The “Break it Down” Blog

When KDE 4.0 was first released with major portions of the desktop rewritten and pieces of the desktop (from a user’s perspective) still left mostly raw or in some cases semi-functional, there was a large user lash-back to the “massive rewrite” approach taken; some calling to brand KDE 3.x and taking that branch forward instead of paying attention to the new 4.0 branch from the KDE team.

Wow, what a difference a day… or rather a point-release makes.

KDE 4.1 was announced yesterday and my god if that desktop doesn’t look about 100% better and slick enough to make me do a double and triple take.

KDE 4.1 was focused almost entirely on 3 things:

• Getting KDE-PIM (Mail, Organizer, RSS, Newsgroups) all updated and back in the desktop
• Getting Plasma polished, tightened up and looking ready for the ball (eye candy)
• New applications that had been almost ready for 4.0 prepped and included

We heard when 4.0 was released and the user response was mostly either “meh” or “what the hell”, that the massive amount of work that gone into KDE 4.0 had been almost all about getting the right plumbing and “under the covers” technical work done, which is why a lot of the spit and polish hadn’t been done on the UI yet.

Well it looks like the KDE devs weren’t kidding, after 4.0 got out the door they started in immediately on updates to the 4.0 release (patch releases) as well as milestones leading up to 4.1. The end result was a huge amount of polish to the user interface to tighten it down and streamline it, but also add little bells and whistles like the new filtering support in Dolphin (the file manager):

Not to mention any number of the other enhancements to the rest of the file manager, desktop, window manager and included applications.

You can check out a summarized list of the user-visible changes here:

• KDE-PIM is back with 4.1, containing the applications necessary for your personal information and communication. KMail as mail client, KOrganizer as planning component, Akregator as RSS feed reader and others are now available again in KDE 4 look.
• Dragon Player, an easy to use video player enters the stage
• Okteta is the new well-integrated and feature-rich hexeditor
• Step, the physics emulator makes learning physics fun and easy
• KSystemLog, helps you keep track of what is going on in your system
• New games such as KDiamond (a bejeweled clone), Kollision, KBreakOut and Kubrick make taking a break from your work irresistible
• Lokalize, helps translators to make KDE4 available in your language (if it’s not among the 50-odd languages KDE4 already supports)
• KSCD, your desktop CD player has been resurrected
• Dolphin, KDE’s filemanager has a new treeview in the main view, also new is the support for tabs. A new and innovative single-click selection allows for a more consistent user experience, and copy-to and move-to context actions make those actions easier accessible. Of course Konqueror is also available as alternative to Dolphin, taking advantage of most of the above features as well.
• Konqueror, KDE’s webbrowser now has support for re-opening already closed windows and tabs, it also scrolls smoothly through webpages.
• Gwenview, KDE’s image viewer has gotten a new fullscreen view, a thumbnail bar for easy access to other photos, a smart Undo system and support for rating images.
• KRDC, KDE’s remote desktop client now detects remote desktops on the local network automatically using the ZeroConf protocol.
• Marble, KDE’s desktop globe now integrates with OpenStreetMap so you can find your way everywhere using the Free Maps.
• KSysGuard, now supports monitoring process output or running applications so there is no need to restart your apps from a terminal anymore when you want to know what’s going on.
• KWin’s compositing window manager features have been more stabilized and extended. New effects such as the Coverswitch window switcher and the famous “wobbly windows” have been added.
• Plasma’s panel configuration has been extended. The new panel controller makes it easy to customize your panel providing direct visual feedback. You can also add panels and put them on different edges of your screen(s). The new folderview applet allows you to store files on your desktop (in fact it provides a view of a directory on your system). You can put zero, one or more folderviews onto your desktop, providing for easy and flexible access to the files you are working with.

You can check out the official announcement here, and if you really like reading, you can check out the 4.1 Feature Plan here (it’s a giant matrix of everything worked on, targetted or wished for in 4.1)

And of course a KDE 4.1 Screenshot gallery for your browsing pleasure: