Linux vs Windows vs Mac

Vixta Is a new Fedora 8 based Linux os,which use kde environment and it is meant to look like Microsoft vista.

Goals:
1)Absolutely free
2)Spread linux
3)No need of Config.
4)User-Friendly.
5)Eye-catching.
6)Like Microsoft Vista in look and Feel

Too bad they didnt include features and stability as a goal.
Vixta a is a welcomed concept,but its still in childhood stage it need lot of development to be fully featured OS.It have stability issue and crashes.It have some kde applications like Kate, Konquerer,Ktorrent and Kolorpaint but KMail or Kontact is missing.Kernel support was limited,i couldn’t find any matching source.After updating the kernel it wont boot.Vixta discussion forum is not very active most questions are anwered like “refer documentation”.The vixta kernel donot include modules to enable cpu scaling in modern operating system ,i think its because they wanted to save space.
My dell xps m1530 laptop was hotter than with any other OS i have still used especially while compiling source code.Another irritating bug was the blinking panel,which would disappear while doing cpu intensuve tasks,but luckly will come back.

Conclusion:
Vixta is a nice idea,But to make it a good operationg system it have much distance to go.Its plus points are familiar looking with nice eye-candy. I suggest you install using virtual box as i did.Its source code is not provided,they tell any way its very similar to fedora so its not worth reproduce the same code.But think its not fair according to GPL every linux distro must provide its source code.Lets hope things get better in future and they will provide the source code..

Download:http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=206087
VIXTA website:http://vixta.sourceforge.net/index.php

Enable Repositories

You can turn on more repositories of programs and packages. These let you install more software on your computer. Run “Add Applications”. This is in the bottom of the Programs menu in Gnome, and under the Utilities menu in KDE.

1. Open the Settings->Repositories menu.
2. Click on “Add”. Select Ubuntu 5.10 “Breezy Badger”
3. Mark all the checkboxes. Click Ok.
4. Click on “Add”. Select Ubuntu 5.10 Security Updates
5. Mark all the checkboxes. Click Ok.
6. Click on “Add”. Select Ubuntu 5.10 Updates
7. Mark all the checkboxes. Click Ok.
8. Click Ok.

Menus

Kubuntu

Install Kubuntu

Install

Installing Kubuntu will add the K Desktop Environment (KDE), and a bunch of basic programs. It will not replace your Gnome desktop, it only provides an alternative. There are two methods of installing packages like this:

Command Line

Open a command prompt, in Gnome you can find one called “Terminal” in the “Utilities” menu. Type the following: sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop. Enter your password and press enter. A prompt should appear asking if you really want to install all this stuff; type Y and press enter.

Package Manager

I usually only use a package manager when looking for packages I want, which is most of the time. If I know the name of the package it is much easier to install it from the command line. In the system or settings menu (the right one on the top) find Synaptic Package Manager. Search for the package named kubuntu-desktop, right click, select mark for installation. Click on Apply in the toolbar. Answer yes to all the questions about whether you really want to install it.

Switch to KDE

In the right menu at the top of the screen select log out. This takes you back to the login screen. Click on the session button and select KDE. Enter your username and password. The login manager will ask if you want this to be your default session type; select yes.

KDE

Double Click to Open Files

The first thing you’ll want to do is get rid of that annoying single click opens files business. I don’t understand this behavior; how are you going to select files if clicking on them opens them?

Click on the K in the lower left corner of the screen. Select the System Settings menu item. This opens KDE’s settings. Under hardware click on Mouse. There is a section labeled Icons, in which Single-click to open files and folders is marked. Mark Double-click instead. Click on the Apply button. Close the System Settings program.

If you have already switched to using control center instead of system settings you can use it instead.

List Menu Items By Name

Menu items are listed by description by default. This is stupid. Right click on the panel (the bar at the bottom of the screen) and select Configure Panel or Panel Menu->Configure panel depending on which one is available. Open the Menus tab. Change Menu item format from Description (Name) to Name (Description). Click on Ok.

Get the Debian Menus

This isn’t specific to just KDE. The Debian Menus list all of the programs installed on your computer, and are fairly well organized. They are great for finding programs you haven’t used, and mining for shortcuts to put in other menus. To get them install the menu and menu-xdg packages. You will need to have already enabled the extra repositories in the first section.

Open a command prompt; you can do this by opening K Menu->System-Konsole. Type the following in the prompt, entering your password and Y where appropriate:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install menu menu-xdg
update-menus

Make System Settings work nicely

The default System Settings behavior is annoying. There are three things you can do about it.

