KDE Announces KDE 2.0 BETA 1

The KDE team released the newest version of KDE today. Version 1.90, dubbed 'Konfucious' is designed to be a BETA preview of the new 2.0 desktop, and to showcase it's next-generation, powerful, and modular design. Builds are available from FileForum and KDE's FTP. See the official announcement here.

"With KDE 2.0, Linux will be ready to tackle the corporate and consumer desktop," predicted Waldo Bastian, a core KDE developer.

Konfucious will feature a large number of "major technological improvements to developers compared to the critically acclaimed KDE 1.x series."

The primary improvements in KDE 2.0 are the Desktop COmmunication Protocol (DCOP), the i/o libraries (KIO), the component object model (KParts), an XML-based GUI class, and the standards-compliant HTML rendering engine (KHTML).

"This release presents a great opportunity for developers to prepare for the KDE 2.0 release and for users to preview and contribute to one of the most anticipated Open Source releases," added Kurt Granroth, KDE core developer and evangelist.