It’s Here!

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s announcement of the availability of KDE 4.9, the software compilation has already been packaged by the hard working Kubuntu team over at Blue Systems.

This should come as a surprise to no one, as the Kubuntu team has a healthy track record of bringing packages to backports as soon as possible.

Are you using Kubuntu but haven’t seen your update yet?  You might not have the backports repository enabled.  Simply follow these steps to install it to your system an join the bleeding edge;

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports -y
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Curious about what KDE 4.9 brings to the table?  You can read about it here.  Here are some of the highlights:

• “Substantial improvements (were) made to Plasma Workspace core components.”
• “New KDE Applications and major improvements to Okular, Kopete, KDE PIM, education, games and others.”
• “Quality improvements and preparation for Frameworks 5 based on Qt5.”

A look towards the future

The mention of Qt5 prepping and transitional work is promising.  KDE 5.0 will be a very special release, because the KDE team has very publicly made clear that it does not intend to reinvent the wheel, and all of the things that KDE users have come to expect from the mature 4.x series, will all remain intact for 5.0.

Claire Lotion

The KDE 4.9 release is dedicated to the memory of Claire Lotion, who tragically lost her life in May of this year.

From KDE:

Claire was a vibrant person with strong ideals. She will be remembered for pursuing these ideals, and as a good friend and colleague. She also thought a lot about how KDE as an open source community could find connections to the real business world. Her energy, fresh look at things, positive mindset and intense commitment inspired many people. So did her dancing.