KDE SC 4.5 Beta 1 released

The KDE Project developers have released a first beta for version 4.5 of the KDE Software Compilation (KDE SC), a development preview of the next major release for the popular Linux and Unix desktop. According to the developers, the beta is aimed at "testers and those that would like to have an early look at what's coming to their desktops and netbooks this summer". The final version of KDE 4.5 is scheduled to be released in August, 2010.

KDE SC 4.5 Beta 1, code named "cucumber", features a number of improvements over the previous 4.4.x series, such as a reworked notification area and support for tiling in the KWin window manager. Additionally, KDE's Konqueror web browser now uses WebKit as a rendering engine. As with all development releases, use in production environments and on mission critical systems is not advised.

More details about the development preview can be found in the release announcement and on the KDE SC 4.4.80 Info Page. A list of planned features is available on the KDE 4.5 TechBase page. KDE SC 4.5 Beta 1 source code is available to download from the project's web site. KDE is licensed under a combination of the LGPLv2, BSD, MIT and X11 licenses for core libraries and the GPLv2 or GPLv3 for applications. The latest stable release of KDE SC is version 4.4.3 from the 5th of May.

See also:

• Akademy 2010 conference program published, a report from The H.
• KDE's monthly bug fix released: KDE 4.4.3, a report from The H.
• KDE SC 4.4: Fresh breeze for KDE, a feature from The H.

(crve)