• KDE 4.0 is not KDE4 but only the first (4.0.0 even non-bugfix) release in a years-long KDE4 series to come.
• KDE 4.0 is known to have missing parts or temporary implementations (eg printing, PIM, Plasma).
• Most changes happened under the surface and cannot be discovered in a “30 minutes usage”-review anyway.
• User interfaces being unchanged in 4.0 compared to 3.5 may be still changed/improved during KDE4 life time.
• KDE 4.0 will not be the fastest KDE4 release, like for KDE2 most speed optimizations will happen later during KDE4.
• Most applications (many are not even fully ported yet) will take advantage of new features which the new Qt/KDE libraries offer only later.
• Don’t measure portability success (eg MS Windows) by current availability of application releases, they will come.
• KDE 4.0 is only expected to be used by early adopters, not every KDE 3.5 user (and IMHO KDE 4.0 shouldn’t be pushed onto other user types like planned for Kubuntu ShipIt [btw said to have only 6 months support for its packages]).
• KDE 4.1 development will not require the same amount of time as the big technology jump 4.0, expect 4.1 later this year.

BTW, do you know that KDE 4.0 can be installed on Windows as well; while using a Windows machine you can take a dive into the ocean of powerful applications, awesome user experience and the freedom Richard M Stallman talks about. An advanced user can compile KDE 4.0 for Windows through the toolkit available, but an ordinary ‘click-next’ user will have to wait for a while for the Windows-ready-to-install KDE version.

So, there you go. Enjoy KDE4 and the current 4.0.0 release :-p

Related: And here are few more latest reviews on KDE 4:

• KDE4 reviewed
• KDE4 – New look, new concepts, less functionality — for now!
• KDE 4.0.0 – KWin Composite Showcast
• Giving 4.0 a go
• Giving 4.0 a go, Part 2
• Inside of K Desktop Environment (KDE) 4
• KDE 4.0
• First Look at KDE 4
• KDE 4: Houston, we have a problem!
• Disappearing Panel in KDE 4
• KDE 4.0.0: Sweet Follows Sour
• KDE4 offers new glitzy look
• Konqueror 4.0 brings some vast improvements

Somehow KMix is not launched by default when KDE 4 starts, and people who are not aware that it can be launched by simply typing kmix, are lost how they can control volume within KDE 4. So now that you know how to get it there in your system tray, I wanted to show the sheer number of KMix channels offered with KDE 4, that of compared with KDE 3.5 … wow … I am quite sure I wont be needing all of them … perhaps professional musicians will find it usefull. When I launched it the first time, only the first 6 channles were enabled, but then I decided to see how many were there available. All this is with my Creative Audigy 2 ZS sound card.

+ (as it all doesn’t fit in one screen)

compared to the one with KDE 3.5:

i.e, 45 (not including separate channels) vs 37. And finally the system tray options for both versions:

On 11th January 2008, the KDE Community released the fourth major version of the K Desktop Environment. This release marks the beginning of the KDE 4 era.

After five long months of development, the most expected project of 2007, KDE 4, has finally seen the light today! KDE 4 is the next generation of the popular K Desktop Environment, which seeks to fulfill the need for a powerful yet easy-to-use desktop, for both personal and enterprise computing. KDE project’s goal for the 4.0 release is to put the foundations in place for future innovations on the FREE desktop.

The KDE Community is thrilled to announce the immediate availability of KDE 4.0. This significant release marks both the end of the long and intensive development cycle leading up to KDE 4.0 and the beginning of the KDE 4 era.

The KDE 4 Desktop has gained some major new capabilities. The Plasma desktop shell offers a new desktop interface, including panel, menu and widgets on the desktop as well as a dashboard function. KWin, the KDE Window manager, now supports advanced graphical effects to ease interaction with your windows.

