KDE 4.1 Roadmap and Future Goals !

KDE 4 is out, as you probably already know, and it comes with a lot of innovations for the Linux desktop. KDE 4 is the next generation of the popular K Desktop Environment, which seeks to fulfill the need for a powerful yet easy-to-use desktop, for both personal and enterprise computing. KDE project’s goal for the 4.0 release is to put the foundations in place for future innovations on the FREE desktop. But today, we will talk about the future versions of KDE 4 and what features they’ll bring. Let’s have a look first at the main goals for KDE 4.1, which will be released somewhere in July:

• Windows port (Frameworks and Applications)
• Mac port (Frameworks and Applications)
• OpenSolaris port
• Plasma with widgets on canvas, makes things like layouting much easier, and generally integrating widgets into Plasmoids
• Webkit in Plasma
• GStreamer, Quicktime, DirectShow9 Phonon backends
• Apple dashboard widgets support in Plasma
• Decibel VOIP and real-time communication framework
• Done! Dragon Player multimedia player

Ubuntu 8.04 Alpha 4 comes with great new applications..

The Ubuntu developers are moving very quickly to bring you the absolute latest and greatest software the Open Source Community has to offer. Hardy Heron Alpha 4 is the fourth alpha release of Ubuntu 8.04, and with this new alpha release comes a whole host of excellent new features.

Features : -

1. Xorg 7.3 : – The latest Xorg is available in Hardy, Xorg 7.3, with an emphasis on better autoconfiguration with a minimal configuration file.
2. Linux kernel 2.6.24 : -  Alpha 4 includes the 2.6.24-5.8 (2.6.24-rc8-based) kernel. This brings in significant enhancements and fixes that have been merged in the last few months into the mainline kernel. Among these is the introduction of dynticks support for amd64, bringing the same power savings already available on 32-bit systems to 64-bit laptops and desktops.
3. PulseAudio : -  Alpha 4 includes [WWW] PulseAudio enabled by default. Some non-GNOME applications still need to be changed to output to pulse/esd by default and the volume control tools are still not integrated.