Linux: The Ultimate Guide

Computerworld reporter Steven Vaughan-Nichols criticized KDE 4.0 
and 4.1 and called for a fork of KDE 3.5 by rebuilding on top of Qt 4. The 
same reporter praised KDE 4.3 and welcomed Trinity’s KDE 3.5 continu-
ation project. However, Linus Torvalds switched from GNOME to KDE 
in December 2005, GNOME after Fedora replaced KDE 3.5 with 4.0. In 
an interview with Computer World, he described KDE 4.0 as a “break 
everything” model and “half-baked” release, claiming that he expected it 
to upgrade KDE version 3.5. Significant features were being regressed due 
to its extensive changes.
Major Updates of KDE 4
Many applications such as Extragear and KOffice modules have acquired 
numerous improvements with the new features of KDE 4 and Qt 4. But 
since they follow their release schedule, they were not available at the time 
of the first KDE 4 release. These include applications such as Amarok, 
K3b, digiKam, KWord, and Krita. The Qt 4 series enabled KDE 4 to use 
less memory and be noticeably faster than KDE 3. The KDE libraries have 
been made more efficient. However, KDE 4.4 has the highest memory uti-
lization on default Ubuntu installations than GNOME 2.29 Xfce 4.6.
The version LXDE 0.5. Qt version 4 is available under the LGPL for 
Mac OS X and Windows operating system, which allows KDE version 4 to 
run on those platforms. In August 2010, KDE Software Compilation four 
on Mac OS X was considered beta, while Windows is not in the finishing 
state so that applications can be unsuitable for day-to-day use. Both ports 
use as little divergent code as possible to make the applications function 
almost identically on all platforms. In Summer of Code, an icon cache was 
created to decrease application start-up times in KDE 4. Improvements 
were varied – Kfind, an application that used several hundred icons. Other 
applications and an entire KDE session started a little over a second faster.

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KDE Plasma Desktop Environment 
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Pre-releases
KDE 4.0 Alpha 1 was released in the market after adding significant fea-
tures to KDE base libraries, shifting the focus onto integrating the new 
technologies into applications and the primary desktop. Alpha 1 had new 
frameworks to build applications with, providing improved hardware and 
multimedia integration through Solid and Phonon. Dolphin and Okular 
were integrated, and a unique visual appearance was provided through 
Oxygen icons.
Alpha 2 was released mainly focused on integrating the Plasma Desktop, 
improving the functionality, and stabilizing KDE.
Beta 1 was released with significant features included a pixmap cache 
– KDE PIM improvements, speeding up icon loading, improved KWin 
effects, and configuration, better interaction between Konqueror and 
Dolphin, and Metalink support added KGet for enhanced downloads.
• Beta 2 was released with the support of BSD and Solaris. The release 
included:
• The addition of the Blitz graphic library.
• Allowing developers to use high-performance graphical tricks like 
icon animation.
• KRDC (K Remote Desktop Client) overhaul for Google’s Summer 
of Code.
• Plasma provides Amarok’s central context view.
Beta 3 was released release was focused on stabilizing finishing the design 
of libraries for the release of the KDE Development Platform. Plasma had 
many new features, including an applet browser. The educational software 
received many improvements like Marble and Parley with bug fixes in 
other applications.
Beta 4 was released. A list of release blockers was compiled, listing 
issues that need to be resolved before KDE starts with the desktop’s release 
candidate cycle. The goal is to focus on stabilization and fixing the release 
blockers. At the same time, the first release of the KDE 4.0 Development 
Platform was released containing all the base libraries to develop KDE 
applications, including “widget libraries, a network abstraction layer, vari-
ous libraries for multimedia integration, hardware integration to resources 
on the network.”

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52
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Linux 
Let’s discuss the version of KDE 4
KDE 4.1
It was released on July 29, 2008, and included a shared emoticon them-
ing system used in PIM, Kopete, and DXS, which lets applications 
download and install data from the Internet with one click. Also intro-
duced are the GStreamer application, QuickTime 7, and DirectShow 
9 Phonon backends. Plasma improvements support Qt 4 widgets and 
WebKit integration, allowing many Apple Dashboard widgets to be dis-
played. There are also be ports of some applications to Windows and 
Mac OS X.
New applications include:
• Dragon Player multimedia player (formerly Codeine)
• Kontact with some Akonadi functionality
• Skanlite is a scanner application
• Step physics is a simulator
• Games – Kdiamond Kollision, Kubrick, KsirK, KBreakout
KDE 4.2
KDE 4.2 shows KMail, Dolphin, and was released on January 27, 2009. 
The release is viewed as a significant improvement beyond KDE 4.1 in all 
aspects and with a suitable replacement for KDE 3.5 for most users.
KDE Workspace Improvements
The 4.2 release includes the number of bug fixes that have implemented 
many features present in KDE 3.5 had missing in KDE 4.0 and 4.1. These 
include multiple row layout and grouping in the taskbar, icon hiding in the 
system tray, panel auto-hiding, window previews tooltips are back in the 
panel and taskbar, notifications, job tracking by Plasma, and have icons on 
the desktop using a Folder View as the desktop background where icons 
remain where they are placed.
New Plasma includes leaving messages on a locked screen, previewing 
files, switching desktop activities, monitoring news feeds, utilities such 
as the Pastebin applet, the calendar, timer, unique character selector, a 
QuickLaunch widget, and a system monitor, among many others. The 
Plasma workspace can load Google Gadgets. Its widgets can be written 

