First Release Candidate of KDE 4 Available Now

It's here folks! The first release candidate of KDE 4.0 has been released last night and it includes many improvements from previous Alpha and Beta versions : "The KDE Community is happy to announce the immediate availability of the first release candidate for KDE 4.0. This release candidate marks that the majority of the components of KDE 4.0 are now approaching release quality." The good news are that this release candidate is suitable for general use, so everybody can discover the improvements that were implemented in it.

While this first release candidate, codename "Calamity" hits the streets, Plasma (the brand new KDE 4 desktop shell) code is almost finished and the KDE team released the final version of the KDE Development Platform, which provides all the needed applications and libraries the KDE Desktop Environment is based on.

Once again, this release is important too, as the KDE developers rely on the KDE community to help them find and solve any bugs, no matter how important or unimportant they are. So if you want to make KDE 4.0 one of the best desktop environments ever, please Get it, run it, test it...

"Meanwhile, preparations for the KDE 4.0 release events are taking place, with the main event taking place in Mountain View, California in the USA in January 2008. Make sure you don't miss it!"

Here are some screenshots of KDE 4.0 RC1 in action:






The KDE 4.0 new release schedule:

Starting with October, 30th: KDE 4.0 Release Candidate Cycle
December, 20th: KDE 4.0 Final Release

About KDE 4

KDE 4 is the next generation of the popular K Desktop Environment which seeks to fulfill the need for a powerful yet easy to use desktop for both personal and enterprise computing. The aim of the KDE project for the 4.0 release is to put the foundations in place for future innovations on the Free Desktop. The many newly introduced technologies incorporated in the KDE libraries will make it easier for developers to add rich functionality to their applications, combining and connecting different components in any way they want.

KDE is an award-winning, independent project of hundreds of developers, translators, artists and other professionals worldwide collaborating over the Internet to create and freely distribute a sophisticated, customizable and stable desktop and office environment employing a flexible, component-based, network-transparent architecture and offering an outstanding development platform.

For more details on this release candidate version, please visit the KDE 4.0 RC1 official webpage.

Until the final release of KDE 4.0 is available in late December, you can download this first release candidate right now from Softpedia and you can also download the KDE LiveCD version 0.7 based on KDE 4.0 RC1, from here.

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