KDE team has announced the availability of KDE 4.0 beta 1. This release marks the beginning of the integration process which will bring the powerful new technologies included in the now frozen KDE 4 libraries to the applications.
From now on, the applications will focus on integrating the new technology refined during the last months, and the library developers will try to fix all bugs found during this process. No new applications will enter the official KDE modules.
Now the KDE libraries are rather stable, the development focus is shifting to finishing other components of the desktop. One of the most notable components is Plasma. While the developers are pretty much ready with the infrastructure for the plasmoids, most of them are not yet shipped. By default, development of those features is happening in KDE’s source code repository in the playground module. Thus, you will still see good old Kicker, KDE’s panel and taskbar when you boot up KDE 4.0 Beta 1.
Javascript support has been added to plasma, and according to its lead developer, it might soon support the Mac OS X Dashboard widgets. Superkaramba applets are supported already, Opera widgets might follow soon.
For more information, refer here.
KDE 4 Beta 1 is available for Kubuntu. It’s available in Feisty backport repository for Fiesty users and it’s there in Gutsy development version for Gutsy users. Click here to read the instruction on installing and using it in Kubuntu.
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