NEW with KDE 4:

• Plasma, the brand new desktop shell and panel, is an amazing piece of technology that makes your KDE experience better than ever. Its role is to offer, to the end-users, an efficient and ergonomic access to their desktop.
• The window manager of KDE 4, KWin, comes now with Solid (a sophisticated hardware API) and Phonon (a multimedia framework) and with some amazing desktop effects.
• All known KDE applications, such as Konqueror, which is the default file manager and web browser, KGet, KColorPaint, Konsole, Kopete, SuperKaramba, are now greatly improved and I’ll bet you will not even recognize some of them
• As an alternative file manager, Dolphin is included for those of you who have already been using it.
• and tonnes of more new and cool features .

Lots of KDE Applications have seen improvements as well. Visual updates through vector-based artwork, changes in the underlying libraries, user interface enhancements, new features, even new applications — you name it, KDE 4.0 has it. Okular, the new document viewer and Dolphin, the new file manager are only two applications that leverage KDE 4.0’s new technologies.

The Oxygen Artwork team provides a breath of fresh air on the desktop. Nearly all the user-visible parts of the KDE desktop and applications have been given a facelift. Beauty and consistency are two of the basic concepts behind Oxygen.

KDE 4.0 Visual Guide:

The KDE 4.0 Desktop and applications deserve a closer look. The pages below provide an overview of KDE 4.0 and give some examples of its associated applications. Screenshots of many components are included. Be aware that this is just a small sample of what KDE 4.0 offers you.

	The Desktop: Plasma, KRunner, KickOff and KWin
	Applications: Dolphin, Okular, Gwenview, System Settings and Konsole
	Educational Applications: Kalzium, Parley, Marble, Blinken, KStars and KTouch
	Games: KGoldrunner, KFourInLine, LSkat, KJumpingCube, KSudoku and Konquest

Full Announcement

Related reviews and blog posts from around the net:

• A tuned-up KDE 4.0 ready to roll, opens up to Mac, Windows
• KDE 4: A New Dawn for the Linux Desktop?
• KDE 4.0 Screenshots Tour
• Howto Install KDE 4.0 in Ubuntu Gutsy
• Goodbye Vista, KDE 4.0 Has Arrived!
• KDE 4.0 is out – a look back
• KDE 4 is available: First impressions
• KDE 4 Brings Improvements Galore to the Linux Desktop
• KDE 4.0 – The Official Release
• KDE 4.0 released: rough, but ready for action

Being the real first release, be patient and don’t expect everything to work flawlessly. This build will still need some tweakings and bug fixing, once the Linux and other KDE DE users start reporting back to developers. KDE users who require mission-critical robustness and the full feature set of the KDE 3.5.x series should probably wait until KDE 4.1 before making the transition.

Yay, KDE 4 is here

Geubuntu 7.10 “Luna Nuova” is only the second release of the distro, which seems to trace Ubuntu’s release cycle. As the version number suggests, Geubuntu 7.10 is based on Ubuntu 7.10, from which it borrows the kernel and user conveniences like the restricted-drivers management utility.

Geubuntu is an installable live CD, but it can also be installed on top of an existing Ubuntu distro by installing specific packages from the Geubuntu mirror. Currently there’s only a 32-bit ISO available. To run Geubuntu on 64-bit hardware you’ll have to take the longer route of first installing a 64-bit version of Ubuntu and then getting Geubuntu packages that are compiled for 64-bit platforms.

Installing from the live CD requires about 1.5GB of disk space. The distro booted smoothly on all the computers I tried it on, including a 1.3GHz Celeron and two dual-core desktops, with a 2.0GHz E4400 and a 1.8GHz E6300. Geubuntu isn’t short on applications; some of the most used apps it includes are the Firefox Web browser, Pidgin instant messenger, Eclair and VLC media players, and the GIMP image editor. To keep its requirements low, Geubuntu bundles AbiWord word processor, Gnumeric spreadsheet, Orage Calendar, and the Thunar file manager instead of more resource-intensive office suites. If you want to install more apps you can use the Synaptic package manager.

