Linux Tricks

KDE 4.0 Alpha 2 features new shell

The KDE development team, gathered at the aKademy event in Glasgow, Scotland on July 4 announced the immediate availability of the second alpha release of the K Desktop Environment v. 4.0. The eight-day-long aKademy continues through July 7 at the University of Strathclyde.

“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,” team spokesperson Sebastian Kügler said in his blog.

The most important new development in KDE development is in Plasma, KDE 4’s new shell for the desktop, Kügler said. Plasma features KRunner, an application that directly launches programs and starts other tasks, and plasmoids, which are applets that display information on the desktop.

Plasmoids are live windows that can show data, such as the time of day and information about hardware devices. They also can provide access to online resources, such as showing RSS feeds, images or providing dictionary lookup, Kügler said.

Another addition worth mentioning, Kügler said, is System Settings, the replacement for KControl and an improved user interface hosting various modules for configuring the desktop and other aspects of the system.

The upcoming weeks will be spent on stabilizing and streamlining the underlying KDE libraries to provide a stable interface for programmers for the whole KDE4 life cycle, Kügler said. In addition, he said, the team’s focus will shift to finishing the applications that are shipped with the base desktop and polishing their user interfaces.

The first beta release of KDE 4.0 is expected by the end of July, Kügler said, with the final release currently planned for the end of October 2007.

Users who would like to test KDE 4.0 Alpha 2 should refer to the alpha 2 information page to see the current status of the build.

Other good references for testers are PlanetKDE.org or TheDot.