KDE 4.3 Released

OSNews ^ | August 5th | Thom Holwerda

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

The KDE team has released KDE 4.3. This release comes packed with improvements and bug fixes - in fact, over the last six months, 10000 bugs were squashed, 2000 feature requests handled, and 63000 changes were checked in by 700 people. We've already talked about this new release in quite some detail last week, but let's take a look at the most important new features anyway.

The Plasma desktop shell comes with a new default theme called Air, which looks a lot less heavy than the previous Oxygen theme. Plasma has also been improved performance-wise, and it takes up less memory. The folder view widget now has a feature which allows you to drill down into folders without having to open Dolphin.

The SystemSettings tool can now employ the tree view again (KDE 3 people, rejoice!), and it also has been improved performance-wise. Dolphin received some love as well, such as small previews of files within a folder, and its configuration panel has been improved.

This is just a selection. KDE 4.3 comes packed with changes and improvements, so have a look around the release announcement to see if there's anything of your fancy. Distributions will pick this new release up soon enough.

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

I've been using it for about a week now, and I like it. It's a little bit faster, especially with respect to the factory bundled games.

[Nateman]

I’m use to Gnome myself, but I do use PCLinux every now and then. I’m amazed there was that many bugs to find in the first place.

[Terpfen]

I’m amazed there was that many bugs to find in the first place.

Not everything listed as a bug is actually a bug. In bug tracking software, everything is filed as a bug, even performance enhancements or improvements to already-functioning code. When it's marked as fixed, then it counts as a bugfix, even though it wasn't a bug in the first place.

On top of that, every piece of software in the world has an enormous amount of bugs, either existing in original code or added through regressions. Usually they don't impact performance, but are just glitches in the background that most people don't see. Regardless, they're there.

[wally_bert]

I need to get back into Linux more. About all I do with it now is lift data from uncooperative Windows boxes with Knoppix. I think I have pretty much forgotten what command line stuff I knew too.

[Dumpster Baby]

Oceans of bugs, seas of bugs, mountains of bugs, valleys of bugs, wide open plains of bugs, continents of bugs......... All my installed Linux versions use KDE 3.5 or that version of Linux just doesn't get installed.

:o)

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

Linux isn’t about command line anymore. Hasn’t been for quite a long time.

Sure, you can access the CLI if you want. It’s there. But it’s unnecessary.

[pctech]

I'd be tempted to try Linux except for the fact that it just doesn't work like Windows, sorry to Linux geeks out there.

You can't install programming the way you do Windows and it's still harder to work with plus there just aren't many programs that are comparable to programs like Photoshop.

[buridan]

You can run Windows Photoshop with Wine under Linux.

[snowsislander]

KDE 4.3 is fine -— indeed, I am posting from KDE 4.3. I moved to kdm and KDE because I was having an odd gdm problem.