The KDE Project has announced the official release of KDE 4.0.
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.
KDE 4 is definitely a major milestone in KDE's history. New to version 4.0 are many new libraries, which help modernise the desktop and will bring more features and functionality that are usable by all KDE applications. KDE 4.0 also features many new applications, including Dolphin, a dedicated file management application and major updates to many of the existing applications.
While the new release is now stable and ready for use, the next few minor versions will see more polish added and things stabilising further.
If you're looking to play with KDE 4 right now, you might want to wait a bit longer yet. Most distributions won't be shipping it until at least the next major version of the distro, or in some cases the version after that. There are, however, a list of distributions that do have packages, and some live CDs on the announcement page.
I'll be looking at the new release in more detail probably a bit later on, but for now feel free to check out the official visual guide .
With PulseAudio already in Fedora and soon to be in Ubuntu 8.04, it is sure to get even more popularity. But what is so special about it? To many, it just seems like yet another replacement for esound. And while PulseAudio can be dropped right in to replace ESD without problems, it offers so much more.
One big feature is the volume manager. While it doesn't seem to be packaged with the PulseAudio server itself, it can be installed as pavucontrol.
The screenshot above really speaks for itself. With PulseAudio, not only do you have control over the total sound level, but also over each application individually. This is a feature of Windows Vista, but now you can experience it on your Linux or BSD system as long as you use PulseAudio.
Today we have a quick tip for productivity in your GNOME desktop. This is not a well-known technique, but it is very fast and a quick way to open any folder.
While on your desktop (either with no windows open or with the desktop focused) type / (forward slash). Now type in a folder path and hit Enter. The directory will be opened in a new Nautilus window. On top of that, it will also autocomplete most paths.
For a quick usage example, say I want to get to /var/lib quickly. Instead of having to open Nautilus and navigate to it, I just type the path out on the desktop. /var/lib Enter, and boom, I'm in the folder.
