The first alpha release of KDE 4.1 was launched today, as the KDE Community announced, and it provides a first preview of what we can expect from the final version, due for release on July 29. Let's have a quick look at the features that will be available in KDE 4.1:

￭ KDE 4.1 will bring Akonadi, the desktop-independent storage engine for PIM (Personal Information Management) data. While not yet based on Akonadi, KDE 4.1 will also bring a KDE 4 port of PIM programs such as KOrganizer and KMail;
￭ Although the ports are not completely finished yet, KDE 4.1 will also be available on OpenSolaris, Mac OS X and Windows platforms;
￭ KDE 4.1 Alpha 1 is powered by Qt 4.4, a version that brings improvements in performance and functionality, faster SVG rendering, layouts and widgets can now be used on canvases such as the Plasma desktop and panel. Migrating the Plasma codebase to these new features is still work in progress, so some instability is to be expected here.

In other news, the next maintenance release of KDE4, KDE 4.0.4, is expected any day now!

The KDE 4.1 release schedule:

￭ March 31st, 2008: Soft Feature Freeze
￭ April 22nd, 2008: Hard Feature Freeze
￭ April 22nd, 2008: Tag KDE 4.1 Alpha 1
￭ April 29th, 2008: Release KDE 4.1 Alpha 1
￭ May 20th, 2008: Message Freeze.
￭ May 20th, 2008: Tag KDE 4.1 Beta 1
￭ May 27th, 2008: Release KDE 4.1 Beta 1
￭ June 17th, 2008: Tag KDE 4.1 Beta 2
￭ June 24th, 2008: Release KDE 4.1 Beta 2
￭ July 8th, 2008: Artwork Freeze
￭ July 8th, 2008: Tag KDE 4.1 RC 1
￭ July 15th, 2008: Release KDE 4.1 RC 1
￭ July 22nd, 2008: Tag KDE 4.1.0
￭ July 29th, 2008: Release KDE 4.1

Would you like to see KDE 4 in action? Download the openSUSE-based KDE 4.0.3 Live CD right now from Softpedia.

Are you a console freak and you want to compile KDE 4.1 Alpha 1 yourself? Download the KDE 4.1 sources right now from Softpedia.