Since it seems it will turn up quite often, I would like to answer the question 'Will openSUSE 11.2 include KDE 4.3.2?'. The short answer is no and yes .

The 4.3.2 release of KDE came too late to be included in openSUSE 11.2. As the distribution release gets closer, there is a certain point after which only reviewed changes should be allowed in, in order to reduce the possibility of these changes causing unexpected breakages that might go unnoticed within the relatively short time until the release. This can happen and it wouldn't be very good to fix something small and break something bigger for the release because of some unnoticed mistake. So openSUSE 11.2 will not officially include KDE 4.3.2.

As can be probably seen from the 'officially' in the previous sentence , this is not all, as openSUSE 11.2 will, in practice, almost include KDE 4.3.2. We were updating from the 4.3 branch until few days before KDE 4.3.2, and were still including bugfixes that were important enough even after that. So if you care more about how it works than what sticker is slapped on top of it, then you shouldn't need to worry.

And additionally, of course, it is possible to install 4.3.2 from the KDE:43 repository, where new stable KDE releases are packaged as long as KDE:KDE4:Factory:Desktop is frozen for openSUSE 11.2.

The decision on the matter of the (not)preselected desktop in openSUSE has been made. You can read about it in the mail announcing the decision, I would like to just offer a KDE view, from Will and me.

What happens now is that in the desktop selection screen during installation there will be the KDE radio button preselected. That's all, folks. Nothing more, nothing else. It doesn't mean KDE gets better somewhere else, no new KDE developers are going to magically appear on the KDE team, this means nothing for SLED, and it means nothing for other parts of openSUSE. Therefore, in case you feel a strange urge to start publically shouting "Victory!" or saying something about GNOME getting dumped, do yourself a favour and don't bother trying to look like a pyromaniac (besides, I think there still will be enough of those and you'd just get lost in the crowd). The openSUSE distribution wants to be a distribution for all and this means that KDE is one part of openSUSE alongside GNOME, Xfce, Firefox, OpenOffice.org and others. If KOffice one days gets more popular in openSUSE than OpenOffice.org, it becomes the default. If GNOME one day becomes more popular in openSUSE than KDE, it becomes the default. As simple as that.

However, I believe that even this small change can achieve a lot for KDE. Some people, when supporting the openFATE feature, expressed their opinion that making openSUSE focus on KDE would make openSUSE the best KDE distribution. But openSUSE is not some magic creature that gestures and makes things happen, it is the community that does that, and there is nothing preventing you from taking a part in making KDE in openSUSE even better. Since that is how you can also look at this whole issue - I hope this is enough to show that openSUSE really wants to be a community distribution open to all. So if you have doubted that for whatever reason, you might try to look again and reconsider. Or, of course, even if you are just looking for a distro with good KDE, you could check out openSUSE too .

A few technical details ... er, a shameless plug ... well, simply , in case you want to give it a try right now, a couple of things that could help you. First of all, the latest openSUSE release is 11.1, which includes KDE 4.1.3, and openSUSE 11.2 with KDE 4.3 is in development. Don't faint, the fix is simple - you can try either installing from a 11.1-based LiveCD with KDE 4.3 created by Stephan Binner, or you can upgrade KDE in 11.1 using either zypper or 1-Click (note you will have to confirm vendor changes because of switching to a different repository). More information about KDE in openSUSE, including the mailing list, IRC channel, build service (you'll hear about that one again) can be found in the openSUSE Wiki. So, all those of you who wanted openSUSE to be the best KDE distribution out there, let's see about it.

If you look at for example kde-apps.org or kde-look.org, there are numbers of various KDE applications, utilities, styles, decorations and what not. Various contributors post there their work for others to try and use. This is the place where new software or other contributions often look for their first users.

However, if you look closer, you may notice one problem - most of them are only provided as the source tarball, with no, few or old binary packages. Sadly, here the old jokes about how difficult it is to install software on Linux are still valid - it is not difficult to find applications with comments along the lines of "I tried to compile it, it said <whatever error>, what do I need to do, help". The difference between providing or not providing a simple way to install your newest creation can be the difference between users using it or not.

