en.credativ blog: Category News

credativ and OpenERP Partner to Take on Proprietary ERP Giants

2011-06-07T14:12:03Z

Rugby, UK - 6 June 2011

credativ Ltd, the UK branch of the largest independent provider of Open Source consultancy in Europe, today announced that it is partnering with OpenERP in a move aimed at increasing OpenERP’s share of the UK enterprise resource planning market (ERP).

Chris Halls, MD, credativ UK, comments on the partnership: “OpenERP provides a flexible, robust and cost-effective alternative to proprietary systems such as SAP, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and Sage, and is especially attractive to SMEs that may have previously found the cost of ERP systems prohibitive.”

“credativ has already introduced OpenERP to UK SMEs and enterprises in the manufacturing, ecommerce and logistics industries. credativ’s customers using OpenERP have already realised business benefits including cost savings, streamlined processes, improved visibility and simplified reporting.”

OpenERP's comprehensive suite of modular applications caters for all major business processes including: CRM, project management, warehouse management, manufacturing, financial management and human resources.

credativ has been providing open source training and consultancy to public and private sector clients since 1999. The credativ team has extensive experience of working with OpenERP; recent implementation work includes delivering customisations for warehousing, accounting, VAT, reporting and Magento e-commerce integration.

Halls continues: “Our partnership with OpenERP underlines our commitment to improving the system’s functionality. We want to highlight open source ERP as an alternative to less flexible proprietary platforms, and believe that this new partnership will bring our experience, size and range of services to organisations who are considering OpenERP.

OpenERP’s modular design allows organisations to introduce or replace existing ERP systems at their own pace without the burden of ongoing licensing costs. We see our partnership with OpenERP as an opportunity to encourage more organisations to make the move to open source.

credativ's unique support offering is available from operating systems to business applications - at scale. Our international OSSC (Open Source Support Centre) provides support and consultancy not only for OpenERP but for all major open source applications and distributions.”

Committed to actively participating in the Open Source community, members of credativ’s 40+ developer team regularly contribute to projects with recent input into OpenERP bug fixes, banking functionality and VAT reporting modules.

About credativ:

Founded in 1999, credativ is an independent consulting and services company which operates from Germany, the U.K., Canada, and the U.S. With a large team of experts in open source software, credativ offers a vast knowledge base that can be tapped into at any time by its clients. The company focuses on the service and support of open source software with a comprehensive range of services, including open source consulting, architectural and technical advice, open source software development, open source training, and personalised support. credativ is “Your One-Stop Shop for Open Source SupportTM”.

credativ and Black Duck announce International Partnership

2010-12-06T15:13:54Z

Rugby, 6 December 2010 - credativ Ltd and Black Duck Software Inc. have announced an international partnership to help further the deployment and integration of Open Source Software.

The OSSC (Open Source Support Centre) run by credativ in the UK, US, Germany and Canada will now also be providing support for customers of Black Duck Software Inc.

Black Duck Software is a worldwide provider of “managed software component reuse” solutions; they support businesses and organisations who use Open Source and third party source code in adhering to relevant licensing obligations, thereby reducing the associated business risks.

Through this partnership with credativ, Black Duck can now also offer comprehensive technical support for the many free software projects which are developed through extensive developer communities rather than through an organisation. This service guarantees Black Duck customers additional security for complex Open Source services and provides an alternative which is comparable to the manufacturer's support available with proprietary software.

Mr. Chris Halls, Managing Director of credativ Ltd in the UK, explains:

“We are delighted about the partnership with Black Duck. We hope that combining our competencies will enable us to cover all the requirements for safe operation of Open Source software. Our partnership is a good basis for further international expansion - our Open Source Support Centres will be enhancing Black Duck's service offering, not only for the US but also the European market.”

If you would like to know more about our Open Source involvement simply leave us a comment here... alternatively please contact us directly.

