KDE 4.3.0 Beta 1: Eye Candy and More

KDE 4.3.0 Beta 1 is now available for testing and there sure are a whole lot of new things to look at on this Linux desktop GUI. While KDE 4.0 when it was first released showed lots of promise, but plenty of flaws, both KDE 4.1 and 4.2 have made some significant improvements.

With KDE 4.3.0, developers are going even further with more bug fixes and of course more features. At the top of the list for me is something called Policykit integration. Policykit basically enabled a better degree of control over a user desktop.

“The list of new features and improvements is long and impressive as ever,” KDE developer Sebastian Kugler stated. “There is a new tree view mode in System Settings, many cool new features, the desktop search becomes more visible to the user, and yet more polishing in user interfaces all over the place make using KDE more fun.”

The KDE 4.x series is also known for its ‘eye-candy’ and the 4.3 Beta is no exception with new window animations, and improvements to the Plasma desktop interface and KWin window manager.

There are a lot of minor items and tweaks too (check out the full list), that regular KDE 4.x users might notice.

From my point of view though, it’s really about usability. KDE 4.x completely changed the KDE desktop and that shocked more than few people. But now, a year later it doesn’t seem so strange, it is a whole lot more stable and polished. KDE 4.3.0 is still just a beta and is in the bug hunting phase. The final release is currently targetted for July.

Article courtesy of InternetNews.com.