Mandriva demonstrates semantic desktop integration with KDE
Published:06-July-2007
By BR staff writer
Linux distributor Mandriva has announced that the semantic desktop technology it has been working on as part of a European Union-funded project will be included the upcoming version four of the KDE desktop.
Backed to the tune of 11.5m euros ($15.6m) by the EU, the NEPOMUK-KDE project is a framework designed to extend the desktop computer into a collaboration environment that supports personal computing and information sharing.
Short for the Networked Environment for Personal Ontology-based Management of Unified Knowledge, NEPOMUK is a project to turn the personal computer into a collaborative environment designed to better enable online collaboration and personal information management.
Mandriva joined the project in February 2006 through its Edge-IT services subsidiary, which was awarded 1.8m euros ($2.1m) to help fund its various roles in the project, including the definition of the infrastructure tools, helping to organize and lead community engineering and establish community support, and leading the KDE project.
Other NEPOMUK Consortium members include IBM, Hewlett Packard, SAP, Thales, and the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, among others.
At the aKademy 2007 KDE developer conference Mandriva announced that it is building a KDE 4 preview image integrating the latest NEPOMUK technologies, and that the KDE Dolphin file manager and KDE PIM personal information management software have already adopted the NEPOMUK libraries.
Mandriva also announced that it is extending the scope of the initial project to integrate semantic features of different technologies, for example by implanting features on top of the Eclipse Rich Client Platform and Mozilla XUL frameworks.
It is also teaming up with the XWiki project and the Stockholm Royal Institute of Technology to design a community semantic help desk with peer-to-peer capabilities.