Use Settings Instead

In the System Menu select settings. If you have removed it from your panel you can add it to the K Menu by right clicking on the panel, selecting Configure Panel, and in the Menus tab, under Optional Menus check System and click Ok.

Use Kcontrol Instead

Kcontrol has the same components, listed differently. You can find it under Debian->Apps->System->Kcontrol. There are two ways to add it to your menus:

• You can right click on the K menu and select menu editor and copy kcontrol from the debian menus into the main menu; you may also want to move System Settings elsewhere.
• You can also enable the preferences submenu; right click on the panel and under Panel Configuration in the Menus tab under Optional Menus check the box next to Preferences. This enables a menu that contains not only a link to KControl, but also to all the settings applets individually.

Make the applets open in new windows

Right click on the K menu and select menu editor. Click on System Settings at the bottom of this new window. Change the command from systemsettings -caption "%c" %i %m to systemsettings --noembed -caption "%c" %i %m. Click on the Save button. Quit.

Get shutdown buttons in KDE, login automatically

These commands make KDE your default desktop so that auto-login will get you to the right place and use KDM as the login manager so that shutdown buttons show up in KDE. Open a terminal and copy and paste the following commands. Press Enter. Enter your password when prompted.

echo startkde > .xsession
sudo bash -c "echo /usr/bin/kdm > /etc/X11/default-display-manager"

Open the KDE control center and under System Administration open Login Manager. Click the button to enter Administrator Mode; the border should turn red. Under the Convenience tab mark the checkbox for “Enable Auto-login”. Click Apply. Close the window.

You will be automatically logged in to KDE the next time your computer boots. Starting with that session the shutdown buttons will work when you pick Log out…

Different Taskbars for Different Desktops

My taskbar gets very cluttered with many programs open. Opening programs on different desktops keeps the windows uncluttered, and it will keep your taskbar uncluttered to. Right click on the panel and select configure panel. Click on the big blue taskbar button on the left. Unmark “Show windows from all desktops” and click Ok.

Konqueror

Konqueror’s default behavior is to try to make the file manager behave like a web browser. This is kind of annoying, and makes file management type stuff hard. I recommend making all of these changes to Konqueror’s settings:

1. Open a Konqueror window by opening your home directory in the System Places menu (the one next to the K Menu).
2. Select the Settings-Configure Konqueror menu item.
   1. Under Behavior, in Misc. Options, check both “Open folders in a separate window” and “Show network operations in a single window”. This will make folders opened in Konqueror open in new tabs instead of replacing the folder you were looking at. The network operations thing keeps windows less cluttered when moving files around.
   2. Under Appearance uncheck Underline filenames.
   3. Under Web Behavior, in Tabbed browsing, open Advanced Options. Uncheck “Open as tab in existing konqueror when URL is called externally”. Click Ok. This keeps web pages and folders from ending up in the same konqueror window, which is awkward. You might want to uncheck the “Open new tabs in the background” option if you are annoyed or confused when opening a folder doesn’t make it show up.
3. Click Ok to close and keep your new Konqueror settings.

Now we’ll arrange the window in a more usable manner.

1. Press F9 to make the directory tree visible.
2. In the Settings->Toolbars menu check Main Toolbar.
3. In the Settings->Toolbars menu check Extra Toolbar.
4. Arrange the Toolbars in a pleasing manner. I like Main first, then extra, then the location bar on the next line.
5. Select Settings->Save Kubuntu File Manager profile. Click Save.

GRUB

You might not want Ubuntu to always boot as default. If so you’ll probably want to do two things: Make the previous operating system boot by default and make the boot screen pretty so you’ll notice it. Steps marked with an * can be omitted if you don’t want the pretty boot screen.

