KDE Ships First 4.7 Release Candidate

KDE has released a first release candidate of the upcoming 4.7 release of the Plasma Desktop and Netbook workspaces, the KDE Applications and the KDE Frameworks, which is planned for July 27, 2011. With API, dependency and feature freezes in place, the KDE team's focus is now on fixing last-minute bugs and completing translations and documentation.

The 4.7 release will bring a number of exciting improvements:

  • KWin, Plasma's window manager now supports OpenGL-ES 2.0, improving performance and deployability on mobile devices
  • Dolphin, KDE's flexible file manager has seen user interface improvements and now sports a better user experience for searching in files' metadata.
  • KDM, KDE's login manager now interfaces with the Grub2 bootloader
  • Marble, the virtual globe now supports offline address search, especially making its mobile version more useful on the road

To download source code or packages to install go to the 4.7 RC1 Info Page.

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Comments

@point 4:
unfortunately, the plasma desktop itself can't use the KWin shadows, widgets are not windows but really part of one big plasma window...

@point 6: I don't think anyone works on microblog unfortunately but a new microblog is being developed as part of plasma active with QML, I believe...

by Anonymous (not verified)

Wi-fi is not working on Ubuntu/Kubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal). On trying to connect to your network the program informs you there is no firmware installed and no ammount of correction will get you on-line unless you have an ethernet cable long enough to reach your router (which may be in an inaccessible place - like by the front door to your apartment/house). Ubuntu/Kubuntu is becoming like Microsoft in making costly and silly mistakes in its supposed stable software. Basically, [I don't like] Ubuntu/Kubuntu! terabyte1

by Anonymous (not verified)

Incidentally, I've been with Ubuntu and Kubuntu since Dapper Drake, and until Canonical moved to Unity on Ubunt I had no problems. On Kubuntu there was the usual high scoring bug-fixes by a backup-team which is best described as stupendous for their efforts in tackling the challenges from going from 3.5 to 4.00 Series KDE. Most times Kubuntu now is surpassing the 3.5 version of Kubuntu when it was around, except for the problem of the Wi-Fi no-go area. I've been with Computers since the early 70's working with BSD (Unix) fragments at Plessey Ltd sometimes on telecommunications equipment using a 'Strowger' testing lines in the main Telephone Exchange bays of Liverpool. Also we worked with Nasa with regard to their Gemini Project building equipment for them. So you see, I'm not just a computer monkey newly joined to Linux/Unix computer systems, and sometimes I get frustrated when things go wrong with otherwise superb software from my favourite stable (Canonical). So sorry if I seemed a mite peevish. terabyte1

by Anonymous (not verified)

On the same issue (above),I currently have version 10 (Julia) on LinuxMint under KDE (becoming my favourite desktop ;) ) on my main machine and it works beautifully there - it locates my network name automatically and my pass-phrase without any problems. On my backup machine I have (again) KDE under PCLINUXOS and that works beautifully too with my wi-fi. It's just Fedora, OpenSuse, Sabayon, Centos, Debian, Suse Enterprise Server (SLED), and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6., I'm having problems with! Terabyte1

On my 2 machines and several others that I support, WiFi is working great...implemented in a thoughtful manner. Kubuntu (desktop and netbook) are working with no issues as well.

This sounds like a hardware issue. And almost certainly is not associated with KDE.

Have you posted to the Kubuntu and Ubuntu forums?

One thing I have to keep in mind all the time is that not all "bugs" are due to a problem with KDE (or any DE for that matter) but more a problem with the underlying distribution itself. For example, "nepomukservicesstub" (I might not have gotten the spelling right on that) randomly crashing in the KDE 4 series (up through 4.7 RC1 by the way) pretty much runs across all distros I've tried on two different machines but certain other processes hogging the CPU or using too many resources are more distro related than anything else. (I know the devs are hot on the Nepomuk/Strigi problems so I'm not too concerned about it. They'll have it sorted out eventually I'm sure.)

Someone mentioned a "clock_gettime event poll loop" constantly using 60% to 90% of their CPU that simply doesn't exist on one particular distro I have installed that uses the latest KDE 4.7. Nor does it exist on another distro that uses the latest 4.6.4. Admittedly it can be extremely difficult when trying to figure out whether certain problem are either DE or distro related. Some are pretty obvious and some are not.

by Anonymous (not verified)

when moving toolbars in konqueror, kde and plasma is crashing, can someone confirm this ?

which qt is needed by RC-rpm's ? is it possible to run 4.7 RC1 with 4.7.80+ ??

3d (effects,compisiting) seems broken in kde 4.6.90

by Anonymous (not verified)

when moving toolbars in konqueror, kde and plasma is crashing, can someone confirm this ?

which qt is needed by RC-rpm's ? is it possible to run 4.7 RC1 with 4.7.80+ ??

3d (effects,compisiting) seems broken in kde 4.6.90