Recently the developers who are in charge of the KDE project announced the launch of a beta version of what will become the next open source software suite KDE Applications 19.04.
What will become the new version of KDE Applications 19.04 has been in development since the beginning of March and now the beta version of it is ready for public testing, allowing the community to understand new features and improvements as soon as possible, and help the development team to ensure the quality of the user experience and release the version.
What are KDE Applications?
For those who still do not know about KDE Applications, we can tell you that these are a set of compatible applications and libraries designed by the KDE community, which are mainly used in Linux-based operating systems, but mostly of these applications are cross-platform and are released on a common launcher.
Formerly the KDE application package it was part of the KDE software build.
Examples of featured applications in the package include Dolphin file manager, Okular document viewer, Kate text editor, Arky Konsole terminal emulator file tool among others.
About the new beta of KDE Applications 19.04
KDE Applications 19.04 that entered the beta development phase, along with it this also marks what are the phases of dependency freezing and functions freezing, which means that the KDE team will now focus only on fixing all those errors that occur.
This in order that the final version is out of "vulnerabilities" and polish this version, to deliver a stable final version.
The software package KDE Applications 19.04 includes a number of open source applications that are critical to the proper functioning of the KDE Plasma desktop environment.
Of course, these applications can also be used in other desktop environments.
With this, the development team expressed the following:
“KDE Applications 19.04 require extensive testing to maintain and improve quality and user experience.
Real users are the true critics that are needed to maintain high quality in the ongoing development of the KDE project and this is so because developers cannot test all possible configurations »
What's new in this beta version of KDE Applications 19.04?
Many changes have been implemented in the KDE Applications 19.04 software suite, but in some highlights, we can mention some of the new features that are in store for this release.
Of them we can highlight the ability to start the Dolphin file manager using the keyboard shortcut global Super + E and support screen capture file name preview in Spectacle.
It's also worth mentioning that the Dolphin file manager will eventually show the same layout for all folders by default.
On the other hand, we also found that the tooltip will now display the monochrome icon correctly. Also, you can use hidden items by rearranging them in the "Places" panel.
KDE Applications 19.04 will support three maintenance releases until the 11 of July of 2019.
The first, KDE Applications 19.04.1, and will be planned for May 9, 2019. The other two, KDE Applications 19.04.2 and KDE Applications 19.04. 3, are scheduled for June 6 and July 11, 2019, when the series reaches the end of its useful life.
The final version will be ready on April 18
Finally, as for what is expected of the calendar of this version It is planned a Release Candidate (RC) by April 4 y the final release of KDE Applications 19.04 would be arriving on April 18 of this year.
This schedule could be met, as long as developers do not run into any performance issues or seriously affect the integrity of KDE Applications 19.04.
Without more to mention, I can only add that if you want to know more about it or want to know how to test this beta version, you can visit the following link.