1. Download the splash image, butte-splash-gimp.xpm.gz, and save it in your home directory.
2. Open up a console.
3. Run each of these commands to make the folder for images and copy the image there:

   sudo mkdir /boot/grub/images/
   sudo cp butte-splash-gimp.xpm.gz /boot/grub/images/

4. Open up the GRUB configuration file in a text editor: kdesu kate /boot/grub/menu.lst
5. Find this line; it’s right at the top:

   default		0

6. Replace it with

   default		saved

7. Add the following lines just after this line to use the pretty boot screen:

   foreground	FFFFFF
   background	336699
   splashimage (hd1,0)/boot/grub/images/butte-splash-gimp.xpm.gz

8. Change the (hd1,0) part to the drive Ubuntu is installed on. (hd0,0) is first hard drive first partition, (hd0,1) is first hard drive, second partition, (hd1,0) is second hard drive, first partition. If you arn’t sure you can look further down in the file for the root lines used in the Ubuntu boot options. Those are the drive and partition that Ubuntu is on.
9. It should now look something like this:

   ...
   # You can specify 'saved' instead of a number. In this case, the default entry
   # is the entry saved with the command 'savedefault'.
   default		saved
   foreground	FFFFFF
   background	336699
   splashimage (hd1,0)/boot/grub/images/butte-splash-gimp.xpm.gz
   
   ## timeout sec
   ...

10. Save the file and close the text editor.

The bootloader will now remember which operating system you used last and boot it by default. The bootloader will be pretty and hopefully attention catching.

xscreensaver

The kde screensaver module is broken and annoying in many ways, especially if you want to use your own pictures for the screensavers or want to select only some of the screensavers for random display. The original xscreensaver system is much nicer. Here’s how to switch:

1. Switch off the KDE screensaver. Open your KDE settings and select the “Look and Feel” “Screensaver” page. Turn off the “Enable Screensaver” checkbox.
2. Download this file. Save it in your home directory.
3. Open up a console. Type bash xscreen and press enter. When it asks you for your password enter it.
4. The xscreensaver settings will open and warn you that it’s not currently running. Click Ok to start it for this session. You can change settings right here.

You can get back to the settings in the K menu under Debian->Screen->Save->ScreenSaver Preferences. You can use a menu editor to copy this somewhere else too.

Using your own images for the screensaver.

In the Advanced tab in screensaver settings check the “Choose Random Image” box. Browse and select the directory your pictures are in.

If you are displaying images you may want to set Cycle After to a low number, like 1 or 2 minutes, so that the effects change frequently. Many of the screensavers have their own settings for how frequently they loadi images; a few use the same image for the entire duration. The following screensavers use your pictures:

• AntSpotlight
• BlitSpin
• Bumps - used for a bumpmap, image is pretty destroyed.
• Carousel
• DecayScreen
• Distort
• Flipscreen3d
• GFlux (grab)
• GLEidescope
• GLSlideshow
• MirrorBlob
• Ripples (desktop)
• RotZoomer
• RotZoomer (mobile)
• RotZoomer (sweep)
• SlideScreen
• Spotlight
• Twang
• XTeeVee
• Zoom (Fatbits)
• Zoom (Lenses)

Suggested Software

Get as much of the Restricted Format programs as you can.

I recommend installing the following packages:

gnucash

Double entry bookkeeping accounting software. Absolutely excellent. Do your books this way. Menu item will be in Debian->Apps->Tools which is annoying, copy it somewhere more accessible.

celestia

Like a planetarium, but more like a 3d tour of the solar system and beyond. there are amazing textures for celestia on the internet. Only get this if you have a good graphics card.

kde

An easy way to get all of the official KDE programs. Kubuntu already got most of these, but it’ll add more games, artwork, educational programs, accessibility programs. It’ll also install kdevelop and a couple other programs that aren’t of general interest, but it’s much easier than going through and selecting most of these packages individually. If you don’t want the whole shebang search for packages with names containing kde, and just select those describing the fields that are of interest to you. It’s a 115 MB download, and takes up another 350 MB of disk space.

gimp-data-extras, gimp-texturize

More brushes, gradients, palettes, and textures for the gimp.

ogle, okle

DVD players for Gnome and KDE. Both are nice

frozen-bubble

One of the best video games ever

lbreakout2

One of the prettiest video games ever

The following packages are worth noting:

wine

Runs lots of windows programs very well, just not the ones I like. Somewhat difficult to figure out how to use.

festival

Text to speech converter. Needed for KDE text to speech system to work. Still fairly primitive

This simple guide will bring up the Windows start menu inside GNOME and allow you to run, use and install any Windows app (that can run in a VM) inside your existing desktop. It takes about 10 minutes to setup, minus the time to install Windows, and involves one command in total.

Final Update September 2007: Virtualbox 1.5 includes seamless virtualization! Go read about that instead!

Update: If you’ve been having trouble getting this working, make sure the key is correct - our site layout chopped the last part of the registry key earlier. Note this requires Windows XP Pro. XP home won’t do.

Update 2: To install the vmware-server package just use the Add/Remove… program.

