Pinderkent

I was disappointed today to hear that the release of KDE 4.0 will be delayed by two months. The delay is caused by the insertion of two extra betas.

But this isn't a bad thing at all. In fact, I think it shows quite clearly how the KDE crew has a great grasp of the balance between releasing a product as soon as possible, but also releasing it with a reasonably high level of quality.

There's a very good chance that KDE 4.0 will bring a desktop revolution to Linux and the BSDs. We're at the point now where we're seeing significant divergence between GNOME and KDE. On one hand, the KDE 4.0 effort has been going at full-steam for some time now. We're seeing real improvements and innovation being made. They're going beyond just the typical incremental, evolutionary improvements we so often see with software projects. What we're seeing are jumps ahead.

The latest KDE 4.0 beta, Beta 1, was released at the beginning of August. I gave this a try, and it was quite good.

One program I was particularly impressed with was Okular. It's a viewer for a wide range of document formats, including PDF, PS, CHM, and others. I have to say, even at a relatively early stage in its development, it is already a very high-quality and effective piece of software. With it, I was able to view large PDF documents that caused other viewers, especially GNOME's Evince, to lock up or crash.

I just haven't seen the same kind of progress from GNOME. They've been putting in a lot of effort, as well, but with KDE we're seeing some pretty major results. This does not seem to be the case with GNOME. So as we move forward into the future, I tend to believe that KDE will really start to overtake GNOME, in terms of functionality, quality, and eventually popularity.