What Does Star 68 Mean

Several years of design, development and testing met today with the release of KDE 4.0. This significant release marks the beginning of the KDE 4 era.

The KDE 4 Desktop has gained some major new capabilities. The Plasma desktop shell offers a new desktop interface, including panel, menu and widgets on the desktop as well as a dashboard function. KWin, the KDE window manager, now supports advanced graphical effects to ease interaction with your windows. Many

KDE Applications have also been improved. Visual updates through the use of graphics vector changes in lower-level libraries, improved UI, new features, even new applications - you name it, KDE 4.0 has it. Okular, the new document viewer and Dolphin, the new file manager are only two applications that the new technology of KDE 4.0. The

KDE 4 libraries have undergone major improvements in most areas. The Phonon multimedia framework provides support independent media platform for all KDE applications. The hardware integration framework makes interacting with Solid devices (removable) devices easier and provides tools for better management energy.

The Oxygen Artwork team provides a breath of fresh air to the desktop. Nearly all the visible parts of the KDE desktop and applications have been given a facelift. The beauty and consistency are two of the basic concepts behind Oxygen.

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The following distributions have been notified about the availability of packages or KDE Live CD 4.0:

is expected shortly after its release an alpha version of 2008.1 Arklinux based on KDE 4, with a final version expected in 3 or 4 weeks. Fedora

incorporate KDE 4.0 in Fedora 9, which will be launched in April, with Alpha versions available since 24 January. KDE 4.0 packages are in the repository pre-alpha Rawhide . Gentoo Linux

provides KDE 4.0 in http://kde.gentoo.org . Mandriva

provide packages for 2008.0 release and is working on a Live CD with the latest draft of 2008.1.

packages are available openSUSE openSUSE 10.3 and openSUSE 10.2. Also available is a KDE 4 Live CD with these packages . KDE 4.0 will be part of the next version of openSUSE 11.0.

Ubuntu packages are included in the next release "Hardy Heron" (8.04) and also available as updates to the stable "Gutsy Gibbon" (7.10). Available is a Live CD for testing KDE 4.0. You can find more details in the announcement in Ubuntu.org.

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