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KDE 4.0 Beta 1 Released
dbhost writes "Along with this morning's cup of coffee and log reviews, I discovered that the KDE team is moving forward with a long awaited beta release of KDE 4.0 beta release of KDE 4.0. The most interesting item I found in the notes is that the file manager in KDE is being separated from Konqueror into a component called Dolphin. Also, according to the announcement, konsole has been treated to a number of improvements such as split view, and history highlighting."
The KDE developers have been reminding people that KDE4 is not KDE 4.0. KDE 4.0 will be the first release in the KDE4 series. All the promised features won't be there in the initial version, and some of them will have to wait until KDE 4.1 or KDE 4.2. It never hurts to remind this, for all the people who have very high expectations.
For those who dont want to install and test, here is an OpenSuse based KDE Live CD
I was told in the KDE channel on Freenode that Dolphin will be an alternative (and default) file browser, but that Konqueror will still retain that functionality. Nitpicking the submission, but I thought it was worth pointing out.
audioLibre - freedom of music
KDE 4 is the entire 4.y.z series. KDE 4.0 refers to just the 4.0.z versions.
No, sorry if that was confusing. I meant to say that KDE4 is a generic name for KDE 4.x, the whole release series (or branch, if you prefer). When the KDE developers talked about everything KDE4 will have, some people were left thinking that all the promised features will be in the KDE 4.0 release, and this is not the case. They should not think the KDE4 developers have lied and in the end left out all those features. KDE 4.0 will have all (or most) the underlying technologies needed to deliver the promised features, but some features will not appear inmediately. Instead, you may have to wait until KDE 4.1 (or 4.2, or ...) to enjoy them.
QT4 is supposed to bring speed increases all over the place, help with parallel processing, it brings SVG rendering, and lessens the memory footprint all at the same time. That is pretty much a reality today even with the beta.
Right now Konqueror still exists as the super-app for those who love it, but there is a better dedicated file viewer called Okular that renders all kinds of documents including PDFs, and does so amazingly fast. There is a dedicated new file manager that I believe both KDE and Gnome fanatics will love. Now if only they have a KHTML/QT fork of Firefox, I'd be happy as pie, but that isn't happening anytime soon.
You get a new series of icons, which some I really love, and others I don't care for. Honestly, I'm just going to replace them with another icon set anyway, but the default icons on the whole are much nicer. There was a new default widget/theme set called Oxygen as well that I thought looked incredible, but the code was poor and so was performance so it went out the window. The new Oxygen widget/theme looks a little to plain for my taste. And it doesn't look like an OS X clone, but it certainly seems to follow the same design philosophy. Given that many worship at the altar of OS X, I'm sure it will be popular, but right now I'm particular to the Domino widgets and a nice dark theme.
The new kwin today has composite technology, which is good and bad. It is good in that we get 3D eye-candy in the desktop without too much fuss since it is built right into KDE. It is bad in that with all the peace and love of Compiz and Beryl getting back together, we just split into two camps again, and the truly brilliant compiz-fusion project is no basically delegated to Gnome users for the most part. I was very disappointed that the KDE team decided to invent the wheel from scratch (and as far as I know they don't really have many effects or plugins right now, where as Compiz-Fusion has tons) rather than just extend support for what already exists.
KDE 4 already has some other great technologies like the semantic desktop project, and Sonnet is very promising, though unfinished. Solid, Phonon and Decibel might not be obvious to the end-user, but apparently are very important back-end technologies. I'm also a fan of Strigi, which is very much a reality today, but I'm not sure if it is being included by default in KDE 4 or not.
There are tons, and I mean tons of little new things, like "Get New Hot Stuff" which is a terrible name, but a neat concept. It is a simple seamless way to download new content into applications. It can already been seen in Amarok if you want to download plug-ins and such.
Plasma does exist, but it is just basically a new (easier) way to make widgets largely. The API and libraries are supposed to very useful, but the revolution in how we use our desktops doesn't exist, and I'm not sure anyone is working on it.
So on one hand, we do have plenty of new toys and great technology that is part of KDE 4. And at the same time it is fair to say that with the most visible project (Plasma) there were huge promises and little delivered. Take that as you will.
It should also be noted that Amarok and KOffice aren't tired directly into the KDE release schedule, but Amarok 2 and KOffice 2 are planned to be major versions and coincide with KDE 4, though they will likely release slightly later than KDE 4.
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Aside from the fact that I've never been "daunted" by a KDE app even when I was a newbie, you may like the way KDE4 is actually dealing with the issue. If you look for example at this screeshot of Okular, you will notice that now icons will be presented by default with text. This means a much bigger overall icon area, which makes the icon much easier to hit and forces the developer to separate wheat from chaff when creating toolbars.
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