The KDE Community [1] has announced the immediate availability of KDE 4.0.1, the first bugfix and maintenance release for the latest generation of the most advanced and powerful free desktop. KDE 4.0.1 ships with a basic desktop and many other packages like administration, network, education, utilities, multimedia, games, artwork, web development and more. KDE's award-winning tools and applications are available in almost 50 languages.
KDE, including all its libraries and its applications, is available for free under Open Source licenses. KDE can be obtained in source and various binary formats from http://download.kde.org [2] and can also be obtained on CD-ROM [3] or with any of the major GNU/Linux and UNIX systems [4] shipping today.
Enhancements
KDE 4.0.1 is a maintenance release which provides corrections of problems reported using the KDE bug tracking system [5] and enhanced support for existing and new translations.
Improvements in this release include, but are not limited to:
- Konqueror, KDE's webbrowser has seen numerous stability and performance fixes in its HTML rendering engine KHTML, in its Flash plugin loader and in KJS, the JavaScript engine.
- Stability problems have been addressed in components that are used all over the KDE codebase. Translations in this release are more complete.
- KWin, the KDE window manager has improved detection of compositing support, some effects have been fixed.
Aside from these fundamentals, work has also been done in many applications like Okular, System Settings and KStars. New translations include Danish, Frisian, Kazakh and Czech.
For a more detailed list of improvements since the KDE 4.0 release in January 2008, please refer to the KDE 4.0.1 Changelog [6].
Additional information about the enhancements of the KDE 4.0.x release series is available in the KDE 4.0 Announcement [7].
Installing KDE 4.0.1 Binary Packages
Packagers. Some Linux/UNIX OS vendors have kindly provided binary packages of KDE 4.0.1 for some versions of their distribution, and in other cases community volunteers have done so. Some of these binary packages are available for free download from KDE's http:// download.kde.org [8]. Additional binary packages, as well as updates to the packages now available, may become available over the coming weeks.
Package Locations. For a current list of available binary packages of which the KDE Project has been informed, please visit the KDE 4.0.1 Info Page [9].
Compiling KDE 4.0.1
Source Code. The complete source code for KDE 4.0.1 may be freely downloaded [10]. Instructions on compiling and installing KDE 4.0.1 are available from the KDE 4.0.1 Info Page [11].
Supporting KDE
KDE is a Free Software [12] project that exists and grows only because of the help of many volunteers that donate their time and effort. KDE is always looking for new volunteers and contributions, whether it is help with coding, bug fixing or reporting, writing documentation, translations, promotion, money, etc. All contributions are gratefully appreciated and eagerly accepted. Please read through the Supporting KDE page [13] for further information.