Wednesday, March 21 2007 @ 02:00 PM EST Contributed by: sde
The KDE Community and the release team have put together a release plan for the long anticipated version 4.0, which is planned to be released in October 2007. KDE 4.0 will be a major milestone for the Free Desktop, as it offers a new foundation and set of frameworks that will shape the desktop user experience for years to come. Users will benefit from improved speed through Qt 4, integration of hardware through Solid, multimedia performance via Phonon, usability enhancements by close collaboration with OpenUsability, new real-time communication options with Decibel, spell-checking with Sonnet, comprehensive desktop search through Strigi and Nepomuk, a new desktop metaphor through Plasma and, last but not least, a completely new artwork experience called Oxygen.
KDE 4.0 will likely contain initial versions of all the major subsystems that have been described in recent Dot articles. These "Pillars" of KDE set the stage for desktop and application growth and maturity over the life of the KDE 4 series. The release schedule contains a number of milestones and dates, the most important of those being:
