KDE Archive

Ars takes a look at the new RC2 release of KDE 4.0. "Transitions are always hard, but when the dust settles, a clean break between versions and an opportunity to introduce some innovative new ideas should lead to a stronger user experience. After years of development, unnecessary cruft builds up and things tend to get disorganized. The KDE 4 transition, though it will definitely be rocky at first, gives developers the ability to cut away the cruft and reorganize code in a manner that makes the whole environment more future-proof and easier to maintain."

Some interesting tidbits concerning KDE 4. Firstly, there is a debate whether to close all bugs of KDE 3.x (or not) once 4.0 has been released; you can vote on a poll posing this question too. Secondly, some unscientific benchmarks show that KDE 4.0 from svn is less resource hungry than current KDE 3.x builds. Update: KDE 4.0 RC2 has been released.

"The first KDE 4 release will come along with several major changes compared to KDE 3.x. While explanations for these changes have been posted at several places before there is a central list missing which explains the reasons to normal users. This post lists some hot topics and tries to shed some light on the reasons behind certain decisions." Update: The release date for KDE 4.0 has been postponed from mid-December to January 11th 2008. I'll be sure to give you my address, Aaron. Insert smiley face.

KDE 4.0 RC1 has been released. "The KDE Community is happy to announce the immediate availability of the first release candidate for KDE 4.0. This release candidate marks that the majority of the components of KDE 4.0 are now approaching release quality. While the final bits of Plasma, the brand new desktop shell and panel in KDE 4, are falling into place, the KDE community decided to publish a first release candidate for the KDE 4.0 Desktop. Release Candidate 1 is the first preview of KDE 4.0 which is suitable for general use and discovering the improvements that have taken place all over the KDE codebase. The KDE Development Platform, comprising the basis for developing KDE applications, is frozen and is now of release quality." You want see Plasma panel? You get see Plasma panel!

The KDE Projects is announcing the third beta of its future KDE 4.0 platform. "This Beta has mostly been focussing on finalizing the design of the libraries in preparation for the release of the KDE Development Platform. Yet, many user-visible changes have gotten in as well. While new features and usability improvements were added, bugs were found and fixed in KDE and the stability of Beta 3 has improved much compared to the previous Betas. With the third Beta, the KDE project has begun to finalize KDE 4.0."

The KDE team has released KDE 3.5.8, a maintenance release. New stuff: "Improvements in Konqueror and its web browsing component KHTML. Bugs in handling HTTP connections have been fixed, KHTML has improved support of some CSS features for more standards compliance. In the kdegraphics package, lots of fixes in KDE's PDF viewer and Kolourpaint, a painting application, went into this release. The KDE PIM suite has, as usual, seen numerous stability fixes, covering KDE's email client KMail, the organizer application KOrganizer and various other bits and pieces."

"While the industry is distracted by the ongoing tussle between Microsoft and OpenOffice.org over document formats, the KDE project is quietly preparing the next generation of its own office suite, KOffice, for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. KOffice 2.0, to be released sometime in the first half of 2008, will be cross platform like many other applications in the KDE suite built with the Qt4 GUI toolkit."

KDE developer Pinheiro revealed his ideas on the next KDE menu, dubbed 'Raptor'. "What is Raptor? Raptor is a an amazing project I have been working on in the last few days. It tries to be a fresh new way of finding your desktop applications, and interacting with its users." A design document (containing more screenshots) is also available .

"The KDE Release Team has revised the release schedule for KDE 4.0. The first visible bits of KDE 4.0 will be the KDE Development Platform release on October, 30. This Development Platform release consists of bits and pieces needed to develop KDE applications. It includes kdesupport, kdelibs, kdepimlibs and kdebase/runtime. The purpose of the KDE Development Platform release is to make it easier for third party developers to port their applications to KDE4 technology and to start developing new applications. The final and long awaited release of the KDE Desktop 4.0 is planned for December, 11th 2007, well in time to be a Christmas present for everyone who has been longing for KDE 4.0."

"The KDE Community proudly presents the second Beta release for KDE 4.0. This release marks the beginning of the feature freeze and the stabilization of the current codebase. Simultaneously the KOffice developers have released their third Alpha release, marking significant improvements in this innovative office suite. Both KDE and KOffice have benefited from the Google Summer of Code, as most resulting code has now been merged."

The KDE project has delayed the release of KDE 4.0 by two months. "We, The Release Team, hereby announce that we are extending the KDE 4.0.0 schedule 2 months by inserting an extra 2 Betas, as follows: September 24: Beta3. October 22: Beta4. November 19: Total Release Freeze. November 21: RC1. December 5: RC2. December 20: 4.0.0 tagged. We feel that there are crucial elements of the release that need more development time. The feature freeze (less exemptions) remains in effect."

The article yesterday on KDE4 triggered both Sebastian Kuegler and Aaron Seigo to respond via their blogs. Kuegler writes: "The Free Desktop and KDE have come a long way during the last years. There have been various huge changes in KDE's social structure, in it's infrastructure and of course in the sourcecode itself. I've split this into three different areas where I think a shift in paradigm has taken place." Seigo writes: "Mark my words: KDE4 is a revolution unfolding and you're getting to watch it all happen from the very beginning."

"With an avalanche of last-minute commits, the KOffice Google Summer of Code students finished yet another great Summer of Code. We had some very exciting projects this year, and most of them were as great a success as last year. Read on for details of the achievements."

"KDE 4.0 is very exciting, though not yet production ready, and that shows with this weeks' release of the first beta. It's a beta release for a major software project (using the traditional definition of beta, and not Google's it's-production-ready-but-we-don't-want-to-support-it-officially-yet definition of beta) and thus, it comes complete with bugs, crashes, missing artwork, and other goodies one would expect such as new code, new technologies and fun toys. For those of you who are unaware, KDE is one of the largest open source projects ever conceived. A major milestone release such as 4.0 is a long time in the making. Here follows a number of things to look forward to for those of you brave enough to try this early beta."