KDE 3.5.5 Released

October 13, 2006; 05:14 AM
The KDE Project announced the immediate availability of KDE 3.5.5, a maintenance release for the latest generation of the most advanced and powerful free desktop for GNU/Linux and other UNIXes. KDE now supports 65 languages, making it available to more people than most non-free software and can be easily extended to support others by communities who wish to contribute to the open source project.

Significant enhancements include:

• Version 0.12.3 of Kopete replaces 0.11.3 in KDE 3.5.5, it includes support for Adium themes, performance improvements and better support for the Yahoo! and Jabber protocols.
• Support for sudo in kdesu.
• Support for input shape from XShape1.1 in KWin (KDE window manager).
• Lots of speed improvements and fixes in Konqueror's HTML engine, KHTML.
• CUPS 1.2 support in KDEPrint.
• Big improvements in the number of translated interface elements in Chinese Traditional, Farsi, Khmer, Low Saxon and Slovak translations.

For a more detailed list of improvements since the KDE 3.5.4 release on the 2nd August 2006, please refer to the KDE 3.5.5 Changelog.

KDE 3.5.5 ships with a basic desktop and fifteen other packages (PIM, administration, network, edutainment, utilities, multimedia, games, artwork, web development and more). KDE's award-winning tools and applications are available in 65 languages.

Distributions shipping KDE
Most of the Linux distributions and UNIX operating systems do not immediately incorporate new KDE releases, but they will integrate KDE 3.5.5 packages in their next releases. Check this list to see which distributions are shipping KDE.

Installing KDE 3.5.5 Binary Packages
Package Creators. Some operating system vendors have kindly provided binary packages of KDE 3.5.5 for some versions of their distribution, and in other cases community volunteers have done so. Some of these binary packages are available for free download from KDE's download server at http://download.kde.org. Additional binary packages, as well as updates to the packages now available, may become available over the coming weeks.

Package Locations. For a current list of available binary packages of which the KDE Project has been informed, please visit the KDE 3.5.5 Info Page.

Compiling KDE 3.5.5
Source Code. The complete source code for KDE 3.5.5 may be freely downloaded. Instructions on compiling and installing KDE 3.5.5 are available from the KDE 3.5.5 Info Page.

Supporting KDE
KDE is a Free Software project that exists and grows only because of the help of many volunteers that donate their time and effort. KDE is always looking for new volunteers and contributions, whether its help with coding, bug fixing or reporting, writing documentation, translations, promotion, money, etc. All contributions are gratefully appreciated and eagerly accepted. Please read through the Supporting KDE page for further information.

We look forward to hearing from you soon!

About KDE
KDE is an award-winning, independent project of hundreds of developers, translators, artists and other professionals worldwide collaborating over the Internet to create and freely distribute a sophisticated, customizable and stable desktop and office environment employing a flexible, component-based, network-transparent architecture and offering an outstanding development platform.

KDE provides a stable, mature desktop including a state-of-the-art browser (Konqueror), a personal information management suite (Kontact), a full office suite (KOffice), a large set of networking application and utilities, and an efficient, intuitive development environment featuring the excellent IDE KDevelop.

KDE is working proof that the Open Source "Bazaar-style" software development model can yield first-rate technologies on par with and superior to even the most complex commercial software.