KDE 4.0 Beta 4

Tuesday, 30 October 2007

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

KDE Project Ships Fourth Beta Release for Leading Free Software Desktop, Codename "Kippie"

With the fourth Beta, the KDE project would like to collect feedback to ensure the quality of KDE 4.0.

The KDE Community is happy to release the fourth Beta for KDE 4.0. This Beta aimed at further polishing of the KDE codebase and we would love to start receiving feedback from testers.

As KDE has largely has been in bugfix mode, this latest Beta aims to encourage testers to have a look at it to help us find and solve the remaining problems and bugs. Besides the stabilization of the codebase, some minor features have been added, including but not limited to much work on Plasma, the KDE 4 desktop shell.
Sebastian Kügler notes: "The improvements have been huge, and plasma is much closer to what it needs to be before the release. I am confident we will be able to finish it and present a very usable plasma to our userbase with KDE 4.0. We will then be able to extend on that and present truly innovative desktop interfaces throughout the KDE 4 lifecycle.

The new Beta 4 incorporates many improvements from previous Beta and alpha releases: Beta 3, Beta 2, Beta 1, Alpha 2 and Alpha 1.

Beta 4

With the fourth Beta, the KDE developers hope to collect comments and bug reports from the wider KDE community. With their help, we hope to solve the most pressing problems with the current KDE 4 codebase to ensure the final 4.0 release is usable. We would like to encourage anyone who is willing and able to spend some time on testing to find and report problems to the KDE developers.

The current KDE 4 Desktop with Dolphin and Systemsettings

You can find some documentation on the pages of our Bugsquad and in other places. There will be weekly KDE 4 Krush Days on Saturdays and everyone is invited to help out. Having a recent SVN checkout (follow instructions on TechBase) is great, but using the regularly updated openSUSE KDE 4 Live CD or the Debian KDE4 Beta4 Live CD, while very easy, is also a big help to us.

Release blockers

Several Beta Goals have been formulated, and as long as these are not ready, we will continue to release Betas.

For developers

At the same time, the KDE community unleashes a release candidate for the KDE Development Platform, the collection of libraries that are needed to develop and run KDE 4 applications. This development platform aims at making it possible for third parties to start porting their applications without the need to compile everything from KDE's source code repository. The final KDE 4 Development Platform will follow shortly, as soon as it is made sure that the current snapshot does not contains any grave bugs.

Next Up

While the last improvements will be made in the coming weeks, as soon as the Betacycle objectives are met, we will start preparing our first Release Candidate. This marks the beginning of a short period where we will allow only the most important bugfixes in preparation for the release.

Get it, run it, test it...

For those interested in getting packages to test and contribute, several distributions notified us that they will have KDE 4.0 Beta 4 packages available at or soon after the release. The complete and current list can be found on the KDE 4 Beta 4 Info Page, where you can also find links to the source code, information about compiling, security and other issues.

About KDE 4

KDE 4 is the next generation of the popular KDE Desktop Environment which seeks to fulfill the need for a powerful yet easy to use desktop for UNIX and LINUX workstations. The aim of the KDE project for the 4.0 release is to put the foundations in place for future innovations on the Free Desktop. The many newly introduced technologies incorporated in the KDE libraries will make it easier for developers to add rich functionality to their applications, combining and connecting different components in any way they want.

About KDE

KDE is an international technology team that creates free and open source software for desktop and portable computing. Among KDE's products are a modern desktop system for Linux and UNIX platforms, comprehensive office productivity and groupware suites and hundreds of software titles in many categories including Internet and web applications, multimedia, entertainment, educational, graphics and software development. KDE software is translated into more than 60 languages and is built with ease of use and modern accessibility principles in mind. KDE's full-featured applications run natively on Linux, BSD, Windows, Haiku, and macOS.

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