Today we are going to upgrade KDE to the new version 4.3.1 on Kubuntu.

KDE 4.3.1 has been released yesterday and it is a Service Release of the 4.3 series that brings many bug fixes, performance improvements and translation updates.

For stability reasons the Kubuntu standard repositories do not offer the update, so you have to add a third party repository.

First thing, open KPackageKit.

From KPackageKit

Then go to “Settings” and click on “Edit Software Sources”.

From KPackageKit

Go to “Third-Party Software” tab and click “Add” At the bottom of the screen.

From KPackageKit

On the dialog windows you will get insert the following line, but wait before clicking “Ok”:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-ppa/backports/ubuntu jaunty main

From KPackageKit

Before clicking “Ok”, open Konsole and execute the following 2 commands:
gpg –keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com –recv 2836CB0A8AC93F7A
gpg –export –armor 2836CB0A8AC93F7A | sudo apt-key add -
(in the following screenshot, Konsole tells that “key 8AC93F7A: “Launchpad Kubuntu Updates” not changed”; that is because I already had the key, but in your case it should tell you that the key has correctly been imported).

From KPackageKit

When you done it, go back to KPackageKit and finally click “Ok”; when you do it, KPackageKit will tell you that it has to regenerate the master list of the software available.

From KPackageKit

From KPackageKit

When you have done it, close it and click on the small wheel with the green arrow that you will see near the clock on the task bar and confirm all the available updates.

When the installation has completed, log off from your KDE session and log back in. YOU ARE DONE!

If you want to verify that you actually installed the update, open any KDE own software (like Konsole), go to “Help” and select “About KDE”; you should get a windows like this.

From KPackageKit

I hope you will enjoy your new and update version of KDE.

Stay tuned for more guides.

The major changes are the following (original version here):

• Show a dialog on application crashes.
• Much improved OLE copy/paste support.
• Various listview improvements.
• More Direct3D code cleanups.
• Various bug fixes.

The source is available from the following locations:

http://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/system/emulators/wine/wine-1.1.20.tar.bz2
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wine/wine-1.1.20.tar.bz2

Binary packages for various distributions will be available from:

http://www.winehq.org/site/download

You will find documentation on http://www.winehq.org/site/documentation

You can also get the current source directly from the git
repository. Check http://www.winehq.org/site/git for details.

Wine is available thanks to the work of many people. See the file
AUTHORS in the distribution for the complete list.

Bugs fixed in 1.1.20:

2221 Hyper Chem v7.5 doesn’t open/save files
4464 d3dx9_*.dll are unimplemented
9084 Panzer General III SE pinkish text instead of transparent
9102 Panzer General III Scorched Earth in-game crash (memcpy)
9637 Switchball only shows a blank screen
10253 Fraps does not record videos or take a screenshot
11716 star wars battlefront crashes with sound enabled
12040 Stronghold 2 1.4: crash when starting the application
12057 Power! Estimator renders numerical cell text incorrectly
12393 adobe illustrator 10 crashed on startup
12560 Perfect World: Corrupt Bitmap Images
13563 Nestopia: crashes with enabled shaders
13820 Yahoo! Messenger 9.0 beta hangs on login
13825 Morrowind pagefaults when trying to run fullscreen with missing videos
14456 Diablo II hangs when it loses focus
14812 dsound bug causes games to crash
14970 everquest crashes in winmm
15081 Perfect World – Grey Characters
15088 Lotus Approach page faults on open dialog
15172 File Names with spaces seen as seperate files
15303 dragonshard crashes or presents a corurpted screen
15494 ddraw_test throws an exception when run
15557 GTA Trylogy can’t install
15566 GTA 3 doesn’t find DVD
15575 Word Pro table nubmers get reformatted
15603 Screen periodically erased in Starfleet Command II
15622 Everquest crashes
15630 Program LaTeXPiX crashes at startup
15764 Homeworld 2 Patch (homeworld2_update_en_10_11.exe) to v1.1: crash during setup
15881 Pharaoh – can’t play on fullscreen
16613 A Vampyre Story Demo installer doesn’t work
16989 Cobra 11 Nitro: Cars drawn as artifacts
17198 World Editor: Tree Component of Unit Editor doesn’t (re)draw correctly
17397 Ventrilo 3.0.4 won’t initialize GSM 6.10 codec stream
17478 Fix dpa warning from comctl32/listview.c
17498 winemaker fails on 64-bit systems
17528 3D Mark 2001 SE Dragothic: Textures not rendered on running humans
17774 Fable crashes on starting a new or existing game
17910 Black & White: Crashes in texture code at start
17984 Invalid handle for RegOpenKeyExA in win64 bit application
17987 Autocad toolbars mis-sized
17991 QueryPathOfRegTypeLib fails to locate typelib when (major.minor) = (0xffff.0xffff)
18007 Subtitle Workshop “Save as..” selection menu not appearing
18030 Images not show (or flickering) in old app
18076 SmartDraw.exe: unimplemented function gdiplus.dll.GdipBitmapSetResolution
18090 Watchtower Library no longer starts
18111 Powerhorse crashes
18114 rpcrt4.NdrDllCanUnloadNow: COM proxy/stub factory reference count eval incorrect (crashes Visual Studio 2005 on exit)
18125 Drawing problem in Wine
18150 Foobar2000 properties dialog is blank
18155 Approach crashes on File, Export

