Features/KDE47

KDE Plasma Workspaces 4.7

Summary

Rebase to KDE Plasma Workspace 4.7. including Plasma Desktop and Netbook workspaces, the KDE Applications and the KDE Platform.

Owner

• KDE SIG
• Email: than@redhat.com, jreznik@redhat.com, rdieter@fedoraproject.org, ltinkl@redhat.com
• IRC: #fedora-kde

Current status

• Targeted release: Fedora 16
• Last updated: 2011-07-26
• Percentage of completion: 99%

Currently KDE Workspaces and Platform 4.7.0 is nearly completely packaged in rawhide. Qt 4.8 (beta1) is built in rawhide but currently we experience a few build issues. Package splits mostly done (some blocked on review - the less important ones).

Detailed Description

We have rebased KDE to 4.7

New features overview

• KDE Plasma Workspaces, KDE Applications and KDE Platform 4.7
• kdeplasma-networkmanagement support for NM 09
• split packages for some previously monolithic modules
• gtk3 theming integration
• GRUB 2 support
• Qt 4.8 with
  • Qt Mobility framework

Possible features:

• KDE Plasma Active (tablet/mobile workspaces) preview
  • still under upstream development, depends on KDE Platform 4.7

Benefit to Fedora

KDE is popular, feature rich and stable desktop environment used by a lot of Fedora users.

Scope

Requires rebasing to the latest upstream version and preparing distribution specific patches. All new required packages are already included in distribution. But as upstream changed release schema and now provides splitted tarballs for some previously monolithic modules, we are going to follow this decision in Fedora too as we want to stick as close as possible to upstream. This involves changes in packaging, new reviews and small overload for packaging system.

How To Test

1. yum groupinstall kde-desktop
2. set KDE as default environment + KDM
3. login to KDE desktop

or use Fedora KDE Plasma Workspaces spin

What should be checked (KDE):

• distribution integration
• custom branding changes (KDM theme, KSplash theme, artwork) - for Preview Release
• working sound in Phonon, esp. with regards to the PA integration
• "root" modules in System Settings (due to pk1)
• test hal-less solid backend for functionality (and free of regressions)

We are working on test plan for KDE QA.

For more specific Desktop testcase see Desktop Validation testing page.

User Experience

• Modern, feature rich and stable desktop environment.
• splitted packages (advantage especially for other desktop environments users to select favorite applications without need to install the whole KDE stack)

Dependencies

• upstream KDE 4.7 release, see [1].
  • final release July 27
• Fedora branding/theming from Fedora Design team!
• gtk3 theming/integration. There's no official oxygen-gtk for gtk3 release, we need snaphot. Also we need kcm-gtk ported.
• Qt 4.8 release (no release schedule but we can expect it during summer - more likely end of summer).

Contingency Plan

Given how the KDE 4.7 and Fedora 16 schedules align, there should be plenty of buffer time between the KDE 4.7 and Fedora 16 releases. We are already working on importing and polishing beta and rc1 version of KDE. In case of problems with upstream release we can revert to older release or we can omit individual problematic modules (e.g. kdepim) of this feature. KDE 4.7 could later be shipped as an update.

Documentation

The Fedora KDE Desktop User Guide is very important part of this feature for users. It guides users how-to use the new KDE 4 Desktop and it's targeted to both former KDE 3.5 user and first time KDE 4 users.

Fedora KDE Desktop User Guide (draft)

Upstream documentation sites:

• http://docs.kde.org/
• http://www.kde.org/documentation/

Release Notes

This release features the KDE Plasma Workspaces 4.7, the KDE Applications and the KDE Platform.

The 4.7 is the latest release of KDE 4. There are a lot of enhancements and new features.

Comments and Discussion

• See Talk:Features/KDE47