Update 3: If RDesktop starts a blue background, instead of just the taskbar, click Start ? Control Panel ? User Accounts ? Change the way users log on and off, and enable the welcome screen and fast user switching.

This is a newer version of a rather popular article I wrote a while ago. This updated version is a lot simpler and allows multiple apps to be run.

• Click Applications ? Add/Remove… install the vmware-server package.
• Click System ? Administration ? Synaptic Package Manager. Install the rdesktop package.
• Click Applications ? System Tools ? VMware Server Console When VMware Server Console starts, click Connect to attach to your local machine. Then Create a New Virtual Machine. Use all the defaults, but pick NAT networking. Pop in your Windows CD, and install Windows
• Once Windows has started:

1. Enable Terminal Services by clicking Start ? Control Panel ? System. Click the Remote tab, and enable Allow users to connect remotely to this computer
2. Turn off the desktop for the user you’ll use to run your Windows apps, by clicking Start ? Run typing regedit and selecting HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/ CurrentVersion/Policies/Explorer. Create a DWORD called NoDesktop set to 1.
3. Note the IP address of Windows. Clicking Start ? Connect to ? Show All Connections. Select the Local Area Connection and hit the Support tab
4. Download SeamlessRDP, then extract it to C:\seamlessrdp
5. Log out of Windows, and close VMware Server Console (leave the VM running)

• Back in Ubuntu, open a Terminal, and run:

rdesktop -A -s ‘c:\seamlessrdp\seamlessrdpshell.exe c:\windows\explorer.exe’ IPAddress -u user -p password

substituting the IP address you noted earlier.

• The top of the Windows taskbar should appear above your GNOME panel on the bottom of the screen. Right click it, select Properties, and disable Lock the Taskbar. Then drag the taskbar to the left hand side of your screen.

That’s it. You can now run launch any Windows app you want from your VM (and install more if you need them). They’ll appear on the GNOME desktop, and you can switch between them from the panel.

We’re going to look at what may be a better way to do it. It’s certainly easier and from reports, NTFS-3G is a bit more stable as well. This Howto is written specifically for and from Ubuntu 6.10 - Edgy Eft but should work on any Debian based distro.

It should be noted that NTFS-3G may contain bugs and issues. Writing to NTFS from Linux may be unstable so you should use this at your own risk.

The first thing you’re going to have to do is install NTFS-3G. Let’s open up a terminal session and do the following:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g

You’ll be prompted to install this and several other dependancies as well. If you run into errors where ntfs-3g can’t be found, check out this article about adding extra repositories.

Now that NTFS-3G is installed, it’s time to tell your box to use it to mount your NTFS partition. Let’s find out where exactly that is. Back in your terminal type

sudo fdisk -l

You should get something that looks like this:

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 2550 20480008+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 2550 7493 39707451+ f W95 Ext’d (LBA)
/dev/sda3 7494 9729 17960670 83 Linux
/dev/sda5 2550 7394 38911288+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda6 7395 7493 795186 82 Linux swap / Solaris

We’re interested in the partition that says HPFS/NTFS. Notice that on my machine it’s /dev/sda1. You’ll want to keep track of this for yours. I suggest spelling it out in leftover Halloween candy on your desk, or for a spooky effect, use fake blood.

Now that you have your info on the NTFS partition, let’s edit the fstab file in your /etc directory to use NTFS-3G.

sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.bak

Always make backups of stuff like this. Really.

Many Ubuntu users will find that the fstab already reflects their NTFS drive as mounted in the /media folder. This is standard but does not allow write access, only read access. We’re going to change this to use NTFS-3G. To see what you have do the following:

cat /etc/fstab

If you have a mount point already for your NTFS partition, it will look something like:

/dev/sda1 /media/sda1 ntfs defaults,nls=utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0 1

You’ll want to replace the bit that says ntfs with ntfs-3g, so it looks like this:

gksu gedit /etc/fstab

Now add:

/dev/sda1 /media/sda1 ntfs-3g defaults,nls=utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0 1

Replace the /dev/sda1 bit with whatever you wrote down from your fdisk -l output and save the file.

If you don’t have this listed at all, you’ll want to create a mount point in your /media folder. If you want to call it ‘windows‘ then you’d make a directory under /media called windows:

sudo mkdir /media/windows

Then add the below line to your /etc/fstab file:

gksu gedit /etc/fstab

Now add:

/dev/sda1 /media/windows ntfs-3g defaults,nls=utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0 1

Finally, restart your machine. Your Windows partition should now be on your desktop, and you can access it through your terminal by going to /media and then cd into the directory your using.

