KDE 4.4 Brings Lots of Improvement and Increased Functionality

As we mentioned in our news section about two weeks ago, KDE 4.4 was due to come out on February 9th, and without a hitch, it happened. Since KDE 4.3 was the reason I finally decided to upgrade to KDE 4 from 3.5 back at its release, I was excited to see if 4.4 would reinvigorate my love for the desktop environment, and in many ways, it actually has. There’s a lot more here than just stability fixes.

There’s so much new with 4.4, that I’d have to write an article, but since we’re dealing with a news post here, I’ll keep things simple. First and foremost, the entire environment has been heavily refined, with increased functionality and improved visuals. The three-lined window theme has finally been dropped and replaced with a much cleaner design, while many components have also experienced visual improvements (it’s hard to describe, but you’ll notice the differences fast after using 4.4 for a couple of minutes).

In addition to the environment itself being improved visually and functionality-wise, so have many of the plasmoids and KDE applications. There are even a couple of new applications as well, such as the Blogilo blogging software, and R, SAFE and Maxima scientific applications. In addition, the “GetHotNewStuff” interface has been heavily improved, making it easy for developers to offer downloadable content from within their applications, in a similar manner as downloading themes from inside KDE’s theme manager.

KDE’s own chat client, Kopete, has finally hit its 1.0.0 version, and I plan to give it a try within the next couple of days. The last time I used Kopete was at least six years ago, so I’m very curious to see how it compares to my current favorite, Pidgin. As already mentioned, many plasmoids have also been updated, but not only that, but the way that you add them has also been revamped, as you can see in the screenshot below. Instead of a pop-up, the list will be displayed as a bar at the bottom, and you can quickly search or refine the selection with the various options.

I admit I still have a lot to discover with 4.4, I’m sure, but one feature that’s been taken straight from Windows 7 that I really appreciate is the ability to either maximize an application by dragging it to the top of the screen, or drag it to the left or right to take up that half. You can see an example of what I’m talking about here. It’s a simple feature, but one I’ve wanted ever since I first saw the Windows 7 implementation.

There’s a lot more that’s new with KDE 4.4, and I’ve only scratched the surface. If you want to dig deeper, a good place to go is the feature guide, where there is a ton of information and many screenshots to fill you in. Congrats to the KDE developers on this launch, and thanks for all the hard work. KDE 4.3 made me love KDE 4, and 4.4 only increases my excitement for the environment.

9th February, 2010. Today KDE announces the immediate availability of the KDE Software Compilation 4.4, “Caikaku”, bringing an innovative collection of applications to Free Software users. Major new technologies have been introduced, including social networking and online collaboration features, a new netbook-oriented interface and infrastructural innovations such as the KAuth authentication framework. According to KDE’s bug-tracking system, 7293 bugs have been fixed and 1433 new feature requests were implemented. The KDE community would like to thank everybody who has helped to make this release possible.