About credativ

Founded in 1999, credativ is an independent consulting and services company which operates from Germany, the U.K., Canada, and the U.S. With a large team of experts in open source software, credativ offers a vast knowledge base that can be tapped into by its clients. The company focuses on the service and support of open source software with a comprehensive range of services, including open source consulting, architectural and technical advice, open source software development, open source training, and personalized support. credativ is “Your One-Stop Shop for Open Source Support” ^TM.

The Open Source Support Centre (OSSC) offers support for the following:

Debian, Kubuntu, Ubuntu, Xandros, SUSE, Red Hat, Fedora, CentOS, Linspire, Mandriva, Slackware, Open BSD, Gnome, KDE, MySQL, PostgreSQL, PostGIS, Slony, Zarafa, eGroupware, Kolab Groupware, Scalix, SugarCRM, vtiger, CITADEL, Mozilla-Firefox, Mozilla-Suite, OpenOffice, Thunderbird, Wine, Apache, Asterisk, OpenSER, FreePBX, OpenPBX, CallWeaver, SpamAssassin, ClamAV, OpenLDAP, OTRS, RT, Samba, Cyrus, Dovecot, Exim, Postfix, sendmail, Amanda, Bacula, DRBD, Heartbeat, Keepalived, Nagios, Open Security Filter, Ferm, FAI, Squid, XEN, VirtualBox.

For further information please contact:

credativ Ltd,
36 Regent Street,
Rugby,
Warwickshire,
CV21 2PS

Press contact

Simon Bowring

Tel: +44 (0) 1788 298150
Fax: +44 (0) 1788 298159
Email: simon.bowring@credativ.co.uk

About Black Duck Software Inc

Black Duck Software is the leading provider of products and services for automating the management, governance and secure use of open source software, at enterprise scale, in a multi-source development process. Black Duck™ enables companies to shorten time-to-solution and reduce development costs while mitigating the management, compliance and security challenges associated with open source software. Black Duck Software powers Koders.com, the industry’s leading code search engine for open source, and is among the 500 largest software companies in the world, according to Softwaremag.com. The company is headquartered near Boston and has offices in San Mateo, California, London, Paris, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Beijing.

For more information, visit www.blackducksoftware.com.

Black Duck, Know Your Code and the Black Duck logo are registered trademarks of Black Duck Software, Inc. in the United States and other jurisdictions. Koders is a trademark of Black Duck Software, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

Press contacts

Peter Vescuso
Black Duck Software
press@blackducksoftware.com
+1 781-891-5100

Ann Dalrymple
TopazPartners

CIOZone Interview

2010-08-11T14:55:23Z

CIOZone, a social network for CIOs, recently interviewed our Founder and CEO Dr. Michael Meskes.

CIOZone is a central place where CIOs can network. In this video, Roger Green takes the time to drop in to our office in Moenchengladbach, Germany to interview Michael Meskes, the founder of credativ about the history of the company, how Open Source has developed and how the business is different today from what it was 10 years ago.

This discussion is followed by analysis of current development and future challenges; the difference between Open Source vendors and proprietary global players; virtualisation and cloud computing in relation to Open Source and what to keep in mind when migrating to Open Source software.

Read on or watch the video at ciozone.com.

If you're looking for support, services and training for Open Source software, you've come to the right place at credativ!

PostgreSQL 9.0 is now in Betaphase

2010-05-25T10:29:00Z

The PostgreSQL developers' community recently published the first Beta version of the new 9.0 release. Over 200 new functions and improvements feature in this new version.

With this new release, PostgreSQL now amongst other features claims an inbuilt replication solution as well as the ability to access and read standby nodes, continuously being updated by Log Shipping (Hot Standby). Streaming replication allows the sending of transaction logs directly to one or more standby nodes, which considerably reduces the amount of time lost compared with the more common, file-based log shipping. Combining these two features makes for an extremely efficient solution for high availability or loadbalanced systems.

