KDE 4.3 RC3 Codenames "Cay" Out For Testing

KDE Community Ships Third Release Candidate of KDE 4.3 Free Desktop, Containing Many New Features and Improvements

July 22nd, 2009. The KDE Community today announced the immediate availability of KDE 4.3 RC3, a release candidate of the 3rd iteration over the KDE 4 desktop, applications and development platform.

While 4.3 already feels very stable, there still have been quite some changes to the code-base since the second release candidate. In order to have the 4.3.0 release well-tested, the release team decided to put out another release candidate and postpone the final 4.3.0 release by one week. The most notable change is probably a fix for a performance problem in Plasma, where applets would shortly freeze after being resized. This bug has been resolved by delaying the caching of rendered SVG images until after the resizing has finished.

KDE 4.3 focuses on polishing and completing the user experience by providing a modern and beautiful Free working environment.
Please make sure you report any existing issues, and in case of showstopper bugs, contact the KDE release team.

Highlights of KDE 4.3 are...

Please note that KDE 4.3 RC3 is not suitable for end users. Its sole purpose is gathering feedback and testing.

The tree mode and the default icon mode in System Settings

Highlights of KDE 4 include...

Changes

General

Plasma Desktop & KWin Window Manager

Plasma Addons

PIM

Games

Others


Peeking into directories in Plasma and, formatting options in the notes applet and the translatoid
Note that the changelog is usually incomplete, for a complete list of changes that went into KDE 4.3 RC3, you can browse the Subversion log.

To find out more about the KDE 4 desktop and applications, please refer to the KDE 4.2.0, KDE 4.1.0 and KDE 4.0.0 release notes.

Installing KDE 4.3 RC3 Binary Packages

Packagers. Some Linux/UNIX OS vendors have kindly provided binary packages of KDE 4.3 RC3 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. 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 4.3 RC3 Info Page.

Compiling KDE 4.3 RC3 (a.k.a. 4.2.98)

The complete source code for KDE 4.3 RC3 may be freely downloaded. Instructions on compiling and installing KDE 4.3 RC3 are available from the KDE 4.3 RC3 Info Page.

Supporting KDE

KDE is a Free Software community 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 for further information.