CrystalXP.net

Two weeks ago, the Release Candidate of KDE 4.2 has been published, and today the final version of KDE 4.2 is available.

First, for web users who don't know KDE you can read this article and you can also visit this page.



Remind that at its launch on January 2008, KDE 4 was controversial notably because of problems of stability, the lack of some applications... On the end of July 2008, the arrival of the version 4.1 brought a little more stability and some application such as KDE-PIM, Dragon Player... but this version didn't satisfy yet the whole community, and some nostalgic users prefer using the previous version 3.5. That's why, the final version of KDE 4.2, considered to be more than a simple update, is longed-for, and it could be the real beginning of KDE 4.



This latest version of KDE brings many bug fixes, many features, some new and improved applications, and users interface improvements.





First,KDE 4.2 is more stable and more performant, the release has implemented many features that were present in KDE 3.5 but had been missing in KDE 4.0 and 4.1. Then, many improvements have been made forthe visual elements of the panel configutation Plasma and the window manager KWin such as :

- Support of Google gadgets



- New applets like the calendar, timer, special character selector... Plasma applets can be written in Ruby and Python. Support for applets written in JavaScript and Mac OS dashboard widgets has been further improved.
- Wallpapers are now provided plugins, so developers can easily write custom wallpaper systems in KDE 4.2. Available wallpaper plugins in KDE 4.2 will be slideshows and of course regular static images and solid colors.
- New desktop effects have been added such as the Magic Lamp, Minimize effect, Cube and Sphere desktop switchers
- etc. (for more click here)



Notice also many other improvements :

- Dolphin now supports previews of files in tooltips and has gained a slider to zoom in and out on file item views





- Konqueror offers increased loading speed by prefetching domain name data in KHTML. A find-as-you-type bar improves navigation in webpages



- KMail has a powerful and attractive message header list, and reworked attachment view



- Kontact has gained a new planner summary and support for drag and drop in the free/busy view.
-etc. (for more, click here)

And also new applications :

- PowerDevil, the new KDE4 power management infrastructure brings a modern, integrated tool for controlling various aspects of mobile devices.
- A new printing configuration system brings back a number of features users have been missing in KDE 4.0 and 4.1. The components "printer-applet" and "system-config-printer" are shipped with the kdeadmin and kdeutils module.
- Killbots is a new game shipped with the kdegames module. Other games have improved user interaction and added themes and levels.



- etc. (for more, click on this link)

If you want to discover and download the final version of KDE 4.2, you can click on this link, and for more information it is by this way.