First Development Snapshot of KDE4 Released

"Krash" is the name of the first development snapshot of KDE 4, released today for testing and evaluation: " This snapshot is meant as a reference for developers who want to play with parts of the new technology KDE4 will provide, those who want to start porting their applications to the new KDE4 platform and for those that want to start to develop applications based on KDE4. This snapshot is not for end users, there is no guarantee that it will be stable, the interfaces are subject to changes at any time. The changes that have gone into the development version this snapshot is based on have all happend under the hood, little is visible yet.

Now it is up to application developers to use the new possibilities. While this snapshot will probably not be what kdelibs will finally look like, it should give a fair idea of what to expect."

Highlights of this release are:

￭ An initial port of kdelibs, kdebase and kdepimlibs to Qt 4, providing the developer with a wealth of new possibilities. This snapshot uses a preview of the upcoming Qt 4.2.
￭ DBus will be the Inter-Process-Communication protocol used for KDE 4. This snapshot contains an initial implementation. With the use of DBus, KDE will feature improved interoperability with other applications on the Free Desktop. Porting applications to DBus is explained on the porting wiki page.
￭ Phonon is another central feature of KDE4 providing a unified multimedia backend that offers an easy way for application developers to add multimedia capabilities to their applications.
￭ CMake is the new buildsystem used for KDE4.

Developers that want to port their applications and investigate this new technology are more than welcome to do so. Please note that this release is not meant for the end user, as it contains a minimal set of modules. The final version, KDE 4.0, will contain all the modules like you're used to from previous releases.

You can get this release from here, where there are some build instructions as well.

About KDE:

KDE is a powerful Free Software graphical desktop environment for Linux and Unix workstations. It combines ease of use, contemporary functionality, and outstanding graphical design with the technological superiority of the Unix operating system. KDE is a network transparent contemporary desktop environment for UNIX workstations. KDE seeks to fill the need for an easy to use desktop for Unix workstations, similar to the desktop environments found under the MacOS or Microsoft Windows.