KDE has released KDE BETA1 which is NOT intended for people looking for stable desktops, but rather pioneers and bug testers to help check for bugs and problems for an official release later this year. The updates include expanded functionality of the default desktop shell and configuration interfaces. The KDE team also include new and newly ported programs, which is definitely needed as the existing KDE 3.5 installations have a much wider native application base compared to KDE 4 installations.

The KDE team is planning a final release of 4.1 this coming July

KDE 4.0 as we know it is the next generation of the popular K Desktop Environment, which seeks to fulfill the need for a powerful yet easy-to-use desktop, for both personal and
enterprise computing.

Below are the main goals of KDE 4.1 which is to be released sometime in July of this year:

• Windows port (Frameworks and Applications)
• Mac port (Frameworks and Applications)
• OpenSolaris port
• Plasma with widgets on canvas, makes things like layouting much easier, and generally integrating widgets into Plasmoids
• Webkit in Plasma
• GStreamer, Quicktime, DirectShow9 Phonon backends
• Apple dashboard widgets support in Plasma
• Decibel VOIP and real-time communication framework
• Done! Dragon Player multimedia player
• Done! Lokalize (formerly Kaider) computer-aided translation system
• More polished Kopete
• KDevelop and KDevplatform modules
• KDE-PIM module, with some Akonadi functionality
• KBlogger for KDE-PIM
• Move Akonadi library into the kdepimlibs module
• GetHotNewStuff2 / DXS
• Plasmagik plasma packages and add-on creator
• Lots of smaller features

Please take a look at the release schedule below for future KDE 4 versions:

• January - KDE 4.0.1
• February - KDE 4.0.2
• March - KDE 4.0.3
• April - KDE 4.0.4
• May - KDE 4.0.5
• June - KDE 4.0.6
• July - KDE 4.1.0
• August - KDE 4.1.1

Please take a closer look at the KDE 4.1 release schedule below:

• March 31st, 2008: Soft Feature Freeze
• April 22nd, 2008: Hard Feature Freeze
• April 22nd, 2008: Tag KDE 4.1 Alpha 1
• April 29th, 2008: Release KDE 4.1 Alpha 1
• May 20th, 2008: Message Freeze.
• May 20th, 2008: Tag KDE 4.1 Beta 1
• May 27th, 2008: Release KDE 4.1 Beta 1
• June 17th, 2008: Tag KDE 4.1 Beta 2
• June 24th, 2008: Release KDE 4.1 Beta 2
• July 8th, 2008: Artwork Freeze
• July 8th, 2008: Tag KDE 4.1 RC 1
• July 15th, 2008: Release KDE 4.1 RC 1
• July 22nd, 2008: Tag KDE 4.1.0
• July 29th, 2008: Release KDE 4.1

Nokia, the giant mobile phone maker based in Finland has purchased Trolltech, a Norwegian software company for $153.3 million.

Trolltech, formerly known as Quasar Technologies is a computer software company from Oslo, Norway. They are best known for their flagship product which is Qt, a multi-platform C++ Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) framework which also includes packages such as data structures and a networking library. The popular KDE desktop used in Linux is built using the Qt library. Trolltech’s product is also used by other popular softwares like Skype, Google Earth and Adobe’s Photoshop Elements.

The acquisition is a good news for all Linux and Open-Source enthusiasts since we can look forward to better cell phones and devices from Nokia using a slick user interface powered by the Qt library.

You can read the press release from Trolltech’s website and the joint statement (PDF) by Nokia and Trolltech CEOs to the KDE and Open-Source community.

I’m pretty sure that the acquisition is Nokia’s answer to Google’s Project Android.

With less than a month after KDE 4.0 has been released, the Windows port of KDE 4.0 is now functional. You can now install some KDE 4.0 applications on your Windows 2000,Windows XP and Windows 2003 machines. Sorry Microsoft Vista folks, your OS is not yet supported. To install KDE 4.0 applications, you will be needing an installer, an application which collects the required packages including package dependencies from a remote repository and installs them to your Windows machine, making the installation more user friendly.

Right now, a number of applications such as the KDE games, KWrite, Konqueror, Dolphin file manager are working properly in most installations. However, most other softwares are still buggy, some are and eating up a lot of memory. The good news is that these problems are sure to be ironed out soon. KDE on Windows is mostly in an alpha state, so if you are interested in helping to get some of your favourite KDE applications working properly on Windows, you may write down the bugs you encountered and report them here.KDE 4 on Windows currently support two compilers namely Mingw and Microsoft Visual C++. Since Qt 4 is truly a cross platform library and KDE 4 being built using Qt 4, it is only a matter of time before you see people using KDE applications on Windows.

If you would like to try installing KDE 4.0 applications on your Windows machine, you can go to the step by step installation here.

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