[dot] KDE 4.0 Alpha 2 Released

[Dot Stories]

URL: http://dot.kde.org/1183569837/

From: Sebastian Kügler <sebas at kde.org>
Dept: glescas-glory
Date: Wednesday 04/Jul/2007, @10:23

KDE 4.0 Alpha 2 Released
========================

   The KDE Community is happy to announce the immediate availability of
the second alpha  release of the K Desktop Environment. This release
comes straight out of Glasgow,  the largest city in Scotland where
aKademy [http://akademy.kde.org] is currently taking place.  Hundreds of
KDE hackers are working like crazy to hunt down bugs, complete features 
for KDE 4.0 and sit together developing and finishing new and exciting
applications  for the new major version of the leading Free Desktop.

  The most exciting new development is currently going on in  Plasma
[http://plasma.kde.org], KDE 4's new shell for the desktop.  Plasma
provides krunner, an application to directly launch programs and start
other  tasks. Plasmoids are applets that display information such as the
time, information about hardware  devices and also provide access to
online resources, for example  showing RSS feeds, images or providing
dictionary lookup.
 Systemsettings, the replacement for kcontrol is an improved user
interface hosting various modules for  configuring the desktop and other
aspects of the system is another addition worth mentioning.
 The upcoming weeks will be spent on further stabilizing and
streamlining the underlying  KDE libraries to provide a stable interface
for programmers for the whole KDE4 lifecycle.  Furthermore, the focus
will shift to finishing the applications that are shipped with  the base
desktop and polishing their user interfaces.
 The end of July will see a full freeze of the kdelibs module,
manifested in the first  beta release of KDE 4.0 with the final release
currently planned for the end of October this year.
 For the bravehearts who want to try KDE 4.0 Alpha2, please refer to 
this page [http://www.kde.org/info/3.91.php]  to find ways to have a
peak at the current status yourself. As the pace of development  would
outdate screenshots very quickly, the best way to find out about
progress is to refer to sites such as The Dot [http://dot.kde.org] or 
Planet KDE [http:://planetkde.org], the collection of KDE developers'
weblogs.