theKompany.com Announces Eighth Beta Release of Aethera Messaging and Groupware for Linux

theKompany.com is pleased to announce the eighth beta (version 0.9.9) of their Aethera Messaging and Groupware client for Linux using Qt. This release includes lots of bug fixes and speed improvements as well as final support for commercial plug ins which are now available here. Most of the details for the project roadmap can be found here , but this is subject to change as they are constantly researching new features. The web site has also now been updated, so it is now current. Bug reports, suggestions and ideas can now be logged and perused here. In this release, the Virtual File System (VFS) has been rewritten for better memory management and flexibility, transport protocols have been rewritten to use Qt functions, SSL support has been added as long as openssl libraries are on your system, lots of bug fixes and enhancements have been made, the first commercial plug in is now available, tkJabber an embedded Jabber Instant Messaging client that runs inside of Aethera. This is the same Jabber engine used in their tkcJabber product for the Sharp Zaurus which recently won the Trolltech program contest - there is support for SSL as well and is available for just $9.95. There are free upgrades to the product, and further integration with Aethera will be coming in future releases. The contact list now interfaces to online mapping software so you can have a map of a contacts address brought up with a single mouse click. A Windows build will be coming later this summer. One of the advantages to a pure Qt application is that distribution is now far easier than it was before. They've provided a binary in a tarball format, just download the files from https://sourceforge.net/projects/aethera/, login as root and do:

Using the tarball (absolute path)

tar xvfz aethera-0.9.8-i386-linux.tar.gz -P

After installation you can run by typing:

/usr/local/bin/aethera

They would also like to thank their friends at Sourceforge where the download files are being hosted.