The Start of Something Amazing with KDE 4.0 Release

Several years of design, development and testing came together today for the release of KDE 4.0. This is our most significant release in our 11 year history and marks both the end of the long and intensive development cycle leading up to KDE 4.0 and the start of the KDE 4 era. Join us now in #kde4-release-party on Freenode to celebrate or come to the release event in person next week. Packages are available for all the major distributions with live CDs available currently from Kubuntu and openSUSE. Read on for details or take the KDE 4.0 Visual Guide to find your way around.

The KDE 4.0 desktop

The KDE 4 Libraries have seen major improvements in almost all areas.
The Phonon multimedia framework provides platform independent multimedia support to all
KDE applications, the Solid hardware integration framework makes interacting with
(removable) devices easier and provides tools for better powermanagement.

The KDE 4 Desktop has gained some major new capabilities. The Plasma desktop shell
offers a new desktop interface, including panel, menu and widgets on the desktop
as well as a dashboard function. KWin, the KDE Window manager, now supports advanced
graphical effects to ease interaction with your windows.

Lots of KDE Applications have seen improvements as well. Visual updates through
vector-based artwork, changes in the underlying libraries, user interface
enhancements, new features, even new applications -- you name it, KDE 4.0 has it.
Okular, the new document viewer and Dolphin, the new filemanager are only two
applications that leverage KDE 4.0's new technologies.

The Oxygen Artwork team provides a breath of fresh air on the desktop.
Nearly all user-visible parts of the KDE desktop and applications have been given a
facelift. Beauty and consistency are two of the basic concepts behind Oxygen.

Distributions known to have packages:

  • An alpha version of KDE4-based Arklinux 2008.1 is expected
    shortly after this release, with an expected final release within 3 or 4 weeks.
  • Debian KDE 4.0 packages are available in the experimental branch.
    The KDE Development Platform will even make it into Lenny. Watch for
    announcements by the Debian KDE Team.
  • Fedora will feature KDE 4.0 in Fedora 9, to be released
    in April, with Alpha releases being available from
    24th of January. KDE 4.0 packages are in the pre-alpha Rawhide repository.
  • Gentoo Linux provides KDE 4.0 builds on
    http://kde.gentoo.org.
  • Kubuntu packages are included in the upcoming "Hardy Heron"
    (8.04) and also made available as updates for the stable "Gutsy Gibbon" (7.10).
    A Live CD is available for trying out KDE 4.0.
    More details can be found in the
    announcement on kubuntu.org
    .
  • Mandriva will provide packages for
    2008.0 and aims
    at producing a Live CD with the latest snapshot of 2008.1.
  • openSUSE packages are available
    for
    openSUSE 10.3 (
    one-click
    install
    ),
    openSUSE Factory (
    one-click
    install
    )
    and openSUSE 10.2. A KDE
    Four Live CD
    with these packages is also available. KDE 4.0 will be part of the upcoming
    openSUSE 11.0 release.
  • openSUSE based KDE Four Live CD

Thanks to the coders, artists, usability experts, testers, bug triagers and many more who have made this release the start of something amazing. Tell us what you think on this
4.0 feedback page.

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Comments

There are amd64 binary packages for Debian.
http://packages.debian.org/experimental/kdelibs5

It seems that the Debain KDE maintainers are currently preparing a new live cd for i386 + amd64:
http://pkg-kde.alioth.debian.org/kde4livecd.html

They did an awesome job so far, so I guess it shouldn't take long...

by Jeremy (not verified)

I think I may wait until 4.1 until they fix the many bugs.

Lets change it to "Release early when ready, Release often when ready". By ready I mean, no bugs, all features, live up to expectations.

*Gets excited and waits another 6 months(Or whenever)*

by Paul Eggleton (not verified)

You do know that bug-free software does not exist, right? (Well, bug-free non-trivial software anyway.)

by whatever noticed (not verified)

Well, i just wait until my distribution comes with a new version that includes kde 4.x.
Stable or not, complete or not, bugfree or not, a desktop experience is always at best when it is well integrated with the operating system.
And just like with kde 3.0 and 2.0, that won't be the case until the next release of the distribution.

by Hans (not verified)

>> By ready I mean, no bugs, all features, live up to expectations.

http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2008/01/talking-bluntly.html
Meme 3. But you might as well read it all when you're at it.

by Anon (not verified)

How about no regressions?

That's finite.

by Jos Andersen (not verified)

Does this not require some kind of usecase definition around usage and functionality - both previous functionality and KDE 4.0 functionality. Unfortunately i doubt there has been much thinking about those. If this happened then maybe thinking about both software defects and software bugs could be incorporated.
Maybe testing is the way where endusers that cannot code could make themselves important when software is released

by genesiss (not verified)

1. kde 4 release as development platform for next 3-4 years is a must... just remember what kind of mess is going round in 3 branch because of old stuff which is deep insight eg. arts system or different storage of same data???...

2. the question is what kde is like to be in near future???... j don't realy want to start next little kde/gnome war cose its useless so please remeber its my humble opinion...

gnome is as simple as its possible thats ok... and kde always was as complex as possible with a lot of options... thats great to... and it still should be!!!

usability in DE itself is one thing but don't forget about apps!!! e.g. kde kontact (alot smb business is switching to kde/kontact/kolab/openoffice and care less about DE )...

people use to ask why kde is not so clear in its design like e.g. mac os x is (somebody may not like it but everybody must admit that its build with a vision)? kde will never be so solid... because of nature of open source community driven projects... where developers are free to do what they like and users may interact with them... no big boss like jobs ;)...

its time to realize that in mass market project (with corporate usage ambitions) like KDE "usability" is nothing else than providing as much features/options as possible with out breaking others...

I would like to thing about kde as an industry tool for users who like to learn or small/medium it companies which provide services for smb business which gives an opportunity for deep customization...

kde developer shouldn't bother so much about those who are crying that something is not simple!!! because it drives project to resource waisting!!!! eg. I don't understand need of dolphin!!! what is wrong with konqueror file management functions?