Slashdot Mirror
KDE 3.4 Beta 2 ('Keinstein') Released
Carewolf writes "Finally the KDE 3.4 beta 2 has been released (codename "Keinstein"). Besides being the latest and greatest, it also marks the KDE 3.4 feature freeze and will provide a good demonstration of the splendors that will be KDE 3.4. Feature and release plans can be found here, and the news is also covered on the dot. Download now and help hunt the last bugs for the next major release of KDE."
KDE is getting faster all the time. The core of KDE is generally faster now than in the 1.x timeframe. A few things are slower because they do more. Overall though KDE is fast. Effort is being made all the time to make things faster.
I use KDE 3.3 on a ppro-200 with 128Meg of ram and it works just fine.
That said, there are some things that will be much faster in KDE 4.x because qt4 is better in those areas.
KDE 3.4 already has preliminary support for X.org's Composite extension, meaning compositing can be handed off to hardware, true transparency, drop shadows, and all that. Unfortunately it's still rather buggy, which is only partly KDE's fault, and partly X.org's (it's still a fairly new development). I'd say it's pretty safe to say 4.0 will have full support for hardware acceleration and all kinds of iCandy... especially considering Qt4's Arthur.
Work is punishment for failing to procrastinate effectively.