01/28/2003 — KDE Project Ships Major Feature Upgrade of Third- Generation Linux/UNIX Desktop, Offering Enterprises and Governments a Compelling Free and Open Desktop Solution

January 28, 2003 (The INTERNET). The KDE Project today announced the immediate availability of KDE 3.1, a major feature upgrade to the third generation of the most advanced and powerful free desktop for Linux and other UNIXes. KDE 3.1 ships with a basic desktop, an integrated development environment and seventeen other packages (PIM, administration, network, edutainment, utilities, multimedia, games, artwork, web development and more). KDE's award-winning tools and applications are available in 47 languages.

Consistent with KDE's rapid but disciplined development pace, the release of KDE 3.1 heralds an impressive catalog of feature enhancements and additions. As has been typical in recent KDE major releases, a great many of the new features provide welcome news particularly to private and public enterprises.

"We are delighted to see the KDE Project placing such a strong emphasis on Enterprise Desktops," noted Markus Rex, Vice President of Research and Development at SuSE. "Features like the kiosk mode, the improved Mail-encryption and the new remote Desktop operation are key components of SUSE's upcoming office and enterprise product lines."

"People interested in deploying KDE in the enterprise will be pleased with the kiosk features that have been added to KDE 3.1," explained Waldo Bastian, a lead developer in the "KDE Kiosk" initiative. "These new features make it easy to lock down parts of the KDE desktop, precluding users from making unapproved configuration changes or even running unapproved applications."

"Recent additions to KDE's email security and groupware functionality, implemented at the initiative of the German federal government, will bring KDE a long way towards general use not only on the corporate desktop, but also in governments across the European Union and elsewhere," noted Matthias Kalle Dalheimer, President of KDE e.V. as well as Klarälvdalens Datakonsult AB, one of the companies contracted by the German government to implement the new functionality in close cooperation with the KDE community.

"KDE 3.1 is easily the best overall Open Source desktop ever released," added Andreas Pour, Chairman of the KDE League. "From enterprise support to eye candy to security, this release is a testament to the success of Internet collaboration."

KDE, including all its libraries and its applications, is available for free under Open Source licenses. KDE can be obtained in source and numerous binary formats from the KDE http or ftp mirrors, and can also be obtained on CD-ROM or with any of the major Linux/UNIX systems shipping today.

Please read the full announcement at

http://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-3.1.html

Learn more about KDE 3.1 enhancements in the KDE 3.1 New Feature Guide:

http://promo.kde.org/3.1/feature_guide.php

Download KDE 3.1:

http://www.kde.org/info/3.1.html

About KDE

KDE is an independent project of hundreds of developers, translators, artists and other professionals worldwide collaborating over the Internet to create and freely distribute a sophisticated, customizable and stable desktop and office environment employing a flexible, component-based, network-transparent architecture and offering an outstanding development platform. KDE provides a stable, mature desktop, a full, component-based office suite (KOffice), a large set of networking and administration tools and utilities, and an efficient, intuitive development environment featuring the excellent IDE KDevelop. KDE is working proof that the Open Source "Bazaar-style" software development model can yield first-rate technologies on par with and superior to even the most complex commercial software.

Press Contact:
Jasmin Ul-Haque
Novell, Inc
Phone: +44 (0)1344 326-900
E-mail: juh@novell.com