KDE 4.4 Features

I have been really impressed with KDE 4.x, so when 4.4 recently came out, I was excited to try it out. You can get KDE 4.4 for Kubuntu through PPA and Arch already has it available in their main repo. Here are some of the cool new features that will make your Gnome loving friends jealous.

New Plasmoids and added features.

• Improved folder view plasmoid, hover mouse a folder to view it's contents
• improved device notifier, gives options for handling devices
• webslice to view a portion of a website
• Spell checker

Window Management

• ctrl+F9 to view all open windows (similar to expose in OSX)
• ctrl+F7 to view all grouped windows
• ctrl+ F8 to view all desktops - my absolute favorite

• Tabbed Windows (just like fluxbox)
• Improved Krunner with plugins - shows devices, firefox bookmarks, wikipedia (mediawiki plugin), calculator, etc (Leave Gnome-Do in the dust)
• Timeline:/ protocol to sort by time
• Kmix has multimedia keyboard support
• Can flag devices for auto mounting

AND a new netbook desktop. I've never been keen on the moblin/ubuntu netbook remix look. Joulicloud was better, but nothing great. KDE netbook desktop is not perfect, but is better then any of the other choices that are currently available.

I installed it on my netbook running Arch and it's not bad. I definitely like the icons on the desktop and the search field is really handy.

Also some cool new apps.

• rekonq - my favorite new app, konquorer with webkit or Konquorer done right
• palapeli - an actual jigaw puzzle game

Anyway, go check KDE 4.4 out and read about its new features here.