

In this post you can get the general idea about Lancelot and see what it will look like. Already finished are Extender Button (the base of the no-click concept interface) and Action List View (contains extender buttons). You will also be able to put Plasmoids (desktop applets) into Lancelot, which means almost endless possibilities to build your very own menu layout.

Computers in the European Union should be sold without a bundled operating system, according to this submission to the European Commission. It says that the bundling of Microsoft Windows with computers is not in the public interest, and prevents meaningful competition in the operating system market.

At this year's annual KDE conference aKademy in Glasgow, Scotland an entire day was dedicated to the use of free and open source software in schools and education. The main aim of the day, organized by the KDE Education Project, was to unite the many different diverse consumers (teachers, system integrators, students) and to share ideas, success stories and best practice. The report from the day is now available for reading - aKademy 2007: Education Day.

Novell, Xandros and Linspire have signed well publicized agreements with Microsoft. Rumors on the Web have hinted that Mandriva might be next on the list. Mandriva believes in interoperability, which must be based on open standards, like ODF. They also believe that software patent threats are just FUD. So no deal with Microsoft from Mandriva.

The Standards Council of Canada is seeking comments on a proposal to adopt Office Open XML (Open XML or OOXML) as an international standard. So far there are over 130 comments to this proposal and the message is clear. People don't want OOXML. They want a truly open standard that isn't controlled by only one company. People want OpenDocument Format (ODF).

Thousand Parsec is a vibrant free and open source project, creating a framework for 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate) space strategy games. We are happy to announce that this year we are also participating in Google Summer of Code as a mentoring organisation.

Written by a leading developer and maintainer of the Linux kernel, Linux Kernel in a Nutshell is a comprehensive overview of kernel configuration and building, a critical task for Linux users and administrators. The book is available for download in either PDF or DocBook format for the entire book, or by the individual chapter.

In this weeks' edition of The Road to KDE 4, we'll take a look at the up and coming KWord 2.0 as part of the KOffice project. KWord 1.6.1 is already a powerful KDE-integrated word processor, but with KDE 4 technologies, KWord 2.0 promises to be among the most powerful free word processors available.

Since KDE 4 development is in full swing with plans for a KDE 4.0 release sometime later this year, I thought I'd put together a weekly piece entitled The Road to KDE 4. The idea is to have a short overview of one or two of the features that show progress in KDE 4. For my first issue, the goal is to show off some of the great SVG work that has taken place so far.

Beginning with an easy-to-use installer and booting into a well-thought-out desktop, Mandriva 2007 provides an environment that is aesthetically consistent and makes new users feel at home. Where Mandriva 2006 failed to provide an appropriate level of support for more advanced users, Mandriva 2007 includes prominently displayed tools for configuration from the desktop. Although these tools are marred by sluggish package management and an unhelpful security rating system, as well as instability on some machines, overall Mandriva 2007 re-establishes the distribution as one of the most advanced desktop experiences in GNU/Linux.

This is probably the last chance to test and help Mandriva Linux 2007 before its final release.