The all new PostgreSQL version also offers the following innovations:

Memory based LISTEN/NOTIFY: this replaces the previous table based implementation and is much faster.

Exclusion Constraints: broadens constraints to be able to deal with the complex datatypes of overlapping constraints.

Procedural code such as PL/pgSQL, PL/Perl and PL/Python can now be done inline per DO command.

CREATE FUNCTION

Triggers on columns

Triggers can now be tied to conditions

Named argument lists for procedures

Parameters can now be flexibly linked to rolls/databases

As always, anyone interested is invited to share their test results with the developers. Information on the procedure for testing and filing of error messages can be found in the Wiki.

All blog articles which fall into the PostgreSQL category are grouped in their own feed, and if you find you need support and services for PostgreSQL, you've come to the right place at credativ.

credativ Training at Munich Open Source School

2010-05-05T14:00:12Z

In May, Consultants from credativ GmbH will be holding a 3 day advanced system and network administration workshop at the Open Source School in Munich.

Training specifics (subject to modifications!):

Kerberos: This training covers the Kerberos authentification protocol, which can handle a range of services and operating systems transparently. The use of tickets makes single-sign-in possible; so a user can access all services with a unique log in. The training will be aimed at network and system administrators who wish to roll out Kerberos in their business or administrative network; it will also cover the installation and management of Kerberos, as well as the integration of services and client programs.

When: 03-05/05/2010 and 13-15/09/2010
Spam and Virus Defense: This training will clarify the integration and fine tuning of open source based services Postfix, Amavis and SpamAssassin, which protect a network from unnecessary strain due to spam mail or malware. This training will be geared at administrators who wish to secure their company's email systems against spam and viruses.

When: 26-28/05/2010 and 18-20/10/2010
Samba in heterogenous networks: This training concerns Samba as a replacement for Windows servers for smooth integration for both Windows clients in unix-based networks, and Linux servers in Windows-based networks. The training is directed at administrators wanting to migrate a Windows network completely or partly to Linux with the help of Samba. The goal of the training is the management and administration of LDAP-based primary/backup domain controller setups.

When: 30/06-02/07/2010

The training will take place at the Open Source School in Munich city centre, Amalienstrasse 77. Applications can be made via the Open Source School website or by faxing this form. For further information contact Michael Banck.

Further dates for your diary: 21-23 April - PostgreSQL training will be carried out by credativ experts at the Linuxhotel Linuxhotel in Essen.

credativ leads the market with a pre-paid, international Open Source support solution

2010-03-24T15:30:40Z

This week, credativ launches its Open Source Support Card. With this card Open Source Support can be bought at a fixed price - without a binding contract.

After a long preparation phase we are now offering our trusted services in a new, simple format; with the Open Source Support Card you get a fixed contingent of project-specific, pre-paid services.

Customers using the Open Source Support Card have the unique advantage of full cost control; the card can be purchased as a product, without any obligation to sign an agreement for a specific length of time. This may be of particular benefit to larger companies, where new contracts have to be reviewed and cross-reviewed before they can be authorised. A summary of the advantages of the new pre-paid support format include:

Open Source Support for a specific project
Support not restricted to a specific number of desktops and servers within a company
A tempting price model, starting at just £480
Full control of costs
Support available via telephone, e-mail and remote access
Bilingual support - help given in English or even German, if required! ;-)
Cost of support NOT determined by the number of CPUs or users
NO binding contract - easy way to purchase
NO call centre - direct access to the experts
Support units can be used for the following services:

administration
installation (remote)
consultancy

All support is provided to the usual credativ standard. Just as you would expect from our usual contracts, the cost of the service is not determined by the number of CPUs, users, or DB entries. Support units purchased through the Support Card can be used for all related problems within a company - no matter which workstation or server they come up on. The support itself is provided by our Open Source Support Centre: you won't have to deal with non-technical staff or battle through FAQ scripts - our Linux experts and Open Source specialists are on hand to take calls directly. Many of us are actively involved in contributing to a number of Open Source projects - as regular readers will already be aware. ;-)

The new Open Source Support Card is also an exciting development for the wider Open Source community. By offering yet another attractive support option for free distributions, we hope to prove that there is now no reason not to consider Debian and CentOS as viable alternatives to commercial distributions.

