This week marks KDE’s 29th birthday, which is pretty special. Did you know KDE has been around longer than Google, PayPal, Facebook, Instagram, Netflix, Tesla, Spotify, Uber, VMware, LinkedIn, Yelp, and Github? Seriously! That’s a long time producing high quality, autonomy-respecting, non-exploitative software. And humanity needs and deserves it, so we’re gonna keep going! We’re … Continue reading Happy 29th birthday to KDE! →...
In 2016, after being a Mac guy for 23 years, I took the plunge and made a full-time switch to Linux. I did my research, and over and over again encountered the idea that GNOME was good for MacOS refugees like myself. So I gave it a try! But my experience didn’t support the meme. … Continue reading A Mac-like experience on Linux →...
At Akademy 2025 this year, I had the privilege of giving a talk about a big picture topic close to my heart, and you can watch it here: For those who prefer reading over watching and listening, I’ll give a quick summary: I believe that the challenges facing the world today present an opportunity for … Continue reading Talk at Akademy 2025 — minding the big picture: opportunity from chaos →...
By now, many have probably read Jonathan Riddell’s blog post yesterday about his departure from KDE and the events that led up to it. And today, an article has been published in ItsFoss about the topic that unfortunately seems to have misunderstood some of the details of Jonathan’s post. I didn’t want to have to … Continue reading A few corrections about the transition from Blue Systems to Techpaladin →...
I’m back from Akademy 2025 in Berlin, and what an experience it was. At this point, I’ve gotten a reputation as a “big picture guy”, so that’s what I’ll focus on here, rather than the details of my experiences in specific events. Lots of other folks are starting to write blog posts you can find … Continue reading Akademy 2025: something big is happening →...
Today I have something very exciting to share: the Alpha release of KDE Linux, KDE’s new operating system! Many of you may be familiar with KDE Linux already through Harald Sitter‘s 2024 Akademy talk about it (slides; recording), or the Wiki page, or its web page on kde.org. For everyone else, let me briefly explain: … Continue reading Announcing the Alpha release of KDE Linux →...
…might be the one you already have. I’m sure some of you are chucking over my realization of something so obvious! Yeah, fair enough. Perhaps this will at least burnish my KDE Eco credentials a bit. Last October, the loud fan noise, poor multi-core CPU performance, and at best 4-hour battery life of my daily … Continue reading The perfect laptop →...
This is a bit of a rant; feel free to skip it if you’re here for the KDE content. This isn’t the first time I’ve blogged about the dearth of truly great PC laptops out there, and I suspect it won’t be the last. I limit myself to a single computer for simplicity’s sake, so … Continue reading The hunt for a perfect laptop continues →...
Those of you upgrading to Plasma 6.4.1 (released yesterday) may notice a more substantive change than the type we typically make in bug-fix releases: The “highlight window” effect for Task Manager thumbnails is now off by default. This is the effect that makes other windows fade out when you hover over a window’s thumbnail. Why … Continue reading A slight UX change in Plasma 6.4.1 →...
X11 is in the news again, so I thought it would make sense to be clear about the Plasma team’s plans for X11 support going forward. Current status: Plasma’s X11 session continues to be maintained. Specifically, that means: This is actually not too bad; there are relatively few open and fixable X11-specific bugs (0.76% of … Continue reading About Plasma’s X11 session →...