First beta of KDE 4.10 released for testing

The first beta of version 4.10 of the KDE Software Compilation (KDE SC) is now available and brings a new Print Manager, Screen Locker and other enhancements to the desktop environment. Its developers say that the updated Print Manager in KDE SC 4.10 Beta 1, labelled version 4.9.80, should make it easier to set up new printers and monitor print jobs.

The new screen locking mechanism is said to be more flexible and secure. It is based on Qt Quick, support for which has also been expanded in the Plasma Workspaces. KDE's Plasma Quick extensions can now be integrated deeper into the system to allow for more powerful apps and Plasma Components. A number of the included Plasma widgets, such as the system tray, pager, notifications and calculator, have been rewritten in Qt Quick.

KDE's Plasma Desktop running the Dolphin file manager
Source: KDE The KDE developers have also made changes to the Nepomuk semantic engine to improve file indexing performance. The Plasma's window manager and the Gwenview image viewer now support colour correction, allowing them to be adjusted to the colour profile of different monitors. Following feedback from users, the Kate text editor has also received updates that enable it to be extended using Python plugins.

More details about the beta can be found in the release announcement, while an overview of all of the planned changes and enhancements for KDE 4.10 can be found on the project's Feature Plan page. According to the release schedule, a second beta will be released on 5 December and will be followed by two release candidates; the final version is expected to arrive on 23 January 2013.

KDE is licensed under a combination of the LGPLv2.1, BSD, MIT and X11 licences for core libraries and the GPLv2 or GPLv3 for applications. The current stable release of KDE is version 4.9.3 from early November.

See also:

• KDE SC 4.9 now available, a report from The H.

(crve)