The KDE Community has recently finished and shipped the latest version of their popular graphical environment for UNIX workstations. Codenamed ‘Codename’, KDE 4.1.2 is a monthly update for KDE 4.1 and it features:

- Deleting files got a nice 32 times speedup.
- Many bugfixes and improvements in KHTML and its new JavaScript bytecode interpreter Frostbyte. “Stop animations” is back in Konqueror.
- The Kopete Instant Messenger team fixed crashes in the ICQ, Yahoo and Gadu-Gadu protocols.
- Comicbook backend fixes in the document viewer Okular
- Fixes in Gwenview’s thumbnailing,
- Various crash fixes in KGpg, the PGP security utility.

To download KDE 4.1.2 visit this page.

The first release candidate version of Linux Mandriva 2009 has KDE 4.1.1 as default desktop.

The new version brings a greatly improved package management tool, with automatic mirror selection and repository configuration. Also replaces the old madwifi wireless driver with the brand new ath5k, for all Atheros cards, and brings further improvements to the Ora theme.

These are some features that could be part of Mandriva 2009 final, scheduled for release on October 9, 2008:/p>

• Linux kernel 2.6.26
• GCC 4.3
• GNOME 2.24
• KDE 4.1
• Firefox 3.0
• OpenOffice.org 3.0
• revamped installer
• improved boot speed
• improved DKMS (Dynamic Kernel Module Support) management
• improved language selection
• implementation of the PolicyKit and PackageKit technologies
• improvements to the Mandriva Windows Migration and Parental Control utilities
• Live Upgrade (same as Ubuntu’s update-manager tool)
• initscript improvements
• Splashy will replace the actual boot splash
• lots of desktop improvements

There are also some rumors that X.org 7.4 and GRUB2 will be included in Mandriva 2009.

KDE community announced the availability of the beautiful KDE 4.1.1 linux desktop environment.

Available in more than 50 languages, KDE 4.1.1 will bring to your desktop:

• Significant performance, interaction and rendering correctness improvements in KHTML and Konqueror, KDE’s web browser
• User interaction, rendering and stability fixes in Plasma, the KDE4 desktop shell
• PDF backend fixes in the document viewer Okular
• Fixes in Gwenview, the image viewer’s thumbnailing, more robust retrieval and display of images with broken metadata
• Stability and interaction fixes in KMail

Since KDE 4.0.0, Extragear applications are also part of regular KDE releases. Extragear applications are KDE applications that are mature, but not part of one of the other KDE packages.

Kubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) update instructions:

The KDE 4.1.1 packages will go to /usr/lib/kde4 and can be installed along side your existing KDE 3 installation.

You can find the updated packages for Kubuntu 8.04 in the Kubuntu Member’s KDE 4 Personal Package Archive (PPA) repositories. To update to KDE 4.1.1, please follow these simple steps:

1. Add deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-members-kde4/ubuntu hardy main to your /etc/apt/sources.list.
2. If you already have the kubuntu-kde4-desktop packages installed, simply type sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade and answer the questions in which you are prompted. If you do not have kubuntu-kde4-desktop installed, simply type sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install kubuntu-kde4-desktop and answer the questions. Both of these options are to be typed at the command prompt.

kdeplasma-addons contains new Plasma fun.

A new version of the popular and free unix/linux desktop environment KDE 3 is available.Curent version KDE 3.5.10 features translations in 65 languages, improvements to KPDF and Kicker, the KDE3 Panel. 

KDE 3.5.10 packages are available for Kubuntu 8.04, the Hardy Heron.
 

Update instructions:

The updated packages for Kubuntu 8.04 are located in the hardy-backports repository. To update to KDE 3.5.10, please follow these instructions:
 

1.  Launch Adept
2.  In Software Repositories enable Unsupported updates in Updates.
3.  Click on Full Upgrade.
4.  Commit changes.

About KDE

KDE is an international technology team that creates free and open source software for desktop and portable computing. Among KDE’s products are a modern desktop system for Linux and UNIX platforms, comprehensive office productivity and groupware suites and hundreds of software titles in many categories including Internet and web applications, multimedia, entertainment, educational, graphics and software development. KDE software is translated into more than 60 languages and is built with ease of use and modern accessibility principles in mind. KDE4’s full-featured applications run natively on Linux, BSD, Solaris, Windows and Mac OS X. 
 