Very usable desktop

The first thing you’ll notice about Geubuntu is its speed. Despite being based on Ubuntu 7.10, it runs well on older hardware like my Pentium Celeron 1.3GHz laptop. This is because Enlightenment isn’t as resource-hungry as Ubuntu’s default desktop environment GNOME, which Geubuntu doesn’t bundle.

Geubuntu boots into the visually stunning Sunshine theme created by its artist developer. The desktop sports panels at the top and bottom of the screen. To maximize the desktop real estate, the top panel folds over the top when not in use. The bottom panel, though minimal, is fully loaded with menu and application launchers, virtual desktop switcher, and applets like clock. I like its animated marquee-style auto-scrolling list of application launchers, which prevents the panel from taking too much space.

In addition to being visually stunning, Geubuntu’s Sunshine and Moonlight themes both have animated bits. Depending on the theme, a sun beam shines down from the sun or an Enlightenment logo appears on a large Moon and reflects in rippling water after regular intervals. Users can easily (and almost instantaneously) switch between the two themes at a click.

Of course this bling would be useless if it came at the price of usability. But that’s what I like about Geubuntu. It’s a stunning distro that’s also very usable, thanks to an assortment of components. Of note are two Xfce components, the Xfce panel and the Thunar file manager. These are complemented by bits and pieces from GNOME, such as the GNOME bar and applets like the network manager and the search applet.

Watch out for bugs!

The components that make this distro usable also introduce a few noticeable bugs, since they were not designed to interact with each other. And Enlightenment is still under heavy development and has several bugs of its own. Despite bundling Thunar file manager, Geubuntu relies on Enlightenment’s file manager, fm, for displaying desktop icons. However, you can’t mount or unmount removable devices or browse their files using their desktop icons; for that you need to use Thunar.

Also, when running Geubuntu from the live CD, the distro doesn’t log out without complaining that some task is taking too long to complete, giving you the option to either wait or continue with the logout. According to a post on the forums, it’s the Xfce panel that seems to be causing this and the developers are working on a solution. Strangely, once you’ve installed Geubuntu to the hard drive, it logs out without complaining.

This isn’t the only discrepancy between the live and installed versions of the distro. When I first installed it, the desktop didn’t display the top panel. I tried logging out, restarting the computer, killing and restarting the panels, but nothing worked. But reinstalling the distro brought back the panel.

Secondly, my PCMCIA wireless card, which worked from the live CD, didn’t work from the installed version. On the dual-core desktop, the distro picked up the wide-screen monitor and correctly booted into its 1440×900-pixel resolution. It failed however, to activate the wireless card, even after i installed the correct drivers via NDISwrapper. Also the splash screen that comes up while the distro boots is only visible when the distro boots from the disk. Live CD users get to stare at a blank screen during boot, which can be a little confusing for new users.

Some of the components under the Moonlight theme retain traces of the Sunshine theme, such as the semitransparent terminal window. If you run into any other errors, refer to the online documentation to check for a solution, if it’s a known bug.

Conclusion

Despite being a young distro with just two releases under its belt, Geubuntu delivers a visually stunning desktop without compromising functionality. As a double benefit, the components it uses to blend functionality with bling have modest hardware requirements. This makes the distro perfectly suitable for older computers.

Built atop Ubuntu, the distro has a solid, well-tested base. Its unique mix of components from desktop environments Xfce and GNOME on top of the under-development Enlightenment environment introduces several bugs, but the developers are working to iron these out, and have already tackled several between the first two releases. I’d recommend this distro to desktop users with aging hardware, and to users who haven’t tried Enlightenment before.

OpenXML, also called OOXML, was denied “fast track” International Standards Organization (ISO) approval in September, but a final vote on making it a standard will take place in February, and Microsoft is anxious to get the earlier decision reversed.

To that end Microsoft is working with the ECMA TC 45 group to answer detailed questions which accompanied the negative ballots in September, in hopes of changing hearts and minds by February. GNOME’s participation in that group is upsetting Open Document Format (ODF) advocates.

