The first beta of what will become KDE 4.9 was released yesterday, just four day past due date. After the usual round of testing and more pre-stable releases, the final, stable version of KDE 4.9 should hit the proverbial shelves early August 2012. The complete release schedule is available here.
The list of planned features is very long and includes many UX and UI additions, improvements and bugfixes, but the two that I am looking forward to the most are KLook and StackFolder, two features already available by default on ROSA Marathon 2012 and also in ROSA Desktop 2012 beta.
KLook is a kde-baseapp, while StackFolder is a kdeplasma-addon. Both were contributed upstream by ROSA Laboratory’s developers. ROSA Laboratory is the Russian outfit behind ROSA Desktop/Marathon.
KLook, which I have written about here, and StackFolder, are major user-friendly additions to KDE. KLook brings a multi-MIME-type viewer integrated into Dolphin. Users will be able to view file-types supported by KLook straight from Dolphin without having to launch separate applications. Currently, KLook supports viewing audio, video, text and image (png and jpg) files. And it has a thumbnail and a fullscreen mode. The screen shot below shows KLook in thumbnail viewing mode.
StackFolder, the other feature, is a panel widget that offers quick file previews, making it easy to browse the contents of your home folder or any folder right from the panel without opening Dolphin, the file manager. A screen shot from a test installation of ROSA Desktop 2012 beta showing contents of the system’s home folder’s StackFolder.
The best part is that KLook has also been integrated into StackFolder, making it easy to view supported file-types from the panel. Here is a screen shot of a video file being viewed from a StackFolder, courtesy of KLook.
These are just two of many features that should be available on all KDE desktops, not just on ROSA Marathon and ROSA Desktop.
Out of the all the desktop environments I’ve used, the one that’s made me go “Wow, that’s cool” the most is KDE.
It’s nice to see KDE hasn’t abandoned the classic desktop, and is looking to make it even better.
The KDE edition of ROSA Linux is much better than any out there.
The word is Hu? I think it’s HUU-RAAH!
Lookin’ good, KDE!
Wtf! Couple new icon, button and wallpaper? Why u even write news for this kind of crap?
So StackFolder and KLook are crap. What have you contributed to KDE lately?
Wise guy, do you know how many lines of code it takes to give you that “couple new icon, button and wallpaper?”
Unfortunately those two features can’t make into KDE SC 4.9, because KDE SC 4.9 has been feature frozen since more than two weeks ago.
Hope they can become part of KDE SC 4.10.
I think you are wrong. “Feature frozen” means no new features are accepted into the code being actively developed. If you take a look at the list of planned features, KLook is in todo status, while StackFolder is in-progress.
No, once KDE SC is (hard) feature frozen[1], no feature commits are allowed anymore by policy, even that feature is planned and in-progress. In other words, if one feature is not finished before the feature frezon, it has to wait for next KDE SC. If some feature/application is not included in beta1(already out), it won’t appear in the final official release, either.
[1] http://techbase.kde.org/Schedules/KDE4/4.9_Release_Schedule#Thursday.2C_May_17.2C_2012:_KDE_4.9_Hard_Feature_Freeze
Well, let’s keep our fingers crossed.
August is just around the corner.
See this.
what icon set is used on those screenshots?
ROSA icons. See here.
It’s good to see QuickLook and Stacks ported from OS X to the open source world. They are good user experience improvement