Bluewhite64 Linux 12.1 KDE4 LiveDVD RC1 is now available. Featuring the young but beautiful KDE4.1 desktop, this release candidate of the Slackware based linux distro called Bluewhite64, brings you the Amarok 1.90 music player, Krusader 2.0.0 file manager, KTorrent 3.1.2 and other cool KDE apps on a live DVD.

The Bluewhite64 live DVD contains the KDE3 runtime libraries, so you can easily run KDE3 desktop instead of the default KDE4 desktop.

The official release announcement is posted on the Bluewhite64 linux website:

"I have the joy announcing a new version of the Bluewhite64 Linux 12.1 KDE4 LiveDVD release candidate one.

This release is built on a fresh install of the standard version of Bluewhite64 Linux 12.1 and includes all patches packages from the patches directory and the newly released KDE 4.1. Also, in addition to this release, we have added KDE4 applications like Amarok 1.90, Guidance Power Manager 4.1.0, Krusader 2.0.0, Ktorrent 3.1.2, KDE3 runtime libraries which allows you to run KDE3 applications, and many more. Take a look at the KDE4 LiveDVD ChangeLog to see more details about the added packages and see the Gallery with some nice captures.

To download, please select one mirror close to you form the Get Bluewhite64 page (the main mirror is down, consider this time the primary FTP and HTTP from ROEDU). The ISO is located at the bluewhite64-12.1-iso directory:

md5: 4f9d2e269cd0e9282e9732569cbaf909 Bluewhite64-12.1-KDE4-LiveDVD-RC1.iso

We like to be tested as much as you can in order to release the final and stable version, which is scheduled at September 1’st, and post your feedback at our forums or send email to info at bluewhite64 dot com.

I’d like to thanks to Kenjiro Tanaka for building the KDE 4.1 packages using Robby Workman’s SlackBuilds scripts, Virgil Moldoveanu for building the applications for KDE4 and all others who will test this release .

Enjoy and happy testing!"

The first beta version of Amarok 2, codenamed Nerrivik has been released. It contains a considerable amount of improvements over the previous alpha versions, bringing Amarok one step closer to the 2.0 release.

The highlights of this first beta version are the scripting interface, AFT, new artwork and of course many bugfixes. The scripting interface has matured and script authors are encouraged to explore the new possibilities QtScript offers. The scripting interface might still change but those changes will be minor. Amarok File Tracking (AFT) helps you keep your playcounts, ratings and a lot more file related information that Amarok keeps in its database, even if you move files around in your file system. It has now been brought back to Amarok 2 and will be improved even more in future releases. To find out more about AFT you can read Jeff Mitchell’s blogentry about it. The interface was improved a lot by new artwork provided by Nuno Pinheiro and a new splash screen by Wade Olson.

Some of the most important changes and features since alpha 2:

Features

• Inline editing of tracks in the Collection is now possible.
• Album moves can be undone
• Grouped albums can be moved in the playlist by draggin the album header
• Track moves in the playlist can now be undone
• Gapless playback.
• New "fuzzy" bias type, which matches values loosely.
• Collection Setup automatically expands to show selected directories.
  
• Tag editing and file deletion for MTP devices
• Add toolbox to context view
• Allow selecting multiple playlist items.
• Implement "Move to collection" functionality in file browser.
• Saving/loading of biased playlists.
• Improved script console
• Set items in directory selector to partially checked when relevant. patch by Sebastian Trueg
• Album is now added to the playlist when clicked in Albums applet.
• Trigger play/pause when middle-clicking systray icon.
  
• New start flag –multipleinstances allows to run multiple instances of Amarok.
• Full cover support for Nepomuk collection
• Search local collection for albums to show in the album applet when playing non local content
• Context view state is saved on exit and restored on start up.
• New functions available to the scripting interface, under Amarok.Info.

Changes

• New filename scheme widget in the Organize Collection dialog.
• New laylout of the main toolbar using the new graphics.
• Greatly reduced memory usage when using dynamic playlists.
• Reworked layout and more intuitive interface in the Guess Tags from Filenames dialog.
• New artwork by Nuno Pinheiro
• Better zooming animation in the context view
• Better usage of the available space in the context view.
• Show url in the playlist if track has no name. patch by Edward Hades

Packages are available through your package manager for most Linux distributions and trough the KDE-on-Windows installer on Windows.