KDE 4.0 released (at last!)

The much-awaited KDE 4.0 has been released on Friday 11 Jan 2007.

From the announcement page:

The KDE Community is thrilled to announce the immediate availability of KDE 4.0. This significant release marks both the end of the long and intensive development cycle leading up to KDE 4.0 and the beginning of the KDE 4 era.

The KDE 4 Libraries have seen major improvements in almost all areas. The Phonon multimedia framework provides platform independent multimedia support to all KDE applications, the Solid hardware integration framework makes interacting with (removable) devices easier and provides tools for better power management.

The KDE 4 Desktop has gained some major new capabilities. The Plasma desktop shell offers a new desktop interface, including panel, menu and widgets on the desktop as well as a dashboard function. KWin, the KDE Window manager, now supports advanced graphical effects to ease interaction with your windows.

Lots of KDE Applications have seen improvements as well. Visual updates through vector-based artwork, changes in the underlying libraries, user interface enhancements, new features, even new applications -- you name it, KDE 4.0 has it. Okular, the new document viewer and Dolphin, the new file manager are only two applications that leverage KDE 4.0's new technologies.

To install KDE 4.0, the experimental branch must be enabled. Add the following to /etc/apt/sources.list, then update APT.

deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ experimental main non-free contrib

deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ experimental main non-free contrib

APT will not install packages from experimental unless specifically requested. To install a package from experimental, run the command:

aptitude -t experimental install kdebase kdebase-workspace


or

apt-get -t experimental install kdebase kdebase-workspace


Those are the basic packages. For other packages, please look here.

Have fun!