After two years of work, development, and rewriting a lot of code, the KDE team has today announced the immediate availability of the latest installment of their innovative desktop series. KDE 4.0.0 features a rewritten desktop shell called Plasma, a new icon theme named Oxygen, a total overhaul of the entire graphical appearance, and KWin (the window manager) now supports compositing features and goes hand in hand with Compiz.
KDE, number 4: The new Kickoff Menu, Dolphin, and System Settings
Also coming with the new desktop is Dolphin, the new file browser which over time is supposed to replace KDE’s previous standard, Konqueror. Doplhin features a simplified interface, and a sidebar that has a similarity to the new sidebar of the Finder in Mac OS X, but they don’t work quite the same.
So-called Plasmoids are relying on the new desktop widget engine, much in the fashion of Apple’s Dashboard or similar solutions. It allows you to have small widgets with information floating on your desktop.
Other than that the desktop has seen a lot of more improvements and changes, and is available through mirrors and KDE’s site itself.
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 power management.
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 file manager 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 the 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.
Press Release: KDE 4 available for immediate release
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