PR: Announcing KDE 3.3

The KDE Project is pleased to announce the immediate
availability of KDE 3.3, the fourth major release of the
award-winning KDE3 desktop platform. Over the past six months,
hundreds of applications and desktop components have been enhanced
by a community of developers, with a particular focus on
integration of components.

Stephan Kulow, KDE Release Coordinator, said: “The desktop
reached a quality hard to top in previous releases. Nevertheless,
KDE 3.3 is a great improvement and will further strengthen KDE’s
position as the leading Free desktop environment.”

Building upon previous releases, version 3.3 provides an
integrated desktop and a comprehensive set of applications that
make KDE the most usable and feature-rich environment of its kind.
Responding to the needs of their users, KDE developers have
implemented an impressive range of new features, as well as several
new applications that make your desktop even more productive and
pleasing to use. Of note in this release are the many integration
efforts, linking applications across the desktop together to save
you unecessary time and effort. Stephan Kulow added that
“improvements in terms of usability, stability and integration are
particularly noticeable in the KDE PIM (Personal Information
Management) suite.”

Reflecting its international team and focus, KDE 3.3 is
currently available in over 50 different languages. Partial
translations into 30 other languages are also available, many of
which are expected to be completed during the KDE 3.3 life cycle.
During the past six months, Qt gained increased support for Indic
languages, and languages as diverse as Farsi and Frisian were
added. With 89 different languages and full localization support,
no other desktop is as ready to serve the needs of today’s global
community.

KDE has earned a reputation for quality and a comprehensive
feature set among its global user base that is estimated to number
in the millions. KDE is also proud to be the default user interface
for several operating systems including Ark Linux, Conectiva,
Knoppix, Linspire, Lycoris, Mandrake Linux, SUSE Linux, TurboLinux
and Xandros. KDE is also available as a part of Debian,
Free/Open/NetBSD, Gentoo, Libranet, Fedora, Slackware and Solaris,
among others. In addition to these operating system vendors, more
and more companies are offering commercial support for KDE, some of
which are listed in the business directory of the
KDE::Enterprise website.
With the release of KDE 3.3, the KDE Project looks to enhance and
grow this ecosystem of users and supporters.

Highlights At A Glance

Some of the highlights in KDE 3.3 are listed below.

• New applications
  • Kolourpaint, an easy-to-use replacement for KPaint
  • KWordQuiz, KLatin and KTurtle expand the list of education
    packages for schools and families
  • Kimagemapeditor and klinkstatus make life easier for web
    designers
  • KSpell2, a new spellchecking library that fixes all of KSpell’s
    shortcomings
  • KThemeManager, a new control center module to globally handle
    KDE visual themes
  • The Python bindings PyQT and PyKDE are now maintained with KDE
    in our CVS
• Integration of desktop components
  • Kontact is now integrated with Kolab, KDE’s groupware solution, and
    Kpilot
  • Konqueror features better support for Instant Messenging
    contacts, with the capability to send files to IM contacts, and
    support for IM protocols (e.g. irc://)
  • KMail can display the online presence of IM contacts
  • Kopete can display a “now listening to” message from
    amaroK
  • Juk has support for burning audio CDs with K3B
• Many small desktop enhancements
  • Tab improvements in Konqueror, including scrollwheel
    switching
  • An RSS feed viewer sidebar in Konqueror
  • A searchbar for Konqueror, compatible with all keyword:
    searches
  • HTML composing, anti-spam/anti-virus wizards, automatic
    handling of mailing lists, improved support for cryptography and a
    handy quick search bar all make their way into KMail
  • Kopete gains support for file transfers with Jabber
  • Quanta Plus has a VPL (Visual Page Layout) mode to make editing
    even easier
  • aRts gains jack support, and aKode, a new multithreaded audio
    decoding/encoding library to replace mpeglib
  • KWin has new buttons to support its full features, including
    “always on top”
  • Over 7,000 bugs have been closed, and over 2,000 wishes have
    been fulfilled
  • Over 60,000 lines of code, documentation and other
    contributions have been committed to CVS

For a more detailed list of improvements since the KDE 3.2
release, please refer to the
KDE 3.3 Feature Plan.

Getting KDE 3.3

KDE 3.3 can be downloaded over the Internet by visiting download.kde.org. Source
code and vendor supplied and supported binary packages are
available. KDE 3.3 will also be featured in upcoming releases of
various Linux and UNIX operating systems and can be purchased
separately on CD-ROM. For additional
information on package availability and to read further release
notes, please visit the KDE 3.3 information page.

KDE is available at no cost and all source code, art and
documentation is freely available under Open Source licenses.
Additional third-party KDE applications can be downloaded from
kde-apps.org. KDE 3.3 is also
compatible with other Linux and UNIX software packages including
popular Open Source applications such as Open Office and the
Mozilla web browser.