KDE 4 development Live CD available

An openSuse based Live DVD with an up-to-date snapshot of KDE 4 development packages is available. With a virtual machine this makes it easy to have a look at the upcoming KDE 4.

The KDE svn live DVD was announced three weeks ago already. But today its creator Beineri gave it a nice name, KDE Four Live, and this time it catched my attention.

The DVD is build upon the current openSuse development version, openSuse factory, and was created using the openSuse tool “KIWI”. The actual KDE 4 packages are taken from openSuse’s Build Service which updates these packages quite regularly.
Btw.: if you prefer to test KDE 4 on a normal openSuse machine you can just add the KDE 4 repository of the Build Service, of course. But not everyone has a spare openSuse machine to test things (I wish I would have!).

So, you can download the DVD as any other Live DVD. Burn it or, like me, test it in any virtual machine, and see how KDE 4 looks like at the moment.

I have to admit that I’m quited pleased with the development which took place since my last test: the Oxygen icons are now standard everywhere, the new runner system comes into shape and the system in general is very fast and responsive.
Also, the applications develop more and more: konqueror doesn’t crash anymore for me, and, of course, dolphin shapes up more and more to a really nice application. The tree view is working, the status bar takes over messages which would normally just have an “Ok” button (like “this directory cannot be accessed due to missing rights”) and the finder-like left pane view is implemented.

Of course, there are still a lot of things missing: kcontrol is not usable at all, konqueror wasn’t able to open ftp sites, the desktop itself is missing almost totally, the new runner has still problems with the options dialog and I had several crashes. But who cares about the flaws while talking about a pre-alpha version?

Let’s see what the next days and weeks will bring: KDE 4 Alpha will officially released on May 1.