Review: Calligra Words

Last week we took a tour exploring Calligra’s common interface elements. Today we’ll take a tour to meet Calligra’s word processor, perhap the most widely used of all the kinds of office applications. Because of how widespreaded their usage is any self respectable suite needs to be fully capable of working with documents processed by other popular apllications. Word is fully compliant with this requirement, a goal accomplished by adhering to ISO standards. Any document created with Word can be opened and edited with the mighty popular Microsoft’s Office, and basely any other office suite. Users with older versions of Microsoft’s… Continue Reading

Akademy 2012: Conference sessions

While LaKademy, the first ever Latin American Akademy, is happening in Brazil, the biggest KDE event of the year has announced its preliminary conferences schedule. Akademy, set to start on June 30th in Tallinn, Estonia, will feature KDE developers from all over the world, including personalities like Aaron Seigo himself. While it may seem far away, people interested should start looking for a place to stay, organizers themselves give a few recommendation in Akademy’s site. This is Estonia’s first time hosting KDE’s biggest event, so local developers have put together a video introducing the community of the beautiful Scandinavian country. If you want to check… Continue Reading

Review: Lyx

There are many office application available for Linux, but very few designed for people who need to deal with many numbers, Lyx is designed to write documents with a lot of mathematics, but don’t get confused, it will handle your regular documents just as well. Among scientists LaTeX has been some sort of standard, however, it is complicated to learn and may scare newcomers, or, well, curious people. Lyx is a Qt application designed to offer mathematical capabilities (is built around LaTeX) while offering a user friendly interface and a relatively small learning curve. Lyx is also different from other… Continue Reading

Review: Calligra 2.4

As we reported earlier this week Calligra 2.4 was released. The majority of users probably don’t know what it is, the reason is a mixed of two things: A change on branding and LibreOffice. Formerly known as KOffice, Calligra is KDE’s new and shiniest suite of productivity applications. All applications are designed following the same set of guidelines such that a lot of the knowledge obtained by the user while using one of the apps is transferred to other members of the suite. Moreover, all members are coded to improve interoperability, in other words, all applications integrate with each other. Calligra is,… Continue Reading

Listaller 0.5.4 released

Listaller is a project that aims to replace the way people currently install applications. Specifically, its developers think adding repositories (for example, PPAs) to get a new application or the newest version is an overkill, it’s a security issue since it mostly means someone has full on root access to your computer. To solve this, they’ve come up with a way to install applications  (low level libraries aren’t supported, i.e. you won’t be installing X with this) without requiring changes on anything installed using your system repositories. Their solution is simple enough: Apps installed by the user are dependent on… Continue Reading

Calligra 2.4 released

Later today Calligra, after just over two years of existence, will reach version 2.4, it’s first stable release intended for regular users. Calligra is a suite of applications, a continuation of the KOffice Project. The set of application goes from productivity to graphical design: Productivity applications: Words: Word processor (formerly KWord) Sheets: Spreadsheet program (formerly KSpread). Stage: Presentation program (formerly KPresenter). Flow: Flowchart program, (formerly Kivio). Kexi: Database application like Microsoft Access. Plan: Project management (formerly KPlato). Braindump: An infinite canvas to dump images, words and graphics into (brain storming, flowcharts, etc). Graphics applications: Krita: Drawing application for multi-layered pixel-based images. Karbon: Drawing application for multi-layered vector images…. Continue Reading

LaKademy 2012

Brazil will be the host of the first Latin American Akademy, named LaKademy. The only event similar done in Latin America was 2010’s Akademy-BR. Akademies are summits where developers meet, there they assist to conferences regarding KDE’s future and to massive hacking sessions. The organizers would love to see this project become an official part of the KDE annual summit schedule, along Akademy, later this year in Estonia, or Camp KDE, which happened a few days ago in San Francisco. The list of confirmed participants includes people from all over Latin America and contributors to many different KDE projetcs. The event… Continue Reading

Kubuntu finds a sponsor: Blue Systems

For those who don’t know Netrunner  is based on Kubuntu and sponsored by Blue Systems. From 12.10 onward Kubuntu will be sponsored by Blue Systems too, this comes after Canonical decided to focus all their resources to Ubuntu and its Unity-based interface, ending Kubuntu’s official status as part of the Ubuntu family. Kubuntu will continue to be a community driven project, and a successful one. Being the most used Linux operating system in Brazil, it’s no wonder why the Latin American flavor of Akademy will be happening in the country of samba and bossa nova. Blue systems is also the… Continue Reading