A new development version of KDE has been made available for testing

Jul 28, 2014 11:35 GMT  ·  By

The KDE Project developers have announced that the third beta of Applications and Platform 4.14 has been released and they need manpower to test it properly.

The KDE developers are working to launch the final version of Applications and Platform 4.14, which will also be the last one before the project switches to KDE Frameworks 5 and KDE Plasma 5.

Even when KDE 4.14 is finally out, it will take a long while until the Linux distribution developers choose to adopt any new major packages and changes, and given the fact that 4.14 will be the last one, it will also get a lot more visibility and traction than usual.

Not everyone is happy with the direction taken by KDE Plasma 5, but it's coming, and in a year or two, it will be all over. KDE Applications and Platform 4.14 is the last chance for users to experience the old desktop environment before the developers move to a more modern look.

“KDE released the third beta of the new versions of Applications and Development Platform. With API, dependency and feature freezes in place, the KDE team's focus is now on fixing bugs and further polishing.”

“With the large number of changes, the 4.14 releases need a thorough testing in order to maintain and improve the quality and user experience. Actual users are critical to maintaining high KDE quality, because developers simply cannot test every possible configuration. We're counting on you to help find bugs early so they can be squashed before the final release,” say the developers.

The next version in the series is expected to arrive on July 30 and the release of the final version should happen on August 30. The devs will maintain this last branch for quite some time and three point releases will be made available, with the last one making an appearance on November 11. After this release, most of the work will be directed at the upcoming KDE Frameworks 5 and KDE Plasma 5.

More details about the changes, fixes, and new features of this build can be found in the official announcement. Also, you can download the latest KDE Applications and Development Platform 4.14 Beta 3 sources right now from the official website. This is just the source, but it might be ready for testing in Arch Linux in a couple of days.

Remember that this is a development version and it should NOT be installed on production machines. It is intended for testing purposes only.