KDE 4.1 Desktop review

This review focuses on KDE 4.1, the latest release the K Desktop Environment series. It was officially released on July 29th, 2008. There is no much hype regarding the new release since the older 4.0 was full of bugs. Still KDE remains one of the favorite desktop environment for GNU/Linux OS till date.

KDE 4.1 comes with significant positive changes in graphics and desktop experience. But still its not error free which is disappointing. The entire set of desktops, frames and panels are collectively called plasma in the new version(KDE4). This replaces the old Kdesktop in the older version. A new multimedia interface called Phonon has been added.This makes the KDE desktop enviornment independent of any particular media backend. Decibel is a new applicaition framework introduced in KDE to incorporate all the communication protocols in general to the K desktop. The amjor technologies introduced in KDE 4 could be summarised as follows:

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1. Plasma : A desktop and panel widget engine
2. Phonon : A multimedia framework
3. Solid : A device integration framework
4. Sonnet : A spell checker
5. ThreadWeaver : A library to more effectively use multiprocessor systems

The release of KDE 4 and 4.1 invited mixed response from the web community. It was criticized on the grounds of instability of desktop and applications. But there are a lot of revolutionary changes made to KDE 4 for which it was praised by the KDE fans.