ODF is the format used by Open Office.

Opponents of making the Microsoft Word format an ISO document standard, like OpenDocument Fellowship member Russell Ossendryver, compare GNOME’s actions to Democrats offering counters to President Bush’s 2005 plan on privatizing Social Security — any counter-proposal makes it more likely something bad will happen.

Dave Neary, a member of the GNOME Foundation and community manager for OpenWengo, says it’s all safe as milk. Quoting Jody Goldberg, who calls supporting ODF “significantly more difficult” than supporting OOXML, he suggests ODF will never be the “one true format” without destroying its utility.

In arguing for Open XML on his blog yesterday, Jason Matusow of Microsoft insists no one’s hands are clean, that any decision gives proprietary advantage to someone, and the place to fight all this out is the marketplace, not a standards-setting process.

The issue is vital for this reason. Microsoft Office has a dominant market share. Microsoft Office is proprietary. Microsoft’s XML formatting was changed just before Office 2007’s final release, destroying interoperabiity with ODF until fixes could be found.

Once a proprietary standard is approved by the ISO, and made a standard, its eventual replacement by a truly open standard like ODF becomes impossible. At best the two stand side-by-side, and Microsoft’s market dominance is baked into the market.

That’s why, despite the fact OOXML or OpenXML may be a better format today, groups like NOOOXML are fighting so hard against ISO approval. (The cartoon is from the NOOOXML site.)

Once a proprietary format becomes a standard, the era of truly open standards is over, and the way becomes clear to making anything proprietary.

- by ZDNET

Introduction

With the new features that Gnome and KDE (K Desktop Environment) are adding, each desktop environment is challenging the other for a larger share of the market. If Linux-like operating systems come with one desktop environment, the user has the option to add to the other. Because of the ever-increasing sophistication of the new features, some latest versions of the operating system are including packages for both desktop environments, allowing users to have the option of switching from one desktop environment to another. In this article I will briefly talk about the new features of both Gnome and KDE, and then look at some similarities and important differences between the two desktop environments.

Gnome’s New Features

In September 2007, the Gnome Foundation released the latest version of the GTK+ widget toolkit. More significantly, the foundation has launched the Gnome Mobile initiative, along with a software development platform to create user experiences across a wide range of device profiles. This initiative will allow you to use, develop, and commercialize Gnome components on a mobile and embedded user experience platform.

Let’s take a look at the major changes for the users, administrators, and developers of Gnome 2.20.

What’s New for Users

Want to be notified of a new email while you do other tasks? Evolution, Gnome’s email and groupware client, can do this for you by sporting an icon in your panel’s notification area when you get email. Evolution’s Microsoft Exchange support includes access to Exchange’s delegation feature, so that a colleague can handle your work while you are away.

Need to get help faster? The Gnome help browser (yelp) pages now appear more quickly, as individual pages are now loaded on demand instead of the entire manual being parsed unnecessarily. In Epiphany, the integrated web browser, you will find inline completion in the address bar is now more intuitive. When you select an item from the drop-down list, you will see your selection in the entry box.

Need quicker access to basic information and metadata for your images? You can do this with the new properties dialog of Gnome’s image viewer. It includes XMP (Extensible Metadata Platform) data that your camera or software may store in your image files, along with the existing EXIF data. You can easily open an image in another application, such as the GIMP, by using the new “Open with…” menu item. When you’ve made your changes and saved the file, then your picture will be updated in the image viewer automatically.

Ever wanted a viewer to allow you to enter information into an interactive PDF form? Try the Evince viewer, which also can save and print the resulting form. To make it easier for you to find keywords in your code, Gnome’s simple text editor, gedit, has a new syntax-highlighting system for scripting languages such as PHP and Ruby, even when embedded in HTML. It highlights text such as “TODO” or “FIXME” inside code comments, and gtk-doc source code documentation

You can synchronize notes between your machine and remote servers to relieve you of repeating the task of copying notes. The note-taking application Tomboy can now do this for you. Tomboy allows you to use WebDAV or SSH to connect to a remote server.

