June 13, 2012. Today KDE released the second beta for its renewed Workspaces, Applications, and Development Platform. With API, dependency and feature freezes in place, the KDE team's focus is now on fixing bugs and further polishing new and old functionality. Highlights of 4.9 will include, but are not limited to:

Qt Quick in Plasma Workspaces -- Qt Quick is continuing to make its way into the Plasma Workspaces, the Qt Quick Plasma Components, which have been introduced with 4.8, mature further. Additional integration of various KDE APIs was added through new modules. More parts of Plasma Desktop have been ported to QML. While preserving their functionality, the Qt Quick replacements of common plasmoids are visually more attractive, easier to enhance and extend and behave better on touchscreens.
The Dolphin file manager has improved its display and sorting and searching based on metadata. Files can now be renamed inline, giving a smoother user experience.
Deeper integration of Activities for files, windows and other resources: Users can now more easily associate files and windows with an Activity, and enjoy a more properly organized workspace. Folderview can now show files related to an Activity, making it easier to organize files into meaningful contexts.
Many performance improvements and bugfixes improve the overall user experience, making the KDE Applications and Workspaces more productive and fun to use than ever before.

More improvements can be found in the 4.9 Feature Plan. As with any large number of changes, we need to give 4.9 a good testing in order to maintain and improve the quality and our user's user experience when they get the update.

Testing in Progress

The KDE Testing Team carries on testing with Beta2. The testing effort started with 4.9 Beta 1. 101 bugs reports were opened or confirmed, 33 of them are already closed, the bugs having been fixed. Some regressions in QML applets were identified and fixed. A few bugs were also corrected without anyone opening a bug report. Newcomers joined the team and are doing a great job. The KDE Testing Team is happy to welcome more people. It is easy to get involved: install the Beta 2 from your distribution and choose an area of testing, all details are available on the wiki. We are also available on IRC Freenode in the #kde-quality channel and via our mailing list.

KDE Software Compilation 4.9 Beta2

The KDE Software Compilation, including all its libraries and its applications, is available for free under Open Source licenses. KDE's software can be obtained in source and various binary formats from http://download.kde.org or with any of the major GNU/Linux and UNIX systems shipping today.

Installing 4.9 Beta2 Binary Packages

Packages. Some Linux/UNIX OS vendors have kindly provided binary packages of 4.9 Beta2 (internally 4.8.90) for some versions of their distribution, and in other cases community volunteers have done so. 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 4.8.90 Info Page.

Compiling 4.9 Beta2

The complete source code for 4.9 Beta2 may be freely downloaded. Instructions on compiling and installing 4.8.90 are available from the 4.8.90 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 or become a KDE e.V. supporting member through our new Join the Game initiative.