Article The Changing Desktop Trends

KDE 4 : The Plasma Intervention

KDE4 lit the fire, bursting out with enticing feature and created a new benchmark in the open source desktop innovation. Surprisingly even with laden features and a completely written desktop and plasma workspace KDE4 initial release went through massive reprobation by the end users. Touted as the most usable desktop until KDE 3.5.x release, developers failed to meet the expectation and deliver a solid desktop experience. Too perplexing for an end user on the other hand the lack of stability paved the way for user disagreement. As a result developers were forced to get their hands dirty while fixing the pits and holes of the new release.

With community support and ever lasting bug report along with third party developers churning out missing applications for QT4 desktop, KDE4 was finally becoming functional and till date KDE 4 provides the utmost user experience courtesy of the Plasma desktop.

The Default KDE Desktop

Plasma : - Plasma is a new desktop shell / widget interface the integrates kicker, super-karamba (widgets) and various other KDE sub projects into a single being. Plasma not only diversify the KDE approach towards radical computing but further aids to and fortify KDE desktop experience. Plasma is not limited to a particular device thanks to the upbringing and unblemished QT toolkit.

With plasma written in QT / C++, KDE has an ample sector to aim to, not only just providing support to various devices, with Plasma KDE developers has leveraged the eye candy in every spectrum of compute device be it the full blown desktop or the lowly smartphones. With KDE nipping on the heels of every compute device, its has escalated Linux infrastructure and the eye candy to the available platforms.

The Netbook Edition of KDE featuring Plasma Interface

The most beautiful aspect of Plasma is the kind of integration option and customization it provides. Unlike the newly release Ubuntu Unity and Gnome-Shell, KDE offers behemoth customization options coupled with fascinating widgets and different work-space behavior. In addition to general widget the plasma desktop can be folded into activities. For example. If you want an activity just to fetch news and other similar task you club an activities with the requisite widget and save it. Next time when you roll over to the activity you will be greeted with new laden in a proper manner.

With the recently released KDE 4.6 the KDE SC(Software Compilation) has up the ante by delivering a rock solid release not only boasting of superior bliss but providing a rock solid environment with plethora of native and 3rd party platform dependent application.