The second release candidate of KDE 4.9 is now available

July 11, 2012. Today KDE released the second release candidate for its renewed
Workspaces, Applications, and Development Platform. With API, dependency and
feature freezes in place, the KDE team's focus is now on fixing bugs and
further polishing new and old functionality. Highlights of 4.9 will include:

* Qt Quick in Plasma Workspaces -- Qt Quick is continuing to make its way
into the Plasma Workspaces, the Qt Quick Plasma Components, which have been
introduced with 4.8, mature further. Additional integration of various KDE
APIs was added through new modules. More parts of Plasma Desktop have been
ported to QML. While preserving their functionality, the Qt Quick replacements
of common plasmoids are visually more attractive, easier to enhance and extend
and behave better on touchscreens.

* The Dolphin file manager has improved its display and sorting and
searching based on metadata. Files can now be renamed inline, giving a
smoother user experience.

* Deeper integration of Activities for files, windows and other resources:
Users can now more easily associate files and windows with an Activity, and
enjoy a more properly organized workspace. Folderview can now show files
related to an Activity, making it easier to organize files into meaningful
contexts.

* Many performance improvements and bugfixes improve the overall user
experience, making the KDE Applications and Workspaces more productive and fun
to use than ever before.

More improvements can be found in the 4.9 Feature Plan. As with any large
number of changes, we need to give 4.9 a good testing in order to maintain and
improve the quality and our user's user experience when they get the update.

Links:
* http://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-4.9-rc2.php
* http://www.kde.org/info/4.8.97.php
* http://techbase.kde.org/Schedules/KDE4/4.9_Feature_Plan
--
sebas