KDE
This section covers the news surrounding the Fedora KDE Special Interests Group[1].
Contributing Writer: Ryan Rix
KDE SC 4.5 Beta 1 coming to kde-redhat/unstable
Rex Dieter has begun pushing builds of KDE SC 4.5 beta 1 to the KDE-RedHat unstable repositories for Fedora 13[1]. KDE SC 4.5 brings many new changes across the entire Software Compilation. The SC 4.5 release announcement[2] gives an overview of the new features that are going to hit the kde-redhat/unstable repositories. Dieter will not be pushing Fedora 12 builds until beta 2 or possibly RC1.
If you are interested in testing the KDE SC 4.5 beta, you can find instructions on how to enable the repository at the kde-redhat homepage[3]. Please note that this release may have many bugs. Please report them under the Rawhide component in bugzilla or to rdieter in #fedora-kde on irc.freenode.net.
New VLC-based phonon backend available
Amarok developer Mark Kretschmann has been working with[1] the VideoLan team, developers of the VLC media player to work on a new Phonon backend which uses VLC. Not only does this create a cross platform Phonon backend as VLC has been successfully ported to Mac OS X and Windows, but it is far more stable than existing VLC backends.
Rex Dieter has built a version of VLC which is compatible with this backend, along with the backend itself in the KDE-RedHat unstable repository for testing on Fedora 12 and Fedora 13. If you are interested in testing this new backend, you can find instructions on how to enable the repository at the kde-redhat homepage[2]. Install the phonon-backend-vlc package and set it as the primary Backend in System Settings->Multimedia->Backend.