This may not seem to be that simple to solve though. There are probably only very few people who have all the major KDE distributions installed, let alone actually know how to create packages for all of them and have the time to do that. There are other community members who sometimes provide binary packages, but those only do it for a selected range, and they have to update them as new versions are released. More lucky contributions get picked up and packaged by distributions, but that can be difficult for new ones, since simply they are new and not many users know about them. So it looks like the usual kde-apps/kde-look/whatever contributor needs to depend also on luck to actually even reach the potential users.

Well, for those who still don't know it, let me introduce you: KDE contributors, meet the openSUSE build service; openSUSE build service, this big bunch of people are KDE contributors.

The openSUSE build service is a tool that is used to build the openSUSE distribution, but it can be also used to build additional software for openSUSE (such as the additional KDE repositories that provide various KDE versions). And, what many people might not know, it can be also used to build software for other distributions.

In fact, I've been looking into the possibilities recently, and, in the process of it, I have packaged a bunch of random kde-apps/kde-look stuff in my home repository. And, right now, I have packages for various openSUSE versions and SLED 11, Fedora 10, Fedora 11, Mandriva 2009, Mandriva 2009.1 Spring, Kubuntu 8.10 and Kubuntu 9.04. There are some more distributions supported, for example Debian, but those do not yet have a stable release containing KDE4, so tough luck there.

And I tried to cover various possibilities of what gets posted on kde-apps/kde-look:

• I was probably the first one to package the KWin Aurorae SVG decoration engine by Martin Graesslin soon after he had announced it there, as soon as the necessary KDE4.3 beta2 release entered the KDE4:UNSTABLE repository. I also packaged the Nitrogen KWin decoration, just to have a decoration that builds on more distributions.
• I packaged a set of the Glassified KDM, Plasma and splashscreen themes. The themes were actually just tarballs containing the files (and that actually gave me a hard time when trying to package that for Ubuntu) that need to be uncompressed into the right place, but still, there is the convenience of just installing a package and be done with it.
• I miss the ability switch using keyboard shortcuts between taskbar entries like it was possible with Kicker. There was feature freeze, so instead of providing a patch for Plasma I went for a temporary solution and wrote a simple KDED module hacks that does it. And from the moment I uploaded it to kde-apps as TaskbarSwitch there were also binaries.
• I packaged KShutdown, Ksshaskpass and Kvkbd as examples of various applications. Together with Ksshaskpass I also created a local modification of the openSSH package and sent a request to its maintainer to include a change that enables openSSH to use Ksshaskpass. Kvkbd needed a patch fixing it to work with the XDM/KDM setup on openSUSE.

And the best part about it is that it was actually quite simple and easy. I just took a template for .rpm and .deb packaging, filled it in, tweaked a bit if needed and submitted to the buildservice. Then checked the results after a while, fixed problems and now it is all in home:llunak:kde, ready to be used. Anybody who can code a small KDE application shouldn't have a problem to do the same and then say that the package is in the repository home:<whoever> and that the installation instructions are at http://en.opensuse.org/KDE/Build_Service.

Of course, it was simple and easy for the Lubos Lunak who wanted to package those things, as that was the point. The other Lubos Lunak, the one trying to ensure it was that way, had it a bit harder. The openSUSE Wiki has a lot of information, but it was necessary to read it and try it out. Some work was needed for building from one .spec file for all RPM distributions (really just one .spec, the only package that needed conditionals was Ksshaskpass, and only because I knew the special handling needed to fit with openSUSE's openSSH). It is of course possible to build for each distribution using their .spec syntax, but I wanted the possibility of having just one syntax that would be mapped automatically as necessary using macros and package renames. Some work was (and still is) needed to help making .deb packaging as shared with .rpm packaging as possible (I think I can forget generating it automatically from the .spec, but for example Debian/Kubuntu build system accepts only .tar.gz tarballs, so there is a build service patch from me pending to make the possible conversion automatic).

That work is going to be only mine, though, the plan is still to make it easy for you. Well, ok, I wouldn't mind if at least somebody added better details to the distribution-specific pages linked from the main page, because I e.g. haven't managed to find out how to easily add a new custom repository on other distributions. So if you are waiting now for a howto, this will need to wait for a while, until it is prepared and cleaned up. You can however try to bribe me at Akademy into demoing it personally .