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KDE Plasma Desktop Environment 
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in Ruby and Python. Also, support for applets written in JavaScript and 
Mac OS X widgets has been improved. New desktop alterations have 
been added, such as the Magic Lamp, Minimize impact, and the Cube 
and Sphere desktop switchers. Other modifications, such as the Desktop 
Grid, have been improved. The user can easily choose effects that have 
been reworked to select the most commonly used results. Compositing 
desktops have been enabled by default, where drivers can support them. It 
can automatic checks confirm that compositing works before allowing it 
on the workspace.
KRunner has extended functionality via several new plugins, includ-
ing spell-checking, Konqueror can access browser history, control power 
through PowerDevil, KDE Places, Documents, and the ability to start spe-
cific sessions of the Kate editor, Konqueror, and Konsole. The converter 
plugin also supports quickly converting between speed, mass, and distance 
units. Multi-screen support has been improved via the Kephal library by 
fixing multiple bugs when running KDE on more than one monitor.
KDE 4.3
KDE 4.3 desktop was released on August 4, 2009, showing Dolphin, KMail, 
and a selection of desktop widgets, with this release being described as 
incremental and lacking in significant new features. It fixed over 10,000 
bugs and implemented almost 2,000 feature requests. Also, integra-
tion with other technologies, such as PolicyKit, NetworkManager and 
Geolocation services, was another focus of this release. A more flexible 
system tray has developed many new Plasmoids, including the openDesk-
top .o rg plasmoid, the first take on the Social Desktop. Plasma also receives 
more keyboard shortcuts.
KDE SC 4.4
It was released on February 9, 2010, based on version 4.6 of the Qt 4 tool-
kit. As such, KDE SC 4.4 has Qt’s performance improvements and Qt 4.6’s 
new features, such as the new animation framework Kinetic. A completely 
new application replaces KAddressBook with the same name – previously 
tentatively called KContactManager.The new KAddressBook is Akonadi 
integration and has a streamlined user interface. Another significant new 
feature is an additional new Plasma interface targeted toward netbooks. 
Kopete is released as version 1.0. KAuth, a cross-platform authentication 
API, is made in KDE SC 4.4. Initially, only PolicyKit is supported as a 
backend.

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Linux 
KDE SC 4.5
KDE SC 4.5 was released on August 10, 2010. New features include inte-
grating the WebKit library, an open-source web browser engine used in 
major browsers such as Apple Safari and Google Chrome. KDE’s KHTML 
engine will continue to be developed, whereas KPackage has been depre-
cated, and KPackageKit was suggested to replace it, but it didn’t make it 
replace it.
KDE SC 4.6
KDE SC 4.6 was released on January 26, 2011, and had better OpenGL 
compositing along with a myriad of fixes and features.
KDE SC 4.7
It was released on July 28, 2011. The version updated KWin to be com-
patible with OpenGL ES 2.0, which will enhance its portability to mobile 
and tablet platforms. Other optimizations, such as Qt Quick, were made 
to strengthen this portability. This version brought some updates and 
enhancements to Plasma Desktop, such as better network management 
and updates to certain widgets and activities.
Apart from the desktop environment, version 4.7 updates many appli-
cations within the Software Compilation. The Dolphin file manager has 
been updated to provide a clean user interface. Now it supports voice 
navigation, map creation, and new plugins. The Gwenview image viewer 
allows users to compare more than two photos side by side. The Kontact 
database has been ported to Akonadi, allowing the database to be acces-
sible from other applications.
DigiKam has been supporting face detection, image versioning, image 
tagging. Most of the applications such as Kate, Kalzium, KAlgebra, 
KStars, and KDevelop have been updated. Moreover, version 4.7 fixed over 
12,000+ bugs.
KDE SC 4.8
KDE SC Release 4.8 was available on January 25, 2012.