Schedules/Is KDE 4.1 for you?
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 2008) until KDE 4.2 is released (scheduled for release in January 2009) 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
This page is under construction. This section could really do with some screenshots on the page. You can help by editing this page.
FolderView is a new technology on the KDE 4 desktop which allows more than one collection of icons on your "desktop". However, it can still be configured to behave much 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:
Projects with a different release schedule than KDE4.
Project (Current Version - Final Release Date)
Put project info here...
- Krusader 2.0 (Beta 1 - Unknown)
Put project info here...
- KOffice 2.0 (Alpha 9 - Late 2008)
Binaries are available for all three major platforms. The developers are looking for volunteers to help put together screenshots for visual changelogs.
- Amarok 2.0 (Alpha 2 "Aulanerk" - October 2008)
Nightly builds are available through Project Neon.
- k3b 1.1 (Pre-Alpha - Unknown)
An alpha release of 1.1 (the KDE 4 port) is forthcoming, but not yet released.
- Kaffeine (Pre-Alpha - Unknown)
The KDE4 port is under way but requires major rewriting to support Phonon and other new features. No releases scheduled at this time.
- Konversation 2.0 (Pre-Alpha - Unknown)
The KDE4 port will not be released to sometime after version 1.1, which will be the last KDE3 release.
- There are also several KDE games that do not have a KDE 4 port yet. Among these are kasteroids, kfouleggs, ksirtet.
- KDevelop 4.0 (Pre-Alpha - Unknown)
An alpha release of 4.0 (a rewritten from scratch version) is forthcoming, but not yet released. Normal users should continue to use the stable KDevelop 3.5.2 version for the time being.