KDE 4.0 Released With openSUSE Packages and Live CD

The KDE Community has announced the immediate availability of KDE 4.0.0. This significant release marks both the end of the long and intensive development cycle leading up to KDE 4.0 and the beginning of the KDE 4 era. KDE developers, including our openSUSE KDE Team, have been working on getting toward KDE 4.0 for over 2 years.

The Start of Something Amazing: A Revolutionary New Desktop

The KDE 4 Libraries have seen major improvements in almost all areas. The Phonon multimedia framework provides platform independent multimedia support to all KDE applications, the Solid hardware integration framework makes interacting with (removable) devices easier and provides tools for better powermanagement.

The KDE 4 Desktop has gained some major new capabilities. The Plasma desktop shell offers a new desktop interface, including panel, menu and widgets on the desktop as well as a dashboard function. KWin, the KDE Window manager now supports advanced graphical effects to ease interaction with your windows.

Lots of KDE Applications have seen improvements as well. Visual updates through using vector-based artwork, changes in the underlying libraries, user interface enhancements, new features, even new applications – you name it, KDE 4.0 has it. Okular, the new document viewer and Dolphin, the new filemanager are only two applications that leverage KDE 4.0’s new technologies.

The Oxygen Artwork team provides a breath of fresh air on the desktop. Nearly all user-visible parts of the KDE desktop and applications have been given a facelift. Beauty and consistency are two of the basic concepts behind Oxygen.

See the rest of the visual guide for more information and images.

KDE 4.0 Packages, openSUSE-based KDE 4.0 Live CD

Regular KDE 4 Packages and an openSUSE-based KDE Four Live CD have been available throughout the whole cycle, and final versions of them are also available now. On openSUSE 10.3 you can use 1-click-install to get the KDE 4.0 desktop environment:

Or you can choose to install a more basic KDE 4 desktop. Developers can also optionally install the KDE 4 build dependencies: all the packages you need to have installed for compiling KDE 4.0 from source (experts only).