:: choice ::

random good link:
EuroQUIS

random evil link:
Ku Klux Klan

random quote:
"If you think you have the solution, the question was poorly phrased."

Gordon's Law

Release Schedule bits and Planned Features for KDE 4.1.

Earlier today, the KDE Release Team came up with a rough release schedule. This schedule is actually two-fold. Bugfix releases will come out every month, at least for the next half year. The next real feature release will be KDE 4.1 in July 2008. Furthermore, KDE will be releasing a new feature version every 6 months, so KDE 4.2 will be there in January 2009, 4.3 in July 2009, and so on. We hope that this way, we make it easier for both KDE people and distributors / OSVs to plan.

Plasma might see an intermittent release in the meantime, which is made quite easy with our improved infrastructure, so early adopting users won't need to wait until July for some sorely missing features (resizing, moving panel, anyone?!).

So what's in the pipeline for KDE 4.1? Let's see:

Mac Port
Windows Port
OpenSolaris Port
Plasma with widgets on canvas, makes things like layouting much easier, and generally integrating widgets into plasmoids
Webkit in plasma
Apple dashboard widgets support in Plasma
Decibel VOIP and real-time communication framework
Dragon Player multimedia player
More polished kopete
KDevelop and KDevplatform
KDE-PIM, based on Akonadi
GetHotNewStuff2 / DXS
Plasmagik plasma packages and add-on creator
Lots of smaller features

Impressive huh? Actually, a lot of those things is close to being done already, and of course, we'll be seeing the 'usual', but nonetheless important things like performance improvements, UI polish, artwork updates, translation and localisation improvements, bugfixes, newly ported applications, new 'smaller' features in applications, new plasmoids, more data on GetHotNewStuff, new KWin compositing effects, and so on ...

As KDE 4.1 will be based on Qt 4.4, we'll get some things for free: new backends for Phonon (gstreamer, DirectShow, QuickTime), performance improvements in SVG rendering, alien widgets for smoother resizing, webkit (there's a KPart being written by Trolltech peeps, and more freedom with GPLv3. (And the stuff I forgot :-)).

Around the same time, KOffice 2 should be available, which is another really big thing. Amarok2 also looks quite promising already, but I don't have exact data right now (could walk over and wake up Jeff Mitchell, but not sure if he'd like that ;-))

Disclaimer: Please note that this is not an official list, nobody guarantees that all or any of the above will end up in KDE 4.1. Right now, it looks like all this stuff will make it into 4.1, lots of it is even close to being finished already. In any event, don't complain if not everythings makes it into 4.1. Also, this list is not exclusive, so there will surely be more new things.

[ Sat, 19 Jan 2008 09:58:26 +0100 ] permanent link

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