The first beta release of the most awaited project of this year, KDE 4.0, was just announced today by the hard-working people behind the KDE project: "The KDE Community is happy to announce the first Beta release for KDE 4.0 is available now. This release marks the beginning of the integration process which will bring the powerful new technologies included in the now frozen KDE 4 libraries to the applications. Simultaneously KOffice have released the second Alpha of KOffice version 2."

This first beta version includes improved text rendering & layout and the new Flake library. Other highlights are:

• Marble widget can be used in Qt Designer;
• KWin has been greatly improved;
• Integration between Dolphin filemanager in KDE and Konqueror has been improved;
• Gwenview received usability work and features;
• Konsole has improved automatic tab titles, support for random background colors per-tab, clickable URLs and a new default color scheme;
• Okular, the universal document viewer of KDE4 introduces usability improvements, better multithreading and work on the print preview component;
• KRDC will be rewritten by Urs Wolfer, solving many longstanding issues and adding features like tabbed view and KWallet support;
• KOffice Alpha 2 is also available now.

The KDE 4.0 schedule:

1 April 2007 - Subsystem freeze
15 Apr 2007 - kdelibs Hackathon week
1 May 2007 - Alpha release + kdelibs soft API freeze
8 May 2007 - Usability and Accessibility review
1 June 2007 - Feature freeze
25 June 2007 until 24 September 2007 - Beta cycle, full kdelibs API freeze
25 September 2007 until 22 October 2007 - Release Candidate cycle
23 October 2007 - KDE 4.0 released

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 Mac OS X or Microsoft Windows.

For more details on this beta release, please visit the KDE 4.0 Beta 1 official webpage.

Until the final release of KDE 4.0 will be available in late October, you can download this first beta version of KDE Four now from Softpedia and you can also download the KDE LiveCD version 0.3.0 based on this first beta release, from Softpedia.

Here are some screenshots from KDE 4 Beta 1: