DATELINE SEPTEMBER 15, 2000

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Final Beta of KDE Desktop Available for Linux^®

Final Beta Preview of Leading Desktop for Linux^® and Other UNIXes^®

September 14, 2000 (The INTERNET). The KDE Team today announced the release of KDE 1.94, the fifth and final beta preview of Kopernicus, KDE's next-generation, powerful, modular desktop. Following the release of KDE 1.93 on August 23, 2000, the release, code-named "Kandidat", is based on Trolltech's^tm Qt^® 2.2.0 and will include the core KDE libraries, the core desktop environment, the KOffice suite, as well as the over 100 applications from the other core KDE packages: Administration, Games, Graphics, Multimedia, Network, Personal Information Management (PIM), Toys and Utilities. The release is targeted at users who would like to help the KDE team make usability, speed and feature enhancements and fix the remaining set of bugs before the release of KDE 2.0 ("Kopernicus"), scheduled for early-fourth quarter 2000.

The major changes since the Beta 3 release last month include:

• General stability improvements throughout the packages.
• Major performance enhancements to the HTML widget. It also now fully supports "mailto:" URLs and caches pages for fast subsequent retrieval.
• The latest Qt release, qt-2.2.0, which for the first time is licensed under the GNU General Public License, as well as the Q Public License.
• Fixes to FTP and HTTP proxy support and many improvements to FTP support, including symlink support.
• The Secure Socket Layer (SSL) code in Konqueror has been improved, although it is still undergoing heavy development.
• Konqueror now features an "Open With" and "Save As" option for non-HTML links.
• Useability enhancements, such as background colors for desktop icon text.

Highlights of Kandidat

Konqueror reigns as the next-generation web browser, file manager and document viewer for KDE 2.0. Widely acclaimed as a technological break-through for the Unix desktop, Konqueror has a component-based architecture which combines the features and functionality of Internet Explorer^®/Netscape Communicator^® and Windows Explorer^®. Konqueror will support the full gamut of current Internet technologies, including JavaScript, Java^®, HTML 4.0, CSS-2 (Cascading Style Sheets), SSL (Secure Socket Layer for secure communications) and Netscape Communicator^® plug-ins (for playing Flash^TM, RealAudio^TM, RealVideo^TM and similar technologies). In addition, Konqueror's network transparency offers seamless support for browsing Linux^® NFS shares, Windows^® SMB shares, HTTP pages, FTP directories as well as any other protocol for which a KIO plug-in is available.

The KOffice suite is one of the most-anticipated Open Source projects. The suite consists of a spreadsheet application (KSpread), a vector drawing application (KIllustrator), a frame-based word-processing application (KWord), a presentation program (KPresenter), and a chart and diagram application (KChart). Native file formats are XML-based, and work on filters for proprietary binary file formats is progressing. Combined with a powerful scripting language and the ability to embed individuals components within each other using KDE's KParts technology, the KOffice suite will provide all the necessary functionality to all but the most demanding power users, at an unbeatable price -- free.

KDE's customizability touches every aspect of this next-generation desktop. Kandidat benefits from Qt's style engine, which permits developers and artists to create their own widget designs down to the precise appearance of a scrollbar, a button, a menu and more, combined with development tools which will largely automate the creation of these widget sets. In addition, KDE offers excellent support for GTK themes. Just to mention a few of the legion configuration options, users can choose among: numerous types of menu effects; a menu bar atop the display (Macintosh^®-style) or atop each individual window (Windows-style); icon styles; system sounds; key bindings; languages; toolbar and menu composition; and much much more.

The source packages for Kandidat are available for free download at http://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/unstable/distribution/2.0Beta5/tar/src/ or in the equivalent directory at one of the many KDE ftp server mirrors. Kandidat requires qt-2.2.0, which is available from the above locations under the name qt-x11-2.2.0.tar.gz. Please be advised that Kandidat will not work with any older versions of Qt. Qt 2.2 is a stable product and not part of KDE's beta testing.

For further instructions on compiling and installing Kandidat, please consult the installation instructions and, if you encounter problems, the compilation FAQ.

Installing Binary Packages of the Final Beta

The binary packages for Kandidat will be available for free download under http://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/unstable/distribution/2.0Beta5/ or under the equivalent directory at one of the many KDE ftp server mirrors. Kandidat requires qt2.2.0, which is available from the above locations. Please be advised that Kandidat will not work with any older versions of Qt. Qt is not part of KDE's beta testing.

At the time of this release, pre-compiled packages are available for:

• Linux-Mandrake
• Caldera Open Linux 2.4
• SuSE Linux AXP 6.4
• SuSE Linux i386 6.4
• SuSE Linux i386 7.0
• SuSE Linux PPC 6.4
• SuSE Linux noarch
• FreeBSD

Check the ftp servers periodically for pre-compiled packages for other distributions. More binary packages will become available over the coming days.

About KDE

KDE is an independent, collaborative project by hundreds of developers worldwide to create a sophisticated, customizable and stable desktop environment employing a component-based, network-transparent architecture. Currently development is focused on KDE 2, which will for the first time offer a free, Open Source, fully-featured office suite and which promises to make the Linux desktop as easy to use as Windows^® and the Macintosh^® while remaining loyal to open standards and empowering developers and users with Open Source software. KDE is working proof of how the Open Source software development model can create first-rate technologies on par with and superior to even the most complex commercial software.

For more information about KDE, please visit KDE's web site.