KDE Platform 4.10 Opens Up More APIs to Qt Quick

Wednesday, 6 February 2013


Plasma SDK

This release of the KDE Development Platform sees more work on a comprehensive SDK for Plasma. Previously separate and distinct components, such as plasmoidviewer, plasamengineexplorer and plasmawallpaperviewer, are now part of PlasMate, the toolset for developing Plasma widgets.

Plasmate forms the heart of the Plasma SDK

Plasmate forms the heart of the Plasma SDK

Qt Quick Support

The use of Qt Quick within Plasma continues to expand. Many components have been updated to use Qt Quick exclusively for the user interface; this also makes it easy to extend and customize Plasma Workspaces. Plasma now also allows Containments (which are responsible for presenting widgets on the desktop and in panels) to be written using only Qt Quick's easy-to-learn language. This gives developers the ability to produce custom Containments for experimentation or special use cases. With this capability, Plasma is a valuable, universal user interface toolkit.

Scripting Desktop Effects

Scripting interfaces for window effects, behavior and management make KWin Window Management a useful tool for developers wanting to address a particular use case. In addition, this modular approach minimizes the size of the core of KWin. It also improves maintainability by moving specialized code into external scripts Compared to the C++ code they replace, scripts make it easier to write, maintain and ensure quality of code.

Installing the KDE Development Platform

KDE software, including all its libraries and its applications, is available for free under Open Source licenses. KDE software runs on various hardware configurations and CPU architectures such as ARM and x86, operating systems and works with any kind of window manager or desktop environment. Besides Linux and other UNIX based operating systems you can find Microsoft Windows versions of most KDE applications on the KDE software on Windows site and Apple Mac OS X versions on the KDE software on Mac site. Experimental builds of KDE applications for various mobile platforms like MeeGo, MS Windows Mobile and Symbian can be found on the web but are currently unsupported. Plasma Active is a user experience for a wider spectrum of devices, such as tablet computers and other mobile hardware.

KDE software can be obtained in source and various binary formats from download.kde.org and can also be obtained on CD-ROM or with any of the major GNU/Linux and UNIX systems shipping today.

Packages

Some Linux/UNIX OS vendors have kindly provided binary packages of 4.10.0 for some versions of their distribution, and in other cases community volunteers have done so.

Package Locations

For a current list of available binary packages of which the KDE's Release Team has been informed, please visit the Community Wiki.

The complete source code for 4.10.0 may be freely downloaded. Instructions on compiling and installing KDE software 4.10.0 are available from the 4.10.0 Info Page.

System Requirements

In order to get the most out of these releases, we recommend to use a recent version of Qt, such as 4.8.4. This is necessary in order to assure a stable and performant experience, as some improvements made to KDE software have actually been done in the underlying Qt framework.

In order to make full use of the capabilities of KDE's software, we also recommend to use the latest graphics drivers for your system, as this can improve the user experience substantially, both in optional functionality, and in overall performance and stability.

Also Announced Today:

The KDE Plasma Workspaces 4.10 Plasma Workspaces 4.10 Improve Mobile Device Support and Receive Visual Refinement

Several components of Plasma Workspaces have been ported to Qt Quick/QML framework. Stability and usability have been improved. A new print manager and Color Management support have been introduced.

The KDE Applications 4.10 KDE Applications Improve Usability, Performance and Take You to Mars

KDE Applications gained feature enhancements to Kate, KMail and Konsole. KDE-Edu applications saw a complete overhaul of KTouch and many other changes. KDE Games introduced the new Picmi game and improvements throughout.

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