The main changes of Ubuntu 9.04 compared to the previous version are:

• Gnome 2.26 for Ubuntu and KDE 4.2 for Kubuntu;
• X.Org server 1.6;
• Wacom tablet hotplugging;
• Improved boot performance;
• Linux kernel 2.6.28.8
• Ext4 filesystem support

Links
Ubuntu 9.04 announcement:  http://www.ubuntu.com/news/ubuntu-9.04-desktop;
Ubuntu 9.04 release notes: http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/904.

The announcement is the following (original version here):

• Support for Visual C++ project files in winemaker.
• Improvements to the Esound driver.
• Many Direct3D code cleanups.
• Fixes to OLE clipboard handling.
• OpenBSD compilation fixed.
• Various bug fixes.

The source is available from the following locations:

http://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/system/emulators/wine/wine-1.1.19.tar.bz2
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wine/wine-1.1.19.tar.bz2

Binary packages for various distributions will be available from:

http://www.winehq.org/site/download

You will find documentation on http://www.winehq.org/site/documentation

You can also get the current source directly from the git
repository. Check http://www.winehq.org/site/git for details.

Wine is available thanks to the work of many people. See the file
AUTHORS in the distribution for the complete list.

—————————————————————-

Bugs fixed in 1.1.19:

61 winemaker: Add support for the Visual C++ project files
3005 Bink video causes Alien vs Predator Gold to freeze untill killed
3697 Evil Genius does not run
3863 When i install the HPAD the everything is shown in HINDI not in ENGLISH
4175 The incorrect list window in the p-cad 2001.
5439 Menus don’t collapse properly in Shareaza
6966 CSpy/IP Address: Cannot overwrite field text
7033 CSpy/Up-Down: Cursor in wrong position
7536 Gravity has database troubles
9187 BBC iPlayer installer claims IE6 is not installed
11958 Magic Workstation (mws play) Stops Displaying Cards
12292 Michelin Rally Masters: Application crashes when PAL_8 Texture and Mipmapping options are enabled
12997 The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King: no sound in movies and no background sound/voices ingame
13738 F.E.A.R : Crashes when sound is enabled
13988 Spore Creature Creator Trial: Interface not rendered
14242 Unreal Tournament crashes on startup
14347 Toon Town Standalone Launcher error
14373 Starcraft : select one overlord (and only it) makes the game very slow.
14466 Immune Attack crashes on game start with an unhandled exception.
14921 Spore Creature Creator Trial: Incorrect rendering of creatures
14997 firmware upgrade utility for Linksys SPA3102 VoIP router
15149 Spore: many rendering issues
15170 Lotus Word Pro can not find screen extents in windowed mode
15231 Pro Pinball fails to change resolutions
15339 Black & White crashes, giving “fixme:d3d:state_zfunc”
15351 Lexware: Message “Fehler beim Erzeugen der FairUse Komponente.” during installation
15358 In Civilization I for Win, if a city located in lower 1/3 of the screen, its name displayed in incorrect place
15644 Morrowind: Waterplane/sprite flickering with ORM=fbo