The Open Source Support Card is designed and marketed in such a way that resellers can also get on board, making access to support that bit easier for consumers: imagine purchasing your server online and while you're at it being able to drop a Support Card into the shopping basket as well - Open Source Support with just one click!

Currently the Support Card is just available for Debian and CentOS in the UK and in Germany, although we will soon be offering it in the US and Canada too. If you have any questions or comments we'd be pleased to hear from you - we've put a lot of effort into this new product, and are looking forward to the response from our customers and the wider community.

OpenGL 4.0 released

2010-03-15T10:21:56Z

During the Games Developer Conference the Khronos Group released new versions of its widely used 2D and 3D graphics API, OpenGL. Besides the expected Version 3.3, they also released OpenGL 4.0.

From 2004 - 2008 there was so little movement from OpenGL that it was practically announced dead, falling badly behind its competitor DirectX. However, since 2008 the responsible Khronos Group has regained its footing and focused on the further development of the graphics specification. In 2008 version 3.0 was released and in 2009 two more releases followed. 3.3 was on the cards for this year's Games Developer Conference, and OpenGL did not disappoint. However, the audience was caught by surprise when the immediate availability of OpenGL version 4.0 was also announced.

According to the Khronos Group, OpenGL 4.0 offers an API to access the most modern hardware features available - putting it on an equal footing with DirectX 11. Up until now DirectX 11 has been far ahead of OpenGL - 3.x was focused on older hardware that was consistent with DirectX 10 (no Tesselation, etc.). Additionally, the press announcement mentions explicitly that the new version was designed with developers in mind, to enable them to create OpenGL-based programs and games significantly faster and more efficiently.

However, the new API is only relevant if there are graphics drivers implementing it: AMD and Nvidia have both promised new drivers soon, and since in both drivers the OpenGL stack for Windows and Linux is almost the same, Linux support for OpenGL 4.0 shouldn't be far behind. It will take longer for open source graphics drivers; the OpenGL implementation Mesa3D does not yet even offer OpenGL 3.x support. However, after a long pause this project started moving quickly again two years ago; at the moment we are seeing new releases on a monthly basis so let's hope support will follow in the near future.

We at credativ would like to see a more transparent process in the Khronos Group - after all, Open Source Services and Support are our main business, and OpenGL is an important part of the Open Source ecosystem. But nevertheless, congratulations on the new release!

Desktops and their performance

2010-03-12T10:00:16Z

Phoronix has used its Test Suite to compare the memory and power consumption of different desktop environments. However, the results should be handled with care.

The "Power & Memory Usage" test was done to evaluate whether XFCE and LXDE consume less power and memory compared with their "big" siblings KDE and Gnome. The tests were done on a stock Ubuntu installation. At first glance the results suggest that KDE consumes much more power than the others. However, these results are misleading.

For a start, measuring memory consumption is all but an easy task and requires a lot of thought. The problem is that many applications share a certain amount of memory and this is especially true for KDE. Very few programs out there can handle this shared memory properly while still showing the memory consumption of a process. "Top" and "free" are worthless in this regard; if you need to use any tool, take "exmap"! A more detailed analysis of this problem was done here.

Yet even if the memory consumption could be measured perfectly, there is still the matter of what this memory is being used for. Gnome and KDE do need quite a chunk of memory right at the start, but that is mainly due to the larger libraries, which offer a number of functions for other programs as well. It is for this reason that the memory measurement done with a set of programs shows different results, indicating that a Desktop with larger libraries has a much slower growing fingerprint for each additional application compared to a Desktop with smaller libraries.

