KDE 4.1 will be what everyone expected 4.0 to be — a fully functional revolutionary Linux desktop. I took a look at the revision 777000 of this desktop environment and what you get is a visual changelog describing the current progress in terms of look and feel and the features.
While the world is still recovering from the work on KDE 4.0.0, we are ready to announce the release of KDE 4.0.1, the first bug fix update of the KDE 4.0 desktop. KDE 4.0.1 contains numerous bugfixes such as stability improvements, performance improvements and, as in every point release, updated translations for most components. Lots of work has been put into shared components making the life of most applications easier. Particularly striking is also the high number of bugfixes in KHTML.
How do you produce a major update of a popular desktop for GNU/Linux? Following the January 11 release of KDE 4.0, I talked with Wade Olson, the press contact for KDE in North America, and a member of KDE e.V., the German non-profit organization that is the financial and legal arm of the project. Olson talked about the goals of the release, its highlights, what was left out, and where development of KDE is going next.
Linux-Tip has already tested KDE 4 (Preview) in a previous workshop. This month the KDE Community announced the immediate availability of KDE 4.0. This significant release marks both the end of the long and intensive development cycle leading up to KDE 4.0 and the beginning of the KDE 4 era.
We will see major improvements in almost all areas. The Phonon multimedia framework provides platform independent multimedia support to all KDE applications. The KDE 4 desktop has gained some major new capabilities like the Plasma desktop an increased KDE Window manager a lot more. Lots of KDE applications have seen improvements as well. Visual updates through vector-based artwork, changes in the underlying libraries, user interface enhancements and new features and new applications. We will also test the new document viewer (Okular) and the new file manager (Dolphin). This workshop will describe how to install KDE 4 on Mandriva 2008.
Wednesday, January 23 2008 @ 05:49 CST Contributed by: david23
KDE 4.0 is the innovative Free Software desktop containing lots of applications for every day use as well as for specific purposes. Plasma is a new desktop shell developed for KDE 4, providing an intuitive interface to interact with the desktop and applications. The Konqueror web browser integrates the web with the desktop. The Dolphin file manager, the Okular document reader and the System Settings control center complete the basic desktop set.
The Start of Something Amazing with KDE 4.0 Release
Thursday, January 17 2008 @ 01:44 CST Contributed by: Linegod
Several years of design, development and testing came together today for the release of KDE 4.0. This is our most significant release in our 11 year history and marks both the end of the long and intensive development cycle leading up to KDE 4.0 and the start of the KDE 4 era. Join us now in #kde4-release-party on Freenode to celebrate or come to the release event in person next week. Packages are available for all the major distributions
Thursday, January 10 2008 @ 03:01 CST Contributed by: Linegod
From KDE News:
Announcing itself today is KOfficeSource GmbH, a company that will sell services around KOffice. The founders comprise a small group of members of the developer community, as well as outside talent. They share an interest in furthering KOffice by supporting it commercially in addition to the non-commercial support that can be found on the mailing lists and IRC. As the name suggests it has been created in Germany but will operate across Europe and further afield.
Markus Mauder on his blog posts a look at the soon to be released KDE 4.0.0 complete with screenshots and a review of some of the significant changes. "I hope you enjoy this preview and come to share my opinion that KDE 4 is going to rock!" He also has an album of screenshots on Picasa that expand on the ones in the article. The big release happens on Friday, join us in #kde4-release-party on Freenode to celebrate.
Now that 4.0.0 is tagged and out and that bit of worry and concern is behind me for the moment, I wanted to take a moment to talk really bluntly about 4.0. In particular, I'm going to address some of the common memes in fairly random order that i see about kde 3.5 and 4.0. I'm going to speak bluntly (though not rudely =) so prepare yourself ;)
There's one thing for certain: Now is an exciting time to be a KDE user. The much anticipated launch of KDE 4 is slated for January 11th, 2008. This is a major revamp of the look and feel of the KDE desktop, with the inclusion of a built-in compositor (think eye candy) and something called "plasmoids" (little functional widgets embedded into your desktop).