15778 Counter Strike Source: bullet holes and knife mark don’t appear on walls
16242 list apps installed with msi
16597 Wrong detection of SelAttributes in RichEdit
16660 build broken in dlls/inetcomm/internettransport.c on OpenBSD
16661 build broken in dlls/iphlpapi/ipstats.c on OpenBSD 4.4
16662 build broken in dlls/ntdll/cdrom.c on OpenBSD 4.4
16663 build broken in dlls/ntdll/signal_i386.c on OpenBSD 4.4
16833 Build fails in Cygwin at dlls/inetcomm/internettransport.c
16891 .NET 3.0: Windows Workflow Foundation installer claims .NET 2.0 Framework needed, MsiNetAssemblySupport/msi fusion version retrieval bug
17162 Installed IE8 RC1 crashes on rpcrt4 call
17170 Text display error in Autocad – size mismatch
17193 [PATCH] cope with missing wglGetExtensionsStringARB / wglGetPixelFormatAttribivARB
17228 Gecko makes Google Talk shows an internal error
17259 Entering IP in text box does not work
17424 Feeding Frenzy unhandled exception when sound is enabled
17644 urlmon/protocol tests fail massively on OpenSolaris
17654 Edit control on toolbar behaves badly
17695 Silkypix 3.0 toolbox menus too narrow
17700 Microsoft Word 2007 Hangs when scrolling a file with to many pages
17703 unimplemented function KERNEL32.dll.GetSystemTimes
17736 Cluedo classic (or clue or just cluedo) – crashes
17753 Cannot compile Wine 1.1.17 from source on Mac OS X
17819 OpenInsight’s OpenEngine does not function.
17824 winemenubuilder.c: “Desktop” string not localized -> no icons
17891 build broken in dlls/ntdll/ntdll_misc.h on OpenBSD 4.4
17907 build broken in dlls/ws2_32/tests/sock.c on OpenBSD 4.5
17917 New *.ini files contain spurious [] lines
17930 Cygwin compilation breaks without –disable-16bit
17977 Sacred hangs when selecting New Campaign

Between all the changes, the most important are:

• Stability fixes in KRunner;
• Performance enhancements in KMail;
• Bugfixes, performance improvements and optimization in KHTML.

The full changelog is available here.

If you are interested on installing KDE 4.2.2 on (K)Ubuntu, wait until tomorrow and I will serve you a guide.

Links
KDE: http://www.kde.org/
KDE 4.2.2 announcement: http://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-4.2.2.php
KDE dowload page: http://download.kde.org/binarydownload.html?url=/stable/4.2.2/

The announcement is the following (original version here):
What’s new in this release (see below for details):
- RPC over HTTP support.
- Improved support for upgrades in MSI.
- Debug symbols in WineDbg on Mac OS X.
- Many Direct3D code cleanups.
- Various bug fixes.

The source is available from the following locations:

http://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/system/emulators/wine/wine-1.1.18.tar.bz2
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wine/wine-1.1.18.tar.bz2

Binary packages for various distributions will be available from:
http://www.winehq.org/site/download

You will find documentation on http://www.winehq.org/site/documentation

You can also get the current source directly from the git
repository. Check http://www.winehq.org/site/git for details.

Wine is available thanks to the work of many people. See the file
AUTHORS in the distribution for the complete list.

