KDE 4.7 Released

Right on schedule, the KDE development team has launched the eighth major iteration of its Linux desktop environment, dubbed 4.7. With it comes a slew of updates to various KDE applications, increased Plasma Workspaces portability, improved multi-media and IM support, in addition to the closing of 12,000 bugs (since KDE 4.6’s launch).

Whenever a new KDE version releases, I’m never that quick in adopting it, and in fact tend to wait for the first minor version bump. But 4.7 is different. There’s enough of interest included in this release that I decided to suck it up and upgrade over the weekend. So far, my experience has been quite good.

In an effort to improve the aesthetic appeal of KDE, refinements have been made to the Plasma environment in 4.7, which includes a revamped Oxygen icon set (which, in my opinion, is a sweet upgrade). The most noticeable change is with the folder icons, which can be seen in the shot below. For comparison, you can see the old icons in this article.

The Plasma back-end has been improved also, with a code cleanup having taken place and support added for OpenGL ES, so that KDE can operate on more devices than just a standard PC. Other Plasma improvements can be read about here.

Some KDE applications to experience big upgrades include Kontact, KDE’s groupware solution, the Dolphin file manager, Marble, a virtual globe application (one I didn’t realize even existed until this release), Gwenview, an image viewer, and DigiKam, a photo manager. DIgiKam in particular introduced some cool features, such as face detection, geotagging and image versioning.

Much improvement has come to KDE’s framework as a whole as well. This includes upgrades to the Phonon media API, which now includes support for the Zeitgeist activity logger. In addition, xine backend support has been deprecated, while both VLC and GStreamer have been deemed stable.

Though it might seem simple (and it is), one of the best improvements that’s come to KDE 4.7 is with the KDM login manager, which now supports GRUB2 and can allow the user to reboot straight to another OS, bypassing the need to select one at the GRUB choice screen.

So far, this is looking to be one of the more interesting KDE releases, and in using the updated environment this past weekend, I am happy to say that I’ve experienced no issues at all. If I do have one complaint, it’s that the new integrated IM feature (which I haven’t gotten working 100%) is a little difficult and tedious to install. Those who want to test it are in for a time-consuming process, so for those without much patience, it might be best to wait until KDE 4.8 to give it a try, or use a KDE 4.7 Live CD whenever one becomes available.