KDE Ships First Release Candidate of Plasma Workspaces, Applications and Platform 4.10
Written for KDE SC by yurikoles on 2012-12-19
Today KDE released the first release candidate for its renewed Workspaces,
Applications, and Development Platform. Thanks to the feedback from the betas,
KDE already improved the quality noticably. Further polishing new and old
functionality will lead to a rock-stable, fast and beautiful release in
January, 2013. One particular change in this RC is an updated look to Plasma
workspaces.
Highlights of 4.10 include, but are not limited to:
* Qt Quick in Plasma Workspaces -- Qt Quick is continuing to make its way into
the Plasma Workspaces. Plasma Quick, KDE's extensions on top of QtQuick allow
deeper integration with the system and more powerful apps and Plasma
components. Plasma Containments can now be written in QtQuick. Various Plasma
widgets have been rewritten in QtQuick, notably the system tray, pager,
notifications, lock & logout, weather and weather station, comic strip and
calculator plasmoids.
* New Screen Locker -- A new screen locking mechanism based on QtQuick brings
more flexibility and security to Plasma Desktop.
* Animated Wallpapers -- Thanks to a new QtQuick-based wallpaper engine,
animated wallpapers are now much easier to create.
* Improved Zooming in Okular -- A technique called tiled rendering, which
internally splits up the document in parts and only renders visible parts
allows Okular to zoom in much more while reducing memory consumption. Okular
Active, the touch-friendly version of the powerful document reader is now part
of KDE SC.
* Faster indexing -- A new indexer allows the Nepomuk semantic engine faster
indexing of files. The new Tags kioslave allows users to browse their files by
tags in any KDE-powered application.
* Color Correction -- Gwenview, KDE's smart image viewer and Plasma's window
manager now support color correction and can be adjusted to the color profile
of different monitors, allowing for more natural representation of photos and
graphics.
* Notifications -- Plasma's notifications are now rendered using QtQuick,
notifications themselves, especially concerning power management have been
cleaned up.
* New Print Manager -- Setup of printers and monitoring jobs was improved
thanks to a new implementation of the Print Manager.
* Kate, KDE's Advanced Text Editor received multiple improvements regarding
user feedback. It is now extensible using Python plugins.
* KTouch -- KDE's touch-typing learning utility has been rewritten and
features a cleaner, more elegant user interface.
* libkdegames improvements -- Many parts of libkdegames have been rewritten,
porting instructions for 3rd party developers are available.
* KSudoku now allows printing puzzles.
* KJumpingCube has seen a large number of improvements making the game more
enjoyable.
More improvements can be found in the 4.10 Feature Plan. As with any large
number of changes, we need to give 4.10 a good testing in order to maintain
and improve the quality and user experience when users install the update.
Testing
KDE is running an extra detailed beta-testing program throughout the 4.10 beta
and RC releases. To participate, get the latest KDE 4.10. Instructions for
installing the latest test release can be found here.
Some areas of KDE deserve extra testing attention this time around. We have
checklists for testing in general, and recommendations for special attention
on the wiki.
Get Involved
The KDE beta-testing program is a way for everyone to contribute to the
ongoing quality of KDE software. You can make a difference by carefully
testing the programs that are part of the KDE 4.10 beta and assist developers
by identifying legitimate bugs. This means higher quality software, more
features and happier users and developers.
Beta Testing Program is structured so that any KDE user can give back to KDE,
regardless of their skill level. If you want to be part of this quality
improvement program, please contact the Team on the IRC channel #kde-quality
on freenode.net. The Team Leaders want to know ahead of time who is involved
in order to coordinate all of the testing activities. They are also committed
to having this project be fun and rewarding. After checking in, you can
install the beta through your distribution package manager. The KDE Community
wiki has instructions. This page will be updated as beta packages for other
distributions become available. With the beta installed, you can proceed with
testing. Please contact the Team on IRC #kde-quality if you need help getting
started.