Your wish not to enter passwords over and over is fulfilled with the Gnome Keyring system. It remembers your passwords for networked servers and web sites. The keyring is unlocked automatically when you log in and when you unlock your screen. You can now also change your keyring’s master password via the Encryption Preferences control panel.

The Power Manager now saves profile information about your batteries, so you can look at it later. It even knows about many battery models that have been recalled by their manufacturers. Your screen is locked and you want to let other people leave you a note? The screen saver can now do this for you, by allowing others to click the “Leave Message” button. You’ll see these messages when you log in.

What’s New for Administrators

Suppose a live, interactive, nested Gnome session is running. You, as the administrator, want to set up user profiles inside a session. The Sabayon User Profile Editor is here to do the job. When you create or edit a profile, a nested Gnome session is started up. The editor allows you to change configuration defaults and mandatory keys in their own Gnome session. Gnome Display Manager now uses RBAC (Role Based Access Control) to control access to the Shutdown, Reboot, and Suspend features.

What’s New for Developers

Want to create third party applications? The Gnome 2.20 Developers’ Platform allows independent software developers to develop applications for use with Gnome. It uses version 2.12 of the GTK+ UI toolkit API, which adds new features and important bug fixes. The largest changes are a new volume button widget, for use by media players, a new recent action class to provide recent-files menu items and the new Builder API to build user interfaces from XML descriptions. You can right-click on widgets to make changes more conveniently. The new Accessibility Explorer allows you to check whether your application provides the information needed by accessibility tools such as Gnome’s Orca screen reader.

Gnome has a new documentation web site, library.gnome.org. It lists all the latest tutorials, manuals, and API references. For offline documentation, you should use the built-in DevHelp utility, particularly when searching for function or class names.

KDE’s New Features

KDE is similar in nature to desktop environments found on the Macintosh and Microsoft Windows operating systems. Since KDE is a X11-based environment, a GTK+ application can run on top of the desktop if the libraries the program requires are installed. Kdevelop uses an external compiler such as GCC to produce executable code and supports many programming languages.

Let’s take a look at some of the major changes for the users, developers and administrators of KDE 3.5. Then we will talk about KDE 4.0, which will include KOffice 2.0 with innovative features.

What’s New

Ever wanted interactive weather forecasts? This can be done by clicking the weather widget in SuperKaramba, a built-in feature of KDE. This program provides other widgets that you can use on your desktop to perform other tasks. Some examples are a system monitor showing CPU, RAM, hard drive usage and kernel version, new mail notification and news tickers. If you can’t find the widgets you want, you can get them from the site http://www.kde-look.org/ in the Karamba section.

Have you found Kopete, a software instant messaging client, limited? No more. Kopete is now multi-protocol, supporting audio and video devices, and thus MSN video conferencing. It adds support for Yahoo! messages in Rich Text format, AIM chat rooms, .Net Messenger Service, AOL Instant Messenger, and Novell Groupwise. It has a new toolbar (widget) in the main window to edit your global identity.

Want to block ads on your web browser? Konqueror, the core part of the KDE, now has adblock features. Along with being a web browser, Konquerer is a file manager and file viewer designed as a core part of the KDE. Full Microsoft Windows support is planned for Konqueror 4.0, which will be a part of KDE 4.0.

Kmail has a new feature: Lotus Notes structured text import filter for your email. A FAX-Viewer plugin is available for the KviewShell (document viewer).

Looking for new applications for education? KGeography, a geography learning program has been added. Kalzium is also available, it can be used to calculate weight of molecules and solve chemistry equations.

What Do We Expect in KDE 4.0?