Martin Schlander already said the most important things but repetition never hurt a good message:

• KDE 4.3 is coming to KDE:KDE4:Factory:Desktop<. If you do nothing and use this repo you will get KDE 4.3beta1 installed soon!
• The stable KDE 4.2 packages will continue to be available in the new KDE:42 repo.
• The Extra-Apps repo is gone, its packages merged into Desktop, Community or Playground according to their level of support and release readiness.
• App packages which have both KDE 3 and KDE 4 versions are being renamed to show that KDE 4 is the default. Eg for digikam, we have kde3-digikam and digikam-kde4. This will cause a package upgrade to the new stable version. If you want to keep the KDE 3 version, install the kde3- package instead of the new KDE 4 based package.
• The Geeko is a quiet and stealthy animal. It doesn't make a lot of noise. But it produces solid, well engineered Linux distros year after year. Stephan 'Unstoppable Force Beineri' Binner has produced a respin installation CD of openSUSE 11.1 containing the latest and greatest KDE 4.2.2, and all the online updates since 11.1 came out in December. Is the longer openSUSE release cycle making you twitchy for a hit of something new? Do you want a rock solid openSUSE with the best KDE has to offer and none of this repo-fiddling nonsense? Get the respin from: http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Medias/images/iso/.

Arrived the time of year of doing another test upgrade for Mandriva users.
This time is a little bit special, since you will be using Qt 4.5.0 final, with all our efforts to make it stable with backports, annoying some KDE devels ( thanks dfaure and Thiago ), etc..
If you want to know who are the guilt ones for this release, go and see nice about tab in "KDE about" after installed
Standard urpmi repositories are available.
README for some detailed information.

* Mandriva 2009.0
KDE 4.2.0 packages now updated for both i586 and x86_64.
A standard urpmi repository is available.
README for some detailed information.
Some reference to a corrupted l10n packages will be verified and fixed this weekend, but not affects regular usage.

* Cooker
Now to the early adopters/testers, the brand new Qt 4.5.0 RC1 is available for Cooker ( future 2009 spring ) users.
The urpmi test repository is available for i586 only for now, using:
urpmi.addmedia qt45 ftp://users.mandriva.com.br/~heliocastro/qt45/i586
SRPMS can be found on same tree.
KDE users in cooker will be able to upgrade and test it. Some minor issues can be found, but should work without bumps.

Have a good weekend !!

* Mandriva 2009.0
KDE 4.2.0 packages now updated for both i586 and x86_64.
A standard urpmi repository is available.
README for some detailed information.
Some reference to a corrupted l10n packages will be verified and fixed this weekend, but not affects regular usage.

* Cooker
Now to the early adopters/testers, the brand new Qt 4.5.0 RC1 is available for Cooker ( future 2009 spring ) users.
The urpmi test repository is available for i586 only for now, using:
urpmi.addmedia qt45 ftp://users.mandriva.com.br/~heliocastro/qt45/i586
SRPMS can be found on same tree.
KDE users in cooker will be able to upgrade and test it. Some minor issues can be found, but should work without bumps.

Have a good weekend !!

* Mandriva 2009.0
KDE 4.2.0 packages now updated for both i586 and x86_64.
A standard urpmi repository is available.
README for some detailed information.
Some reference to a corrupted l10n packages will be verified and fixed this weekend, but not affects regular usage.

* Cooker
Now to the early adopters/testers, the brand new Qt 4.5.0 RC1 is available for Cooker ( future 2009 spring ) users.
The urpmi test repository is available for i586 only for now, using:
urpmi.addmedia qt45 ftp://users.mandriva.com.br/~heliocastro/qt45/i586
SRPMS can be found on same tree.
KDE users in cooker will be able to upgrade and test it. Some minor issues can be found, but should work without bumps.

Have a good weekend !!

* Mandriva 2009.0
KDE 4.2.0 packages now updated for both i586 and x86_64.
A standard urpmi repository is available.
README for some detailed information.
Some reference to a corrupted l10n packages will be verified and fixed this weekend, but not affects regular usage.

* Cooker
Now to the early adopters/testers, the brand new Qt 4.5.0 RC1 is available for Cooker ( future 2009 spring ) users.
The urpmi test repository is available for i586 only for now, using:
urpmi.addmedia qt45 ftp://users.mandriva.com.br/~heliocastro/qt45/i586
SRPMS can be found on same tree.
KDE users in cooker will be able to upgrade and test it. Some minor issues can be found, but should work without bumps.

