KDE 4.3 gets a third release candidate

The KDE developers, erring on the side of caution, have published a third release candidate of the desktop environment for Linux and Unix systems. The developers report that 4.3 already "feels very stable", but that they wanted to have a well-tested 4.3.0 release. The decision to go with a third release candidate, also known as version 4.2.98, came after a selection of fixes for regressions and performance problems were incorporated. Notable changes from the last release candidate include better SVG caching to stop applets freezing after resizing and a fix to broken HTTP redirects found in RC2.

The planned release date for KDE 4.3.0 is now August 4th. KDE 4.3.0 will integrate a number of new technologies such as the PolicyKit for managing user privileges and geo-location support, while improving animation effects, more add-ons for Plasma and a more usable Run Command pop-up.

Developers wishing to test the new release can find the packages on the KDE 4.2.98 info page which also includes links to pre-compiled binary versions for openSUSE 11.1,11.0 and 10.3 and for Kubuntu 9.04.

KDE is licensed under a combination of the LGPL2, BSD, MIT and X11 licenses for core libraries and the GPL2 or GPL3 for applications.

(djwm)