Linux for Desktop: What’s New in KDE 3.2

Finally, the long awaited KDE 3.2 is out and PCQLinux 2004 is the first distro to include it. The first thing that you will notice when you log into KDE 3.2 is its speed–KDE 3.2 is way faster than the older KDE versions. 

Desktop



The new desktop is very polished and when you log in for the first time it asks you, in a wizard-driven manner, for the theme, icon style and language that you want to apply. KDE has also gone the Gnome’s path and made all the icons SVG (Standard Vector Graphics) compliant. This has improved the KDE look very much. Screen savers are now DPMS (Display Power Management Signaling) aware. This makes it possible for movie players to disable the screen saver by setting up X DPMS appropriately, so that you can have an uninterrupted movie experience. An interesting thing that you will notice is the ‘run’ applet (Alt + F2) that seems very much inspired by google.com. You can not only type commands here, but can also do simple arithmetical operations. For example, type 2 +2 and press Enter and it will display 4. Overall, the desktop is good with nice SVG crystal icons and whooping speed.

Konqueror 



One of the major components of a desktop environment is its file explorer and if the same is also used as the default Web browser then users start deserving a lot more from this component. That’s what has happened to Konqueror and as a result it has got a lot of small but useful add-ons. File browsing also has tabbed browsing support. Now Konqueror also has a side bar with some useful links such as Media Player, Devices, Home Folder, Network, etc. When combined with tabbed file browsing, these make your desktop much organized and clutter free.






Internet



On the Internet front as well, this version of KDE has something new to offer. One of the examples is Kopete, a chat client for lot of different services such as Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, Jabber and IRC (similar to GAIM). The other important component that has been added to KDE is KWallet. This is an application that can securely store your passwords and Web forms centrally. This application is fully integrated with KDE applications such as Konqueror and

Kopete.

Interface and navigations



A text-to-speech utility, kmouth (a part of kdeaccessability) makes using the computer easy for those who have problems with their eyesight. Another addition is KhotKey. This gives you options to set hot key combinations for different keyboard strokes. You can also allot mouse gestures for these keyboard strokes and run commonly used commands just by moving your mouse over your desktop.

This is just a quick brief on what’s new in KDE 3.2. To experience it fully, install PCQLinux 2004 with the Personal Desktop option and in the login screen, click on the Session button and choose KDE from the pop-up and then log in.

Anindya Roy