Have a good weekend !!

* Mandriva 2009.0
KDE 4.2.0 packages now updated for both i586 and x86_64.
A standard urpmi repository is available.
README for some detailed information.
Some reference to a corrupted l10n packages will be verified and fixed this weekend, but not affects regular usage.

* Cooker
Now to the early adopters/testers, the brand new Qt 4.5.0 RC1 is available for Cooker ( future 2009 spring ) users.
The urpmi test repository is available for i586 only for now, using:
urpmi.addmedia qt45 ftp://users.mandriva.com.br/~heliocastro/qt45/i586
SRPMS can be found on same tree.
KDE users in cooker will be able to upgrade and test it. Some minor issues can be found, but should work without bumps.

Have a good weekend !!

* Mandriva 2009.0
KDE 4.2.0 packages now updated for both i586 and x86_64.
A standard urpmi repository is available.
README for some detailed information.
Some reference to a corrupted l10n packages will be verified and fixed this weekend, but not affects regular usage.

* Cooker
Now to the early adopters/testers, the brand new Qt 4.5.0 RC1 is available for Cooker ( future 2009 spring ) users.
The urpmi test repository is available for i586 only for now, using:
urpmi.addmedia qt45 ftp://users.mandriva.com.br/~heliocastro/qt45/i586
SRPMS can be found on same tree.
KDE users in cooker will be able to upgrade and test it. Some minor issues can be found, but should work without bumps.

Have a good weekend !!

* Mandriva 2009.0
KDE 4.2.0 packages now updated for both i586 and x86_64.
A standard urpmi repository is available.
README for some detailed information.
Some reference to a corrupted l10n packages will be verified and fixed this weekend, but not affects regular usage.

* Cooker
Now to the early adopters/testers, the brand new Qt 4.5.0 RC1 is available for Cooker ( future 2009 spring ) users.
The urpmi test repository is available for i586 only for now, using:
urpmi.addmedia qt45 ftp://users.mandriva.com.br/~heliocastro/qt45/i586
SRPMS can be found on same tree.
KDE users in cooker will be able to upgrade and test it. Some minor issues can be found, but should work without bumps.

Have a good weekend !!

* Mandriva 2009.0
KDE 4.2.0 packages now updated for both i586 and x86_64.
A standard urpmi repository is available.
README for some detailed information.
Some reference to a corrupted l10n packages will be verified and fixed this weekend, but not affects regular usage.

* Cooker
Now to the early adopters/testers, the brand new Qt 4.5.0 RC1 is available for Cooker ( future 2009 spring ) users.
The urpmi test repository is available for i586 only for now, using:
urpmi.addmedia qt45 ftp://users.mandriva.com.br/~heliocastro/qt45/i586
SRPMS can be found on same tree.
KDE users in cooker will be able to upgrade and test it. Some minor issues can be found, but should work without bumps.

Have a good weekend !!

* Mandriva 2009.0
KDE 4.2.0 packages now updated for both i586 and x86_64.
A standard urpmi repository is available.
README for some detailed information.
Some reference to a corrupted l10n packages will be verified and fixed this weekend, but not affects regular usage.

* Cooker
Now to the early adopters/testers, the brand new Qt 4.5.0 RC1 is available for Cooker ( future 2009 spring ) users.
The urpmi test repository is available for i586 only for now, using:
urpmi.addmedia qt45 ftp://users.mandriva.com.br/~heliocastro/qt45/i586
SRPMS can be found on same tree.
KDE users in cooker will be able to upgrade and test it. Some minor issues can be found, but should work without bumps.

Have a good weekend !!

* Mandriva 2009.0
KDE 4.2.0 packages now updated for both i586 and x86_64.
A standard urpmi repository is available.
README for some detailed information.
Some reference to a corrupted l10n packages will be verified and fixed this weekend, but not affects regular usage.

* Cooker
Now to the early adopters/testers, the brand new Qt 4.5.0 RC1 is available for Cooker ( future 2009 spring ) users.
The urpmi test repository is available for i586 only for now, using:
urpmi.addmedia qt45 ftp://users.mandriva.com.br/~heliocastro/qt45/i586
SRPMS can be found on same tree.
KDE users in cooker will be able to upgrade and test it. Some minor issues can be found, but should work without bumps.

Have a good weekend !!