KDE 4.2 beta 1!

I installed KDE 4.2b1 yesterday. Included in this beta are updates to Kontact, piles of new Kwin effects and Plasmoids, the new and improved notification panel/system tray, and all kinds of other goodies.

A quick note: I had a bitch of a time upgrading. kde-icons-oxygen wanted to overwrite some files in koffice-data-kde4, and aptitude threw an absolute shit-fit over it and just refused to go any further. I ended up solving it by running “sudo dpkg -i –force-overwrite”on the .deb file, which went to Purgatory in /var/cache/apt/archives when apt puked it up. It was a simple fix once I wrapped my head around dpkg’s “force” options (you can get help with the “force” options by running “dpkg –force-help”), but a momentary headache.

Okay, on to the cool stuff! First, a look at Kwin’s new Desktop Cube plugin…

Desktop Cube for Kwin

Which may I add handles desktops in excess of 4 properly (in my case creating a hexahedron), unlike that other compositing window manager.

I’m more impressed by Kwin with every release. I’ve got the eye-candy turned up to 11 (wobbly windows, desktop cube, cover switcher, the works), and it is insanely fast on my Pentium D desktop (Intel graphics, 2GB RAM). When I installed 4.0.0, it was dogass slow, but now this thing flies. I’m impressed.

Kontact (particularly Kmail) has also seen some improvements.

Kontact in KDE4.2b1

Shown here is Kmail with “fancy view” on, and both my Gmail IMAP inboxes open in tabs. Also note the buttons to the right of the search bar; many of the view/sort options now reside here. Good stuff.

Also, it’s really good to see that people are starting to write more Plasmoids.

Widget layer

Geez, this is like a four-for-one screenshot, that’s efficient. Shown here is the “cover switch” Kwin plugin. Widgets clockwise from twelve o’clock: Luna, Timoid, a whole string of digital clocks showing different American time zones, Command Watch refreshing “fortune -a” every thirty seconds, YASP (Yet Another SystemMonitor Plasmoid), and Picture Frame. Only the clock and the picture frame are included by default, but you can find everything else at the usual place.

The notification panel/system tray doesn’t show very well in a screenshot, but it’s much improved as well. Notifications (incoming mail, file copies, etc.) now show up in a stack in the system tray, which you can expand and collapse, and you can pause or cancel file transfers, go to your inbox or whatever right from there. The system tray also gained the ability to hide icons in this release, which I had previously very much missed.

So that’s just the dime tour, but of course there’s MUCH MUCH MORE! I hope you enjoyed this little tour; mad cred to the whole KDE team, and Jonathan Riddell and the Kubuntu ninja packaging strike force.

-p.