The folks behind the popular KDE Linux desktop environment pushed out version 4.4 recently, complete with a new interface designed specifically for netbooks. Basically a desktop environment such as KDE or GNOME provides a user interface and a number of applications for Linux users.

The KDE 4.4 Plasma Netbook shell is optimized for mini-laptops with small screens. It has a full-screen application launcher and search utility. You can use widgets to display content from web sites in a newspaper-like layout. And there’s also an emphasis on integration with social networking sites.

KDE 4.4 is a desktop environment rather than a complete Linux distribution. That means you should be able to use it with a number of popular Linux distributions including Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva, or PCLinuxOS, although the installation methods will vary by Linux distribution.

via Engadget

At times I’ve felt like KDE 4 is a little bit on the sluggish side on my desktop PCs. On a netbook’s Atom processor? I wouldn’t even have considered switching from Gnome if I hadn’t seen this video on YouTube.

The folks behind the KDE desktop environment for Linux are working on optimizing KDE 4’s Plasma user interface to play well with netbooks. That means applications and widgets have to look good on low resolution displays, and graphical effects can’t be too resource intensive.

So far, it looks like things are off to a good start. According to a recently released photo and video, it looks like the netbook version of KDE 4 will take a cue from the Ubuntu Netbook Remix user interface, which basically shows a single window at a time on the display. But the Plasma interface is much prettier to look at than the mostly utilitarian Ubuntu Netbook Remix interface which is based on the GNOME desktop environment.

KDE 4 lets you switch between open programs using an Apple Exposé-like view that shows thumbnail versions of running applications. Individual programs open in full screen mode by default, and there’s a single taskbar at the top of the screen to provide system information, a program menu, and a list of running apps.

You can check out a video demo of KDE Plasma for netbooks after the break.

via Netbook News.de

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KDE 4.2

Some of the folks behind the KDE Linux desktop environment are putting their heads together and trying to come up with a new interface designed especially for netbooks. The goal is to have something ready to go by the time KDE 4.4 is released (The latest version of KDE is KDE 4.2.2). According to developer Aaron Seigo, here are some of the goals:

• The interface will be specific to netbooks, and not just designed for computers with small screen displays (This could mean integration with web services, or something else altogether. It depends on what Seigo and his colleagues consider to be the purpose of netbooks).
• Support for the KDE Plasma interface
• There should be a full screen interface, presumably both for any sort of program launcher and for the applications themselves

In the comments of his own blog post, Seigo mentions that he sees netbooks as devices that are designed to run “specific types of tasks, usually one at a time.” Honestly, it sounds to me like Seigo is confusing netbooks with cellphones. As much as I’d like to see more people working on unique interfaces for netbooks, part of what makes them special is the fact that they are computers that can handle multi-tasking responsibilities better than any cellphone on the market.

If you want to listen to music while instant messaging your friends with Pidgin, checking your email with Thunderbird, and surfing the web with Firefox, you can do that on a netbook. There may not be enough screen real estate to comfortably accommodate all of those windows at once, but it should be easy to flip back and forth between running programs. That doesn’t have to mean using a Windows style taskbar or an OS X style dock. But I’m hoping that when Saigo talks about “one at a time” tasks, he’s not ruling out the possibility of easily running tasks in the background and flipping back and forth.

via Netbook News.de