January 11

Good news for Linux users like you and me, KDE has officially released version 4.0 of its popular KDE desktop.

KDE 4.0 which is built on improved KDE libraries is free desktop software for Linux. KDE contains many different applications for your everyday computing and Internet browsing needs.

Below are major updates in KDE 4 posted in KDE website.

Desktop

  • Plasma is the new desktop shell. Plasma provides a panel, a menu and other intuitive means to interact with the desktop and applications.
  • KWin, KDE’s proven window manager, now supports advanced compositing features. Hardware accelerated painting takes care of a smoother and more intuitive interaction with windows.
  • Oxygen is the KDE 4.0 artwork. Oxygen provides a consistent, easy on the eye and beautiful artwork concept.

Applications

  • Konqueror is KDE’s established web browser. Konqueror is light-weight, well integrated, and supports the newest standards such as CSS 3.
  • Dolphin is KDE’s new file manager. Dolphin has been developed with usability in mind and is an easy-to-use, yet powerful tool.
  • With System Settings, a new control center interface has been introduced. The KSysGuard system monitor makes it easy to monitor and control system resources and activity.
  • Okular, the KDE 4 document viewer, supports many formats. Okular is one of the many KDE 4 applications that has been improved in collaboration with the OpenUsability Project.
  • Educational Applications are among the first applications that have been ported and developed using KDE 4 technology. Kalzium, a graphical periodic table of elements and the Marble Desktop Globe are only two of many gems among the educational applications. Read more about Educational Applications in the Visual Guide.
  • Lots of the KDE Games have been updated. KDE Games such as KMines, a minesweeper game and KPat, a patience game have had facelifts. Thanks to new vector artwork and graphical capabilities, the games have been made more resolution independent.

Libraries

  • Phonon offers applications multimedia capabilities such as playing audio and video. Internally, Phonon makes use of various backends, switchable at runtime. The default backend for KDE 4.0 will be the Xine backend supplying outstanding support for various formats. Phonon also allows the user to choose output devices based on the type of multimedia.
  • The Solid hardware integration framework integrates fixed and removable devices into KDE applications. Solid also interfaces with the underlying system’s power management capabilities, handles network connectivity and integration of Bluetooth devices. Internally, Solid combines the powers of HAL, NetworkManager and the BlueZ bluetooth stack, but those components are replacable without breaking applications to provide maximum portability.
  • KHTML is the webpage rendering engine used by Konqueror, KDE’s web browser. KHTML is light-weight and supports modern standards such as CSS 3. KHTML was also the first engine to pass the famous Acid 2 test.
  • The ThreadWeaver library, which comes with kdelibs, provides a high-level interface to make better use of today’s multi-core systems, making KDE applications feel smoother and more efficiently using resources available on the system.
  • Being built on Trolltech’s Qt 4 library, KDE 4.0 can make use of the advanced visual capabilities and smaller memory footprint of this library. kdelibs provides an outstanding extension of the Qt library, adding large amounts of high-level functionality and convenience to the developer.

Click here to view KDE 4.0 screenshots

Click here to download KDE 4.0

Click here for KDE 4.0 Documentation

:D

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