KDE 2.2.1 Goes Live

DATELINE SEPTEMBER 19, 2001

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Free KDE Desktop Ready for Enterprise Deployment

KDE Ships Leading Desktop with Advanced Web Browser and
Development Environment for Linux and Other UNIXes

September 19, 2001 (The INTERNET). The KDE Project today announced the immediate
release of KDE 2.2.1, a powerful and easy-to-use Internet-enabled
desktop for Linux. KDE 2.2.1 is available in 42
languages and ships with the core KDE libraries, the core
desktop environment, and over 100 applications from the other base
KDE packages (administration, multimedia, network, PIM,
development, etc.). The KDE Project strongly encourages all users
of the award-winning
KDE to upgrade to KDE 2.2.1.

The primary goals of the 2.2.1 release, which follows one month
after the release of KDE 2.2, are to improve documentation and
provide additional and improved language translations for the user
interface, although the release includes some performance
enhancements (particularly application startup time), numerous
minor bugfixes, and significant improvements to the HTTP protocol.
A list of
these changes and a FAQ about the release are
available at the KDE website.
Code development is currently focused on the branch that will lead
to KDE 3.0, scheduled for its first beta release this December and
for final release in late February 2001.

“In response to customer demand, we have made KDE the default
desktop environment in the latest release of our Turbolinux
Workstation product,” said Dino Brusco, VP of Marketing at Turbolinux Inc. “Our customers
really appreciate the features and stability that KDE provides and
we will be offering this latest version of KDE in an upcoming
release of our Turbolinux Server product.”

“KDE 2.2.1 delivers the stability that people have come to
expect from KDE,” said Waldo Bastian, release manager for KDE 2.2.1
and a SuSE Labs developer. “We
are very pleased to provide our users with this stable release
while we get to work on the next generation of KDE.”

KDE 2.2.1 complements the release of KOffice 1.1 late last
month. KOffice is a comprehensive, modular, component-based suite
of office productivity applications. This combination is the first
to provide a complete Open Source desktop and productivity
environment for Linux/Unix.

KDE and all its components (including KOffice) are available
for free under Open Source licenses from
the KDE server and
its mirrors and can
also be obtained on CD-ROM.

For more information about KDE 2.2, please see the KDE 2.2 press
release and the KDE 2.2.1 Info Page, which
is an evolving FAQ about the release.

Installing KDE 2.2.1 Binary Packages

Binary Packages. All major Linux distributors and some
Unix distributors have provided binary packages of KDE 2.2.1 for
recent versions of their distribution. Some of these binary
packages are available for free download under http://master.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/2.2.1/
or under the equivalent directory at one of the many KDE ftp server
mirrors. Please note
that the KDE team is not responsible for these packages as they are
provided by third parties — typically, but not always, the
distributor of the relevant distribution (if you cannot find a
binary package for your distribution, please read the KDE Binary Package Policy).

Library Requirements. The library requirements for a
particular binary package vary with the system on which the package
was compiled. Please bear in mind that some binary packages may
require a newer version of Qt and other libraries than was included
with the applicable distribution (e.g., LinuxDistro 8.0 may have
shipped with qt-2.2.3 but the packages below may require qt-2.3.x).
For general library requirements for KDE, please see the text at
Source Code – Library
Requirements below.

Package
Locations. At the time of this release, pre-compiled
packages are available for:

• Caldera Systems (README)
• • OpenLinux-3.1:
    Intel i386
• Conectiva Linux
• • 7.0: Intel
    i386
• Debian GNU/Linux (package
  “kde”): ftp.debian.org: sid
  (devel) (see also here)
• RedHat Linux:
  • 7.2-beta (Roswell): Intel
    i386, HP/Intel
    IA-64 and Alpha
• SuSE Linux (README):
  • 7.2: Intel
    i386 and HP/Intel
    IA-64 (see also the noarch
    directory)
  • 7.1: Intel
    i386, PowerPC,
    Sun
    Sparc and Alpha
    (see also the noarch
    directory)
  • 7.0: Intel
    i386, PowerPC
    and IBM
    S390 (see also the noarch
    directory)
  • 6.4: Intel
    i386 (see also the noarch
    directory)
• Tru64 Systems
  (README)
• • Tru64 4.0d, e, f and g and 5.x: Alpha
• Yellow Dog
  Linux
• • 2.x: PowerPC
    (see also the
    add-ons directory)

Please check the servers periodically for pre-compiled packages for
other distributions. More binary packages will become available
over the coming days and weeks. Downloading and Compiling
KDE 2.2.1

Library
Requirements. KDE 2.2.1 requires qt-2.2.4, which is available
in source code from Trolltech as qt-x11-2.2.4.tar.gz.
In addition, for SSL support, KDE 2.2.1 requires OpenSSL >= 0.9.6x; versions 0.9.5x
are no longer supported. For Java support, KDE 2.2.1 requires a JVM
>= 1.3. For Netscape Communicator plugin support, KDE requires a
recent version of Lesstif or
Motif. Searching local documentation requires htdig. Other special features, such as
drag’n’drop audio CD ripping, require other packages.

Compiler Requirements. Please note that some components
of KDE 2.2.1 will not compile with older versions of gcc/egcs, such as egcs-1.1.2 or
gcc-2.7.2. At a minimum gcc-2.95-* is required. In addition, some
components of KDE 2.2.1 (such as the multimedia backbone of KDE,
aRts) will not compile
with gcc 3.0
(the problems are being corrected by the KDE and GCC teams).

Source
Code/RPMs. The complete source code for KDE 2.2.1 is available
for free download at http://master.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/2.2.1/src/
or in the equivalent directory at one of the many KDE ftp server
mirrors.
Additionally, source rpms are available for the following
distributions:

• 
  Conectiva Linux
• 
  Caldera Systems
• RedHat
  Linux
• SuSE
  Linux
• Yellow
  Dog Linux (see also the
  add-ons directory)

Further Information. For further instructions on
compiling and installing KDE 2.2.1, please consult the installation
instructions and, if you should encounter problems, the
compilation
FAQ. For problems with source rpms, please contact the person
listed in the .spec file.

About KDE

KDE is an independent, collaborative project by hundreds of
developers worldwide working over the Internet to create a
sophisticated, customizable and stable desktop environment
employing a component-based, network-transparent architecture. KDE
is working proof of the power of the Open Source “Bazaar-style”
software development model to create first-rate technologies on par
with and superior to even the most complex commercial software.

Please visit the KDE family of web sites for the KDE FAQ, screenshots,
KOffice information and
developer
information. Much more information about KDE is
available from KDE’s family of web sites.

Corporate KDE Sponsors

Besides the valuable and excellent efforts by the KDE developers
themselves, significant support for KDE development has been
provided by MandrakeSoft
and SuSE. Thanks!