KDE 4 Released

Jan 12, 2008

Eagerly anticipated, KDE 4.0.0 was officially released on Friday.

The Linux desktop introduces some major changes after a complete rework by its developers. A Visual Guide helps users with their first steps in the colorful new world of KDE and explains the biggest changes. And a release party was celebrated at the Google Campus.

Dashboards are useful and attractive.

Not all of the planned features have made the KDE 4.0 release, and some say the release has come too early. The first release candidate had numerous bugs, although the quality had improved dramatically by the time RC 2 became available.

KDE developers such as Aaron Seigo defended the early release date saying that authorities, companies and home users who preferred a more stable KDE version should stick to KDE 3 for the time being. The early release of KDE 4.0.0 should motivate more developers to test the desktop and submit bug reports.

The new Dolphin file manager on KDE 4.0.

Critics fear that this release policy might scare off potential KDE users, who expect the same kind of stability from the new KDE that they had from the “older” version. Distributions such as OpenSuse and Kubuntu are taking a two-pronged approach and letting users decide whether to install KDE 3.5 or 4.0

.

KRunner can calculate and google.

There have been far too many changes to KDE 4.0 to list them all here. The Visual Guide provides a comprehensive introduction.

New

Kalzium: constructing molecules with KDE 4.0.

Geography lessons with Marble.

KWin supports genuine transparency for windows.

Related content

  • Xfce 4.6: Out of the Mouse Hole

    The resource-sensitive yet still easy to use graphical desktop environment Xfce is now officially released in version 4.6, and comes with some major internal changes.

  • Smoother Going with KDE 4.3.3

    The KDE project has released an update of its free desktop environment. KDE 4.3.3, code-named Clockwork, brings translation improvements and fixes a few bugs.

  • KDE 4.1 Enters Test Phase

    The KDE project released the first alpha version of KDE 4.1 yesterday; the official release date for the final version is late June this year.

  • Growing Gnome

    This first Beta brings developers another step closer to the scheduled release of Gnome version 2.26 in March.

  • First Bugfix Release for KDE 4

    The new KDE Version 4.0.1 is now available for downloading from the KDE project homepage. The release mainly comprises bugfixes, removing errors discovered in version 4.0.0, improving system performance and adding some new visual features.

comments powered by Disqus