LinuxMCE Partners with KDE for New Release
When picking a media center solution for your PC, it tends to be a matter of compromise. There are solutions that are visually attractive, solutions that are Free/open source software, solutions that are more complete than others and solutions that integrate well with a desktop environment. In the past there have been few, if any, that have been all of these things. After an extensive beta testing period a new version of LinuxMCE, release 0704, was recently made available to the public that shows how we can indeed have our media center cake and eat it too. Read on for details of this release and future plans for KDE integration.
LinuxMCE uses X.org's window compositing functionality to provide a simple to use fullscreen interface that is blended on top of the media being played. This interface is a key focus of LinuxMCE according to lead developer Paul Webber. "The traditional PC user interface doesn't work well on a TV. So a different interface is needed, which is called the '10 foot' interface (in reference to the fact that people interact with media devices such as televisions from a distance). The '10 foot' interface is still in the same state as the desktop was pre 1983. There is no standardisation and each application has to figure out how to present its functionality to a user."
In an effort to address the '10 foot' interface challenge, LinuxMCE and KDE Plasma developers are working to bring the two projects together. The first step was making a prototype showing how LinuxMCE and KDE can work together, which is showcased in the 0704 release where LinuxMCE is integrated with Kubuntu and KDE 3.5.
there's a video at Google Videos



