“Linux users are as evangelical about desktop environments, the
all-encompassing graphical user interface software responsible for
providing everything from taskbars to office suites, as they are
about operating systems. It shouldn’t come as any surprise, then,
that the first major release in over five years of the most popular
desktop environment available is causing quite a stir. Due to be
released on December 11th, KDE 4.0 is bringing exhilarating
graphical, usability, and functionality improvements to the
Unix-like systems it is designed for—and Windows users will
get a taste, too.“Free software desktop environments evolved from simple window
managers that controlled little beyond the placement and decoration
of application windows to facilitate multi-tasking…”