tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17454220.post-10456267979371840942008-01-11T10:12:00.000-06:002008-01-11T10:24:15.749-06:00Today, 11 Jan 2007, the first official release of KDE4 was made! KDE 4.0.2 is a Free Software desktop environment built upon TrollTech's QT base, and released as Free Software under the GPL.<br /><br />KDE4 is a major change in how the KDE desktop works, and promises to be a very solid base to future KDE4 releases. KDE 4.1 should be released later this year as a bugfix and improved-capabilities release, at which point it will be more stable for use in production environments.<br /><br /><a href="http://kde.org/announcements/4.0/">Read more about the KDE4 release here</a>. Congrats to all of the KDE4 developers and users -- the future does indeed look very promising! This will be even more exciting as additional applications are re-coded to work with KDE4's libraries and base packages.<br /><br />The KDE4 series implements a lot of exciting changes (for software), such as:<br />- a smaller memory footprint - runs faster on the same hardware as KDE3! Try that, Vista! ;)<br />- new hardware backend named Solid, which helps to tie hardware better into the software that uses it<br />- a new sound mixer, Phoenon, which ties ALL of the various sound outputs in Linux to a single frontend - no more "Device is busy!" errors when trying to use multiple sources for sound<br />- Plasma, the new Desktop shell, with Scalable Vector Graphics to keep icons and images looking crisp at any size, and an incorporation of SuperKaramba widgets into KDE natively (Apple's OSX widgets support might be added for KDE 4.1 even!)<br />- Oxygen icon theme, to make your new KDE even MORE gorgeous<br />- and a lot of other fixes, improvements, simplifications, and applications!<br /><br />I have loaded KDE 4.0.2 onto my home Kubuntu computer and I will post screenshots later today or possibly tomorrow. Until then, check out other screenshots or join the IRC channel on Freenode to celebrate KDE4: irc.freenode.net: #kde4-release-party (note: requires an IRC client like Pidgeon or Konversation)lefty.cruppshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057046553552877729noreply@blogger.com