KDE 4.0-alpha2 Release Announcement
Wednesday, 4 July 2007
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
KDE Project Ships Second Alpha Release for Leading Free Software Desktop, Codename "Cernighan"
KDE 4.0-alpha2 features considerable enhancements of Plasma, the KDE 4 desktop shell.
The KDE Community is happy to announce the immediate availability of the second alpha release of the K Desktop Environment. This release comes straight out of Glasgow, the largest city in Scotland where aKademy is currently taking place. Hundreds of KDE hackers are working like crazy to hunt down bugs, complete features for KDE 4.0 and sit together developing and finishing new and exciting applications for the new major version of the leading Free Desktop.
The most exciting new development is currently going on in Plasma, KDE 4's new shell for the desktop. Plasma provides krunner, an application to directly launch programs and start other tasks. Plasmoids are applets that display information such as the time, information about hardware devices and also provide access to online resources, for example showing RSS feeds, images or providing dictionary lookup.
System Settings, the replacement for KControl is an improved user interface hosting various modules for configuring the desktop and other aspects of the system is another addition worth mentioning.
The upcoming weeks will be spent on further stabilizing and streamlining the underlying KDE libraries to provide a stable interface for programmers for the whole KDE4 lifecycle. Furthermore, the focus will shift to finishing the applications that are shipped with the base desktop and polishing their user interfaces.
The end of July will see a full freeze of the kdelibs module, manifested in the first beta release of KDE 4.0 with the final release currently planned for the end of October this year.
For the bravehearts who want to try KDE 4.0 Alpha2, please refer to this page to find ways to have a peak at the current status yourself. As the pace of development would outdate screenshots very quickly, the best way to find out about progress is to refer to sites such as The Dot or Planet KDE, the collection of KDE developers' weblogs.
Supporting KDE
KDE is a Free Software project that exists and grows only because of the help of many volunteers that donate their time and effort. KDE is always looking for new volunteers and contributions, whether its help with coding, bug fixing or reporting, writing documentation, translations, promotion, money, etc. All contributions are gratefully appreciated and eagerly accepted. Please read through the Supporting KDE page for further information.
We look forward to hearing from you soon!
About KDE
KDE is an award-winning, independent project of hundreds of developers, translators, artists and other professionals worldwide collaborating over the Internet to create and freely distribute a sophisticated, customizable and stable desktop and office environment employing a flexible, component-based, network-transparent architecture and offering an outstanding development platform.
The KDE 3 branch continues to provide a stable, mature desktop including a state-of-the-art browser (Konqueror), a personal information management suite (Kontact), a full office suite (KOffice), a large set of networking application and utilities, and an efficient, intuitive development environment featuring the excellent IDE KDevelop.
KDE is working proof that the Open Source "Bazaar-style" software development model can yield first-rate technologies on par with and superior to even the most complex commercial software.
Trademark Notices.
KDE® and the K Desktop Environment® logo are
registered trademarks of KDE e.V. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the United States and
other countries. All other trademarks and copyrights referred to in this announcement are
the property of their respective owners.
Press Contacts
For more information send us an email: press@kde.org