As you can see, new features in KDE 3.5 are few. That’s because effort has mostly been expended in developing many new features for KDE 4.0, scheduled to be released for deployment in December 2007. KDE 4.0 is delivered in two portions: the KDE Development Platform 4.0 and the KDE Desktop 4.0. Highlights of KDE 4.0 are a new visual appearance through Oxygen and new frameworks to build multimedia applications, and improved user experience, and tools for developers and administrators to make their jobs easier. Full Microsoft Windows support is planned for Konqueror 4.0, which will be a part of KDE 4.0.

KOffice 2.0 is a free office suite of productivity, creativity, management, and supporting applications. Productivity applications include KWord, KSpread, KPresenter, and Kexi (an integrated environment for databases). Supporting applications includes KChart, KFormula, and Kugar (to generate business quality reports). At the time of this writing, KOffice 2.0 is in the alpha stage, and will be part of KDE 4.0 when it is ready for release

The KDE games developer community has considered which games should stay in the kdegames modules for KDE 4.0. Those that can be resized and scalable on high resolution have been kept. Those that cannot resized have been discarded.

Similarities

Both Gnome and KDE are aimed at achieving the goal of making the desktop environment more user-friendly and the development tools more accessible and more modular. They also try to help administrators perform their tasks without overrunning their budget and time. Gnome and KDE offer the same functionality: theming, file management, device management, email management, web browsers, and so forth. It’s up to you to pick the desktop environment that works for you. It’s also possible for you to choose both, so you can switch from one desktop environment to another.

KDE’s SuperKaramba’s widgets are similar to gDesklets for Gnome (as well as Yahoo! Widget Engine for Windows and Max OS X, DesktopX for Windows, Dashboard for Mac OS X, and also the gadgets subset of Google Desktop for Microsoft Windows).

A GTK+ application for Gnome can run on top of KDE. Just make sure the libraries the programs required are installed on the KDE.

Differences

Generally, KDE focuses on offering as many features as possible with as many graphical ways as possible for configuring those features. KDE with its KOffice, is more “Windows-like” than Gnome. Gnome is becoming more scalable on high-resolution screens.

KDE highlights the functionality it has. However, the KDE menus lack the simplicity that Gnome has. Gnome often hides certain configuration options in order to achieve the simplicity that allows the user to get stuff done. However, it lacks certain functionality that KDE has. In Gnome, user preferences and configuration are done through the System menu, user preferences are in the Preferences menu, and system-wide administration is done through the Administration menu and usually requires your super-user password. Unlike Gnome, KDE has one place where all your settings live, it’s called System Settings.

Gnome has tabs for each category of removable drives and media, with checkboxes for the behavior you want and fill-in-the-blank slots for commands you wish to execute for that media device.

KDE has a storage media drop-down menu for each type where you can add and remove various action types; each action (Open a New Window, for example) has an accompanying command and a set of options for which it will be available as an action type.

In Gnome’s file manager, called Nautilus, you can rename files by doing two spaced-out single-clicks on the name. Gnome’s renaming will focus on the name of the file, but not the file extension. In KDE’s file manager (Konqueror), since it defaults to single-click behavior, you have to hold down the Shift key and then do time spaced-out clicks to rename files with your mouse. You can, of course, change KDE to double-click behavior if you want. KDE will highlight the entire file name, including the file extension.

Conclusion

You’ll have to decide which tradeoffs between the KDE’s functionality and Gnome’s simplicity will make your work easier, in isolation or by collaborating with others. The type of collaboration you choose; email, instant messaging, or chat rooms; will influence the desktop environment you are running. If you need the features of both desktop environments, you can always switch between KDE and Gnome.

There will always be competition for market awareness between the two desktop environments, as new technologies, such as higher resolution screens and USB portable physical disk of much higher capacity, become more prevalent. Each desktop community is attempting to increase market awareness of its free programs. For instance, KDE focuses on creating market awareness for KOffice 2.0 for KDE 4.0. Meanwhile, Gnome is pursuing a Mobile initiative, as an attempt to catch up with KDE’s instant messaging client, Kopete.

