14 DAY TRIAL // On January 25th, the KDE developers announced the second Release Candidate, and the last development release of the upcoming and highly anticipated KDE Software Compilation (KDE SC) 4.4. This development release, dubbed CampKDE, is here as a testing base for all of you who want to report bugs. The final release of KDE Software Compilation 4.4 will be available in exactly two weeks from now, on February 9th. KDE SC 4.4 is composed of the KDE Plasma Workspace, the KDE Applications and the KDE Development Platform. Here are the main changes, but many of them are the same with the ones from previous releases:
· Nepomuk Semantic Search has been improved with a new storage backend, new user interfaces, Nepomuk interaction and timeline view; · Plasma Desktop has been polished in many areas (better management of desktop widgets, widget sharing, better handling of storage devices); · Added Netbook shell; · Added Blogilo, a new blogging client; · Improved the Dolpin file manager; · Improved the Gwenview image viewer; · Added the new KAuth authorization framework on the KDE Development Platform.
For the complete list of changes, please check the official changelog.
How to test KDE SC 4.4 RC2:
Ubuntu and Kubuntu 9.10/10.04 users can test KDE SC 4.4 RC2 by following the instructions below. A big thank you goes to the Kubuntu.org developers for providing the packages in less than 24 hours from the release!
- Go to Main Menu -> System -> Administration and open the "Software Sources" application. Type your password and hit Enter; - Go to the second tab, "Other Software," click the 'Add' button and paste one of the following lines:
For Ubuntu/Kubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala):
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-ppa/beta/ubuntu karmic main
For Ubuntu/Kubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx):
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-ppa/beta/ubuntu lucid main
...and click the 'Add Source' button; - Go to the "Authentication" tab, click the "Import Key File" button and add this GPG Key (right click on the link and select "Save Link As" to save the file on your desktop); - Close the "Software Sources" application and you will be immediately asked if you want to reload the information about available software, so click the 'Reload' button and wait until the "Software Sources" window disappears; - Go to Main Menu -> System -> Administration and open the "Synaptic Package Manager" application. Let it load and search for kubuntu-desktop. Double click the entry and install it; - It is recommended that you reboot your system after the update process.
Those of you who prefer compiling KDE SC 4.4 RC2 from sources can grab them right now from Softpedia. Please remember that this is an unstable release and it should NOT be installed on production machines.