However, even after taking this point into account, you might still ask, "what do you get?" KDE and Gnome usually offer a file indexer and tagger by default - whether these are running or sleeping can massively influence the measurements in tests such as these. Also, both desktops come with some heavy 3D effects. If you turn these off by default the memory footprint and the power consumption is of course much lower.

A comparison between a full featured desktop vs a Desktop with much less functionality is brainless - you could also add a turned off machine to the test and declare it the winner because it has the smallest memory footprint and power consumption!

To clarify: in general the Phoronix Test Suite can be used to evaluate certain data or at least trends in certain data - but data acquisition requires fixed surrounding conditions as well as a detailed discussion of the compared objects and their features, not to mention a detailed (read: scientific) analysis of the results. Throwing numbers around is not enough - if you are going to do so, you should at least include accurate details!

The Power and Memory Usage test is lacking in all these factors, so it is unfortunately worthless. :/

New Blog engine

2010-03-11T14:49:34Z

This week we moved our blog to a new blogging software: Movable Type. Besides the technical advantages it is now much easier for us to display the same article in different languages.

credativ is a multinational corporation with employees of different nationalities. This became problematic when we first started experimenting with our company blog: articles were published in English as well as in German and most of them translated into both languages... the site quickly became a mess.

To get around this problem a new workflow was designed - but unfortunately the blog engine we were using at the time, Wordpress, couldn't really accommodate it. After a short evaluation we decided to move over to the internally well known Movable Type, which efficiently supports setting up several blogs side by side with a central configuration management.

So now the new system is in place on the old address blog.credativ.com. But there are two new addresses you, our readers, should keep in mind:

blog.credativ.com/en for the English articles
blog.credativ.com/de for the German articles

Due to the new structure you can also access feeds according to topic without having to be irritated by double posts in different languages.

So, have fun with the new site. :-)

And, of course: if you need support for Movable Type, Wordpress or a migration just ask, we are ready to help!

[Talk] Single Sign On with Kerberos

2010-02-26T13:14:47Z

credativ employee, Alexander Wirt, is due to give a presentation at the German Chemnitz Linux Days about Single Sign On with Kerberos. Besides an introduction into configuration of Kerberos, the talk will also focus on the configuration of its various services.

Kerberos is an authentication protocol which enables an admin to incorporate services and an operating system transparently into an existing setup. This makes Single Sign On possible: the user only has to enter his/her credentials once and thereafter can access any secured services and websites which support Kerberos without having to enter them again.

The Kerberos Single Sign On approach will be described by Alexander Wirt, credativ's expert on this topic, during a talk at the Chemnitz Linux Days due to take place in March. Besides the basic introduction to Kerberos based on Heimdal, he will also explain how to configure services such as SSH, Apache and IMAP. The topic of this talk will be very close to real-world usage, thus it should enable members of the audience to try it out easily themselves on their own networks.The talk will take place in German on March 13th 2010 at 15:00 in Room V4.

PostgreSQL 9.0alpha4 released

2010-02-25T12:02:50Z

The PostgreSQL project just released the Alpha 4 of its upcoming PostgreSQL 9.0.

The Alpha4 version of the upcoming PostgreSQL 9.0 release is ready for download. It is planned that Alpha4 will be the last Alpha version before the Beta release cycle for PostgreSQL 9.0. Some highlights of this release are:

Reworked LISTEN/NOTIFY infrastructure: the performance has improved massively compared to the old table-based implementation, due to a pure main memory solution. Additionally, the new solution supports so called "Payloads" which makes it possible to transport messages.

Streaming Replication: an integrated solution for replication which has noticeable lower latency times than the usual, WAL-shipping-based solutions.

Procedural code with plpqsql and plperl can now be executed with the DO statement without the need to call a CREATE FUNCTION first.