It’s been a whole month when I’ve investigated the new environment called KDE 4. Honestly I wanted to wait till “Beta 3″, which should have appeared on 5th October. But as you all can see it has never happened. On the IRC channel #kde4-devel I was informed that the “Beta 3″ should have been tagged yesterday but unfortunately it didn’t turn out to be true. Not waiting any longer I made my mind and I have updated the SVN and have run the cmake.

First glance

Right after running the KDE you can tell at once that new wallpaper is far more beautiful than the grey old one and the marvelous contrasting flower is well matched to the bottom bar. Unluckily it does nothing more than displaying the clock. The taskbar despite the fact it was on the bar didn’t display processes and all the effort I made to add there any applet or the Pager was in vain, and ended with a complete crash of the bar. The only thing I succeeded in was to put there the Kickoff menubar.

Kickoff – the new KDE menu

The first appearance of Kickoff was in SUSE Linux 10.2 as a new menu for KDE. The icons were arranged in five categories: Favorite, Applications, My Computer, Recently used, Leave. There is nothing more than the search box that helps you finding applications and documents. It’s too early to discuss about the new KDE menu even talking about its appearance. IMHO I wish that the searching engine wouldn’t be based on Nepomuk or Strigi. I’d like to mention that it is only the initial version of this menu in KDE.

Kget – is still surprising

I’ve talked about this program a lot so far. Even now there has changed a lot of stuff, not only the appearance but the functionality. I’ll shortly remind that Kget is the download accelerator that provides you quequing, placing files in a specific directory chosen by some criteria. This version is enriched with the Transfer Graph applet, which shows you the graph of the download speed of current file. It’s the third applet like this. The first two are: Pie Graph and Bar Chart.

Plasma – new applets

I’m used to some sort of nice rule. All the time I check the state of KDE 4 I meet new Plasmoids – so is now. The first one is the old well-known Network Monitor which transformed from two flushing monitors to the graph that shows the traffic flow.

The next two applets are quite new. The first one is the System Monitor. This applet in the intention of the creators will inform you about the state of the main parts of your PC. In the future you can expect for reading ACPI information such as temperature or fan speed. Unfortunately at the moment the applet tries to perform only the usage of the disc space.

Today the best applet I’ve tried was the Color Picker. It helps you to “pick” the color of any pixel on the screen. Using the standard tool, the “pipette”, you are provided with the color in a few color formats. Very interesting feature it seems to be the probe history that shows a few earlier tries.

KWin Composite – defaultly enabled

It seems that KWin Composite effects are defaultly enabled. You can notice shadows under windows and the animated windows’ minimization. There are also available features from Compiz Fusion that pointing at the left top corner of the screen you are starting something similar to Scale plugin. Switching between windows using Alt+Tab displays thumbs of the windows. Quite interesting is the fact that KRunner looks different from when the Composite effects are disabled.

KSysGuard – the system guard

The System Guard has also changed its appearance by the new background under the graphs.

KStyle / KWin – styles and decorations

It is a rule that I always look very carefully at the appearance comparing Oxygen with Bespin (the unoffical style). IMHO Oxygen still seems too less contrast. I think authors are deserving of credit for continuous improvement. From the last version they improved the appearance of tabs and the highlightment of elements and buttons. The scrollbar turns to green under the mouse point. But still it is far away from mockups in the Internet.

At last the buttons have tooltips. Now you don’t have to think which button closes the window

Dolphin and Kate – the new appearance

It is the high time to see how some applications look like in Oxygen. I’ve tried the file manager Dolphin and the text editor Kate.

Amarok – at least there is some noise!

At the end I’ve checked my favourite audio player. The best way to describe it is to say “sometimes better. sometimes worse”. This time I couldn’t manage to make a collection, not even play one mp3 :/ But instead I could connect to Jamendo and listen to their songs. Thanks to that you can see how the Amarok looks like.

This article is a direct translation of text published on author’s blog: KDE 4 rev 723381