KDE 2.1-beta1 Release Announcement

Saturday, 16 December 2000

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

New Beta KDE Release Available for Linux Desktop

New Beta Version of Leading Linux Desktop Offers New Theme Manager, Image Viewer and IDE and Many Enhancements

December 16, 2000 (The INTERNET). The KDE Team today announced the release of KDE 2.1-beta1, a powerful, modular, Internet-enabled desktop. KDE 2.1 constitutes the second major release of the KDE 2 series, which is the next generation of the award-winning KDE 1 series. KDE is the work product of hundreds of dedicated developers originating from over 30 countries.

KDE 2.1-beta1 offers a number of additions, enhancements and fixes over KDE 2.0.1, the last stable KDE release which shipped on December 5, 2000. The major additions are:

• A new and much-anticipated theme manager has been added, and many icons have been improved. In addition, semi-transparency (alpha-blending) has been implemented on small images and icons.
• Pixie, an image viewer/editor, has been added to the Graphics package.
• KDevelop, a C/C++ integrated development environment, has been added to the core KDE distribution. The version being shipped, 1.4beta, is the first version of KDevelop to make use of the KDE 2 libraries and integrate completely with the KDE 2 desktop.
• Konqueror, the KDE 2 file manager, can now be configured to provide thumbnail previews for text and HTML files. In addition, the standards-compliant Konqueror now stores bookmarks using the standard XBEL bookmark format; a new bookmark editor complements the new standard. Finally, auto-proxy configuration has been implemented.
• KHTML, the HTML widget, now has a special 'transitional mode' which greatly improves its handling of malformed HTML pages. In additon, KHTML now has greatly improved Java support and has added support for Java security (JDK 1.2 or compatible is now required).
• The panel (Kicker) has enjoyed significant improvements. An external taskbar has been included (familiar to KDE 1 users), support for sub-panels has been added (which can be separately sized and positioned), an improved external pager (Kasbar) has been added, and support for applets has been improved (including support for WindowMaker dock applets).
• ARts, the KDE 2 multimedia architecture, now offers a control module to configure sampling rate and output devices, increased performance, improved user interfaces and a number of additional effects and filters.
• For developers, a number of classes have been added to the core libraries, including a class for undo/redo support (KCommand) and a class for editing list boxes (KEditListBox).

KDE 2.1-beta1 includes the core KDE libraries, the core desktop environment, and KDevelop, as well as the over 100 applications from the other standard base KDE packages: Administration, Games, Graphics, Multimedia, Network, Personal Information Management (PIM), Toys and Utilities. KOffice is not included in this release.

All of KDE 2.1-beta1 is available for free under an Open Source license. Likewise, Trolltech's Qt 2.2.x, the GUI toolkit on which KDE is based, is also available for free under two Open Source licenses: the Q Public License and the GNU General Public License.

A more complete list of major changes, a FAQ about the release and the KDE 2.1 release plan are available at the KDE website. More information about KDE 2 is available in a slideshow presentation and on KDE's web site, including a number of screenshots, developer information and a developer's KDE 1 - KDE 2 porting guide.

Downloading and Compiling KDE

The source packages for KDE 2.1-beta1 are available for free download at http://ftp.kde.org/unstable/distribution/2.1beta1/tar/generic/src/ or in the equivalent directory at one of the many KDE ftp server mirrors. KDE 2.1-beta1 requires qt-2.2.1, which is available from the above locations under the name qt-x11-2.2.1.tar.gz, although qt-2.2.3 is recommended. KDE 2.1-beta1 will not work with versions of Qt older than 2.2.1.

For further instructions on compiling and installing KDE, please consult the installation instructions and, if you encounter problems, the compilation FAQ.

Installing Binary Packages

Some distributors choose to provide binary packages of KDE for certain versions of their distribution. Some of these binary packages for KDE 2.1-beta1 will be available for free download under http://ftp.kde.org/unstable/distribution/2.1-beta1/rpm/ or under the equivalent directory at one of the many KDE ftp server mirrors. Please note that the KDE team is not responsible for these packages as they are provided by third parties -- typically, but not always, the distributor of the relevant distribution.

KDE 2.1-beta1 requires qt-2.2.1, the free version of which is available from the above locations usually under the name qt-x11-2.2.1, although qt-2.2.3 is recommended. KDE 2.1-beta1 will not work with versions of Qt older than 2.2.1.

At the time of this release, pre-compiled packages are available for:

• Linux Mandrake 7.2 (i386)
• SuSE Linux 7.0 (i386)

Please check the servers periodically for pre-compiled packages for other distributions. More binary packages will become available over the coming days and weeks.

About KDE

KDE is an independent, collaborative project by hundreds of developers worldwide to create a sophisticated, customizable and stable desktop environment employing a component-based, network-transparent architecture. KDE is working proof of the power of the Open Source "Bazaar-style" software development model to create first-rate technologies on par with and superior to even the most complex commercial software.

For more information about KDE, please visit KDE's web site.

Trademarks Notices. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. Unix is a registered trademark of The Open Group. Trolltech and Qt are trademarks of Trolltech AS. Java is a trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc. All other trademarks and copyrights referred to in this announcement are the property of their respective owners.