KDE 4.0 Alpha 2 is out

With aKademy taking place in Glaskow, Scotland and hundreds of KDE developers hunting bugs and working on features as we speak progress is moving forward at an amazing pace. Some of the most exiting work is being done on Plasma, KDE 4's new shell for the desktop.

Screenshot 1

Plasma provides krunner, an application to directly launch programs and start other tasks. Plasmoids are applets that display information such as the time, information about hardware devices and also provide access to online resources, for example showing RSS feeds, images or providing dictionary lookup.

Screenshot 2

System Settings, the replacement for KControl is an improved user interface hosting various modules for configuring the desktop and other aspects of the system is another addition worth mentioning.

Screenshot 3

Work on the new Dolphin File Manager continues as well and as they get closer to the release date it gets more and more polished.

Screenshot 4

For those who want to try KDE 4.0 Alpha2, please refer to this page to find ways to have a peak at the current status yourself. As the pace of development would outdate screenshots very quickly, please refer to KDE Dot News for updated information on all things KDE.