Schedules/Is KDE 4.1 for you?

From KDE Community Wiki

KDE 4.1 is scheduled for release at the end of July 2008. This is a significant milestone for the KDE 4 series and for KDE in general, but as an early release in the KDE 4 cycle, it does have some known issues which will not be fixed in KDE 4.1. Huge progress has been made in KDE 4.1 which is listed in the KDE 4.1 Feature Plan.

Some of the more obvious issues are listed below. If these issues are important to you, you should stay with KDE 3.5 (KDE 3.5.10 is scheduled for release in August) or KDE 4.0 until KDE 4.2 when most of these issues are scheduled to be resolved.

It is possible that distributions will work around some of these issues before distributing to users. KDE 4.2 is currently scheduled for release in February 2009.

The Desktop

The desktop in KDE 4.1 will mark the start of some significant user interface changes. This is a step away from the way the KDE 3 desktop was designed, but everything possible on your KDE 3.5.9 desktop will also be possible on your KDE 4 desktop. For KDE 4.1, however, some features are not yet complete, but should be ready for KDE 4.2.

FolderView

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This page is under construction. This section could really do with some screenshots on the page. You can help by editing this page.

Under Construction


FolderView is a new technology on the KDE 4 desktop which allows more than one collection of icons on your "desktop" and discourages using it as dumping ground for miscellaneous files. However, it can still be configured to behave just like KDE 3 did. See this blog entry by Lydia Pintscher for some more information on FolderView.

The following issues are known and are scheduled to be resolved in KDE 4.2 next February:

  • Icons do not need to be in a grid. You can drag them to any point within the FolderView. However, the location you leave them in is not saved, so they will be in a grid again the next time you start the desktop.
  • You can have a full screen "desktop with icons", but if you do, you can not have a desktop background. See also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhYinDOKbE8
  • You can have a desktop background, but then you must use the FolderView in regular, not entire screen mode (as shown in Lydia's blog above).

Panels and workspaces

Some panel issues can be resolved before KDE 4.2. Because of the modular design of Plasma, a new panel could be quite easily written with autohide functionality. This would likely be written by a distribution team or a developer on kde-apps.org.

  • Autohiding of panels is not yet configurable.
  • It is not possible to set different desktop wallpapers for different virtual desktops.
  • The Mac-style menu bar is not available.


Applications

New and missing applications

Some KDE 3 applications have not yet been ported to KDE 4. Most distributions still package KDE 3 versions of these applications with their KDE 4 desktop. Some notable applications which will not be included in KDE 4.1 are listed below:

  • KOffice has a different release schedule than KDE 4. KOffice 2.0 will likely be released late in 2008. Alpha 9 has been released with binaries for all three major platforms. The developers are looking for volunteers to help put together screenshots for visual changelogs.
  • Amarok has a different release schedule than KDE 4. The Amarok team is currently aiming for a first release in October 2008 for the 2.0 series. Amarok does have their second Alpha release out entitled Aulanerk. Nightly builds are available through Project Neon.
  • Konversation has a different release schedule than KDE 4. Konversation 2.0 does not yet have a release schedule.
  • digiKam has a different release schedule than KDE 4. They have a beta release of the KDE 4 port, with many new features.
  • k3b has a different release schedule than KDE 4. An alpha release of 1.1 (the KDE 4 port) is forthcoming, but not yet released.
  • Kaffeine has a different release schedule than KDE 4. The KDE 4 port does not yet have a release schedule.
  • Several KDE games do not have a KDE 4 port yet. Among these are kasteroids, kfouleggs, ksirtet.
  • Krusader has a different release schedule than KDE 4. There is a beta release available.


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