You are very much welcome to download and test the Alpha version and play with it. The developers are interested in Bugs and test results; you can find the work flow to publish these outlined in their Wiki.

Debian moved over to DNSSEC

2010-02-25T11:18:08Z

The Debian project has announced that its internal DNS infrastructure is gradually moving over to DNSSEC. Thus from now on, all DNS answers for debian.com, amongst others, will be digitally signed to verify their authenticity.

The Domain Name System (DNS) is one of the core components of the Internet. However, the initial design of DNS is vulnerable against some quite serious attacks, among them cache poisoning which means faking of DNS answers. To avoid this problem, DNSSEC was introduced (DNSSEC in Wikipedia, see also dnssec.net). DNSSEC is an enhancement of the default DNS protocol which makes it possible to sign and thus verify DNS answers. The introduction of DNSSEC into the existing worldwide Internet infrastructure is proving to be slow, due to the complexity and amount of work involved; there are so far only a few top level domains (TLDs) and domains of large projects and companies providing signed answers.

The Debian project has now decided to introduce DNSSEC step by step, so that all project domains will provide verified DNS answers. Firstly, all debian.net and debian.com domains will be signed, and thereafter the collected experience will be used to sign the other domains and sub-domains.

One of the problems the Debian project is facing in the use of DNSSEC is that as yet they do not have the signatures by the TLDs that Debian uses, without which there is no third party to verify the Debian keys. To get around this, Debian will publish the DNSSEC keys via the DNSSEC Look-aside Validation Registry of ISC. This will mean Debian keys can be verified even for TLDs which have not yet introduced a DNSSEC infrastructure.

Moving the Debian project to DNSSEC improves the security of the Debian part of the internet. Additionally, the experience acquired in the changing over of such a large, worldwide and multi-domain project should help other projects of a similar size - and hopefully encourage them to follow suit.

Mobile Linux merged: Moblin + Maemo = MeeGo

2010-02-17T13:42:36Z

A couple of hours ago Nokia and Intel announced that they plan to merge their mobile Linux platforms to create a common base: MeeGo.

Giants Intel and Nokia have had their own Linux platforms for some time; Nokia was developing Maemo while Intel pushed Moblin forward. These two were battling in an already highly competitive market together with Android and LiMo - not to mention the proprietary solutions.Now Intel and Nokia have announced the merge of their two platforms into a new, combined platform: MeeGo.

"Moblin and maemo are merging! We are taking the best pieces from these two open source projects and are creating the MeeGo software platform."

In an economical sense, this is quite a sensible step. Intel and Nokia are two players who can defend themselves against even the likes of Google, Apple or Microsoft. However, in such a hard-fought market they do need partners or a new strategy at least, since both have so far failed to launch a solution with a larger market reach than their competitors. (There are few devices available with Maemo or Moblin.) They have the added advantage that both platforms were technically similar, so the merge enables them to save resources. But the question remains as to whether Intel and Nokia will come into competition with each other on the device market, as MeeGo will be run on a variety of devices, from mobile phones to TVs.

From a technical perspective, it is interesting to see that MeeGo will use Qt as the main graphics library. This framework, currently owned by Nokia, is used to program GUIs; among others, it forms the base for KDE. credativ employees often work with Qt and, being familiar with the advantages of the framework also offer Qt-support to customers. With Qt, MeeGo is based upon a well-proven and modern, graphical framework. Besides, it has been rumoured that MeeGo will be based upon RPM. There are references to "kickstart" files in the developer section, which suggest MeeGo will be close to distributions such as Fedora, OpenSuse or RHEL.

Besides the technical and economic perspective, the community question is significant for any new platform. While it is said that LiMu leaves the community out in total, and Android is criticised for not merging their Kernel patches upstream, in contrast, it is planned that MeeGo will be developed under the umbrella of the Linux Foundation, which is well known to the Community and also employs some outstanding developers.

Time will tell if MeeGo will stand its ground - as yet, there are no devices available and the competition is strong... but it will definitely be interesting to watch!

Skolelinux 5.0 released

2010-02-15T14:05:01Z

The Skolelinux team has released version 5.0 of its popular school server, which is now based on Debian Lenny.

The distribution Skolelinux, also known as Debian-Edu, is a Debian version adapted for running school networks with Linux. It enables even non-geek users to quickly set up a central school server with a terminal server, thin clients, workstations and laptops as desktop computers.

With the release of version 5.0, Skolelinux was lifted to the current Debian software base. Besides providing enhanced hardware support, it now updates the software to recent versions, making the new release more appealing to pupils and schools. Some other technical highlights of this version include:

GNOME is now supported alongside KDE;

The pupils' destkop has been enhanced with links to school software like GCompris, Kalzium, KGeography, KMplot, KStars, Stopmotion and the OpenOffice Suite;

Improved LTSP server configuration:
- Besides the traditional thin clients, diskless workstations are now supported out of the box; manual tweaking is no longer necessary;
- The new PXE start menu allows diskless workstations to boot via network or via local media;
- Software running locally on diskless workstations comes straight from the server, where it can be more easily maintained.

Improved documentation, now translated into German, Italian and Norwegian;

Improved and simplified user- and machine-administration tool LWAT (LDAP Web-based Administration Tool);

Improved browser support with free software products like Gnash, Java and other plugins;

Improved monitoring, now reporting on the status of all machines which are automatically connected to the network;

Improved audio and multimedia experience in PulseAudio, next to Alsa and OSS.

Philipp Hübner, voluntary worker of the Skolelinux project and employee here at credativ underlines the modern approach of the new version:

"Skolelinux made a huge leap forward with the new release: the seamless, out of the box integration of the Diskless Workstation makes Skolelinux perfect for the challenges of today, as it evolves to keep up with the constantly growing performance of computers. This way, the performance of modern workstations is perfectly combined with the low maintainance work of thin clients."

Skolelinux is now used by milions of pupils across various countries, including Spain, Norway and Germany. In 2009, credativ Germany supervised the successful completion of a Skolelinux evaluation project, a solution which is increasingly adopted in schools today. As a certified support partner, credativ is able to offer professional support services in the education sector.We congratulate Skolelinux for this release: well done, we wish you all the best for the future!

KDE 4.4 released

2010-02-12T14:25:29Z

This week the KDE project released version 4.4 of its software compilation. Besides new scientific programs, this version focuses on stability and enhancements of the current programs and functions.

The KDE project released version 4.4 of its "KDE Software Compilation" (KDE SC) package. The new version is especially striking for its attention to detail in the user experience:

An overview of all new features can be found in the Feature Guide, which has more images and videos. Here are some of the most significant enhancements:

Substantial improvements of the semantic search system Nepomuk: the new default storage backend is a lot faster than the old one.

Plasma has advanced: Widgets can now be shared with other users over the network and the management and handling of external storage devices has been reworked.

New programs: besides the blog application Blogilo, KDE SC 4.4 also comes with the scientific programs Cantor and Rocs.

The development platform for KDE Software now has the new authentication framework KAuth, which allows more specific and secure allocation of user rights.

Another new feature which I personally like, is basic support for automatic window sizing - almost basic tiling support. For example, whenever you drag a window to the left window, it is automatically resized to cover the left half of the screen. This is particularly useful when working with several windows at a time on a huge screen.

Compared with previous KDE versions, there are less new features in this release. The developers have really focused on fixing bugs and improving stability. This is one of the reasons why users who are still running KDE 3.x are advised to change over to KDE 4.x now; the distributions will ship KDE 4.4 soon anyway.

During the release of KDE SC 4.4, the main website of the KDE project was also re-designed. kde.org was completely reworked and now includes information from external sources as opendesktop.org. This means interested users have access to much better and more detailed information about the available software.Congrats on the new release from credativ!