—————————————————————-

Bugs fixed in 1.1.18:

2366 Wine unable to initiallize on NetBSD
4145 Redraw problem in “The Journal”
8072 Media Player Classic segfaults
11507 nwn2 dm toolkit missing graphical elements
11856 Any application: keyboard focus lost after a popup is unmapped, if SCIM is enabled
12225 EVE Premium, graphics glitches: some effects missing.
12723 LEGO Island Xtreme Stunts: always wants to install DirectX8.1
13308 comctrl32 listview toggles election while scrolling with ctrl key
13469 cmd can’t handle long input (buffer overflow)
14014 T-Online Browser: Crash on unimplemented Functions (gdiplus.dll)
14080 Red Faction: sound does not work
14139 Governor of poker crashes
14185 Wine 1.0 networking issues – /proc/net/route doesn’t exit on Solaris hosts.
14293 winhelp: Vertical scroll bar is missing in some cases
14624 Metal Fatigue: crashes before game start
14703 Null character comparison problem in vb6 application
14711 ‘Type’ command in cmd.exe does not line feed in the end of a file
15356 Textures are not displayed in Final Fantasy XI with an ATI card
15411 Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 takes a very long time to finish loading
15717 Far Cry 2 quits when OffscreenRenderingMode=fbo
16130 Runes of Magic client doesn’t communicate with the server
16394 No sound in ever17 without native msacm32.dll
16570 FineReader 7 Pro: won’t save to multiple files.
16941 interrupts cause nested trace output
17183 Not showing any text in one of the textboxes
17499 Sun JRE 1.6.0_12 installer crashes
17683 ExpressPCB: does not properly print circuit board traces
17705 Audiosurf: crashes at startup
17759 CommandLineToArgvW bug with empty lpCmdLine
17822 Logic Friday: crashes when entering equation
17843 Rubbish entries in registry on clean .wine
17854 build broken in rpcrt4 on OpenSolaris

Links
Wine’s Home Page: http://www.winehq.org;
Wine’s Download Page: http://www.winehq.org/site/download.

Firefox 3.0.8 fixes the following two bugs:
485286: XSLT should heap allocate all evalContexts;
485217: Exploitable crash in [@txMozillaXSLTProcessor::TransformToDoc ].

Links
Mozilla Firefox: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/products/firefox/;
Mozilla Firefox 3.0.8 release notes: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.0.8/releasenotes/

The major changes that this release bring are:

• Support for Tabbed Viewing;
• Improved user interface and performance;
• Improved Print Dialog;
• Use of Acrobat.com service to upload or share documents;
• Support for Solaris and OpenSolaris;
• And of course, many bug fixes.

While the official Adobe download page offers the .bin installer by default, you can download either the .rpm or the .deb installers of Adobe Reader 9.1 by clicking “Different language or operating system?” and then selecting your desired version.

Unfortunately Adobe Reader 9.1 is offered , as all the previous versions, only for 32 bits platforms;  if you have a 64 bits  version of Linux and you are uncomfortable on how to install it, you should probably wait until it officially shows up on your distribution repositories.

Links

Adobe’s announcement: http://blogs.adobe.com/acroread/2009/03/adobe_reader_91_for_linux_and.html;
Adobe download page: http://get.adobe.com/reader/.

If you are interested to upgrade to 8.04 LTS version, you can follow the following guide: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HardyUpgrades; if you are interested on the 8.10 version, you first have to upgrade to the 8.04 LTS with the above link and then follow this guide: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/IntrepidUpgrades.

There is even a third option: if you don’t mind to wait 5 more days, on April 23rd 2009 Canonical will release the new version: Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope.

Links
Canonical’s announcement: http://www.ubuntu.com/news/ubuntu-7.10-eol.

The most peculiar changes of the kernel 2.6.29 are:

• support for Intel’s hardware kernel mode-settings;
• initial support for the “brtfs” filesystem (it is still reccomended to use it only on testing environments, and not on production machines);
• updates for “Graphics Execution Manager” and “DRM”;
• support for WiMax 802.16 stack;
• support for eCryptfs for encrypted filesystems.

Links
The Linux Kernel Archives: http://www.kernel.org/;

Linux Kernel 2.6.29 Changelog: http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/ChangeLog-2.6.29;

Linus Torvalds’s announcement: http://lkml.org/lkml/2009/3/23/449.