openSUSE 11.0 Released with KDE 4.0.4

openSUSE 11.0 has been released (screenshots), offering KDE 3.5.9 and an excellent experience of KDE 4.0. There has been a huge collection of changes and additions in this new release. For an overview of the improvements in KDE, see the KDE Sneak Peeks article over at openSUSE News, which features an interview with KDE developer Stephan Binner. He talks about the challenges faced, plans for the future, and what changes you can expect in the upcoming KDE 4.1.

KDE 4.0

The openSUSE 11.0 release includes an installable Live-CD with a SUSE-polished KDE 4.0.4 desktop, while the DVD contains KDE 3.5.9 as well. While many applications such as the openSUSE updater applet (with an optional PackageKit backend) have been ported to KDE 4, not all KDE applications are ported to KDE4 yet. In these cases, KDE3 versions of applications such as Amarok, K3b, KOffice or KNetworkManager (adapted to NetworkManager 0.7) are used, which integrate pretty seamlessly. A native KDE4 NetworkManager plasmoid is in development and will become available via openSUSE Build Service repositories. There has also been a whole horde of Plasma updates and fixes put into the release.

As KDE 4.0 doesn’t include KDEPIM (Kontact, KMail, KOrganizer etc.), therefore openSUSE 11.0 includes beta versions of KDEPIM 4.1. These applications work fairly well, and will be updated to final versions via official online update as soon as possible. The online repositories contain many more KDE 4 applications, such as Dragon Player, Okteta, KSystemLog, and Yakuake. Webkitpart is optionally included which makes use of the WebKit part of Qt 4.4.

YaST Ported to Qt4
openSUSE's administration and installation tool, YaST, and SaX2 have been ported to Qt4 for this release. This allowed the YaST developers to use CCS-like Qt stylesheets for the installer, giving it a themed look:

YaST is now using Oxygen icons to give it an integrated look in KDE 4.

KDE 4.1, KDE Four Live

While KDE 4.1 did not manage to make it into openSUSE 11.0, its packages will be available via 1-click-install in the openSUSE Build Service. You can track KDE4's development by using the regularly updated KDE 4 snapshot packages. The openSUSE-based KDE Four Live CD will be based on openSUSE 11.0 in future releases.