14 DAY TRIAL // The KDE Software Compilation 4.5 is shaping up nicely and the development team has unveiled the first release candidate. KDE SC 4.5 RC1, codename “Coppu,” is aimed at those wanting the cutting edge and who can live with some instability caused by the occasional bug. Despite the early release candidate, KDE SC 4.5 is still slated for an August launch.
“Today, KDE delivers the first release candidate of the upcoming KDE Software Compilation 4.5. The final version will be available in August 2010 and this RC is intended for testers and early adopters who can help by finding and reporting bugs,” the official announcement read.
“With the start of the release candidate cycle, the development community focusses on bug fixing and polishing in preparation for the final release while the translators finish the last texts,” it added.
The team has been hard at work and plenty of bugs have been fixed since the previous release, KDE SC 4.5 Beta 2. A total of 1165 issues have been resolved in this development cycle and 1233 have been reported by the testers.
Highlights of KDE SC 4.5.0 RC1:
· A revamped notification area which deprecates the “system tray” model in favor of a D-Bus-based system; · KWin-Tiling enables windows to be automatically placed (tiled) next to each other; · The WebKit rendering engine is now offered as an alternative to the KHTML one used by default in Konqueror. WebKit will be an optional install and won’t be packaged with the standard KDE SC 4.5 release; · An emphasis on stability and polishing the existing features and components.
KDE SC 4.5.0 RC1 sources are available for download here on Softpedia. Remember that this is a testing release and it should NOT be installed on production machines. It is intended to be used for testing purposes only. Please report bugs to bugs.kde.org.