Ars on Cross-Platform KDE 4.0
Since the KDE 4 Release Event, it’s been a week full of KDE news and reporting, both for me and across the web.
In that vein, Ars Technica provides some news on the KDE 4.0 release as well. They also seem pretty excited about the cross-platform capabilities it introduced.
Author Ryan Paul writes, “The open-source KDE desktop environment is making the jump across platforms with broad support for Windows and Mac OS X. The core KDE desktop programs, the KOffice suite, and the Amarok music player are actively being ported.”
While he encountered minor issues testing KDE applications on Windows, most were just user interface glitches, and Paul is enthusiastic about what a cross-platform KDE will bring to the world:
“Broad support for Windows and Mac OS X is an ambitious goal, but the KDE development community appears to have made a very good start in that direction. Many of the new abstraction layers in KDE 4 are geared towards increasing portability and reducing dependence on platform-specific mechanisms. KDE definitely enriches the Windows and Mac OS X software ecosystems and will likely be welcomed by many.”
For Mac users, Paul provides a few helpful links which I’ll simply quote here: “For additional details about the Mac OS X port, check out this recent blog entry written by Reed. The binaries can be obtained via BitTorrent from the KDE TechBase page for the Mac OS X port.”