The next major update to the open source K Desktop Environment is on schedule: the KDE developers have published the second and final release candidate for version 4.9.0 of the KDE Software Compilation (KDE SC). Aimed at developers and testers, KDE 4.9 RC2 already includes all of the planned enhancements and feature changes; as expected at this stage, the developers have focused on "further polishing", as well as finding and fixing any last minute bugs.

In version 4.9, work on migrating Plasma Workspaces to use Qt Quick has continued: the Plasma Components, first introduced in KDE 4.8, have further matured, and more components of the Plasma Desktop have been ported to QML. The developers also say that the Qt Quick replacements for common Plasmoids (KDE's term for embeddable desktop applications) are now "visually more attractive, easier to enhance and extend and behave better on touchscreens".

KDE's Dolphin file manager has been updated to improve file display and sorting and searching based on metadata; files can now also be renamed inline. Activities for files, windows and other resources have been more deeply integrated, and various fixes should improve the overall performance and stability of the software.

Further information about the second RC can be found in the release announcement. Source code for self-compilation and binary packages for some Linux distributions are available to download from the project's site. According to the project's release schedule, the final version will arrive on 1 August.

KDE is licensed under a combination of the LGPLv2, BSD, MIT and X11 licences for core libraries and the GPLv2 or GPLv3 for applications. The current stable release is KDE SC 4.8.4 from early June.

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(crve)