Members  attending the meeting included:   Richard Foerster,  Alan Shoemaker, Don Evinger, Tad Peters,  Ken Howells,  Kandy Phan, and Eugène Clement.  Other guests included Christopher Molnar, software developer and newley appointed Training Director for MandrakeSoft, and Hung Nguyen and Henry Ho who were guests brought by Kandy.   Dave Reisz and Isaac Saldana had planned to attend, but were unable to be there.

Christopher Molnar, was in the area on business for MandrakeSoft, and Eugène was able to persuade him to make a presentation on KDE-2 which will be included in the release of Mandrake 7.2, which should be announced in a couple of weeks.   Chris had his laptop with the latest versions just downloaded from the cooker, and we had the opportunity to see the latest features demonstrated. 

Chris mentioned that most all programs and utilities that make up the KDE desktop have been recompiled or are new with this release.  In addition, K-Office will be included, providing word-processing, spreadsheet, presentation, and vector drawing capabilities.  Each application in the K-Office suite can be run separately or integrated through a 'shell' in a way similar to the Star Office.  

Another major addition is Konqueror,  which is a new browser and "much" more.  It is really an all-purpose tool that acts as a file manager, web browser, and application launcher.   It know about "mime types" and RPMS, and if clicked on an available package, it will launch K-Package.    From there you can install the package IF you are running as root.

An appreciated addition KDE-2  are a host of refinements and additions to K-Control.   A new section on system information provides lots of hardware and configuration details in one central location where it is easy to access.  You can also set browser options, and power features in K-Control.  There is also an E-mail set-up which also configures K-Mail, which is a new Eudora like mail system.

K-Mail uses the same mailbox format as Pine, and features advanced POP.  It runs in the background and allows you to direct mail to different mailboxes.  It also features "profiles",  'filters' and incorporates PGP.   To organize mail, you can create folders and child folders.   Another feature members liked was the ability to 'bounce' an e-mail message by right-clicking on it.

Other new KDE programs mentioned included: KT&T which is an internet *phone* program that requires a sound card, microphone and "actual" IP on each computer,  K-ups {sp?}  which replaces LPD and allows you to print to or from a URL and which can be administered via the web, and K-Snapshot which is a new screen capture program.

The Mandrake 7.2 release will include a number of new applications as well.  One that Chris mentioned was DrakSync which is "like-laplink" and will do secure session r-sync.   Another is Broadcast 2000 which allows creating a full-blown multimedia presentation for publication to CD-ROM  or to a web site.   Another is XAWTV a program for web cams.   Chris mentioned the Ezonics USB cam worked "out-of-the-box" for him on the new 7.2 release,  and should work with cams that have a CPIA interface.

The time went all too quickly, and soon Eugène had to rush Chris off to catch his airplane back to Connecticut.  Before heading off Eugène announced that member Alan Shoemaker is now an employee of MandrakeSoft involved with customer technical support. 

The meeting was a great success, and we are all looking forward to our next session on Nov 11th which will be just before Comdex and The Linux Business Expo in Las Vegas, Nov 13-17, 2000