Try KDE 4.7.0 now

KDE 4.7.0 went live just a few days ago, ready for October releases to safely incorporate it into their software stacks. Impatient and adventurous users who don't get updates automatically on their distros can have a go at it now, though, obviously acknowledging the risks implied in this approach.

Many of the most popular distros out there offer ways to try KDE 4.7.0. I personally found Kubuntu's way easiest, so that's what I did. For those interested, I will discuss how to upgrade at the end of this article.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS



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As you can see from the screenshot above, KDE 4.7.0 does not look terribly different from KDE 4.6.5. Quite the contrary, it's only minor details that make it noticeable, such as the "Activities" button on the upper right.



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I was eager to see the new mobile broadband support in action, and after some brief testing, I have to say it worked perfectly!



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KDE 4.7.0 continues and perhaps even improves on its trend towards reducing its resource footprint. It's too early too tell, but it felt light, responsive, and fast.

INSTALLATION

If you want to install KDE 4.7.0 on Kubuntu like I did, simply follow the following steps:

Note that this is not the official Kubuntu implementation, so proceed at your own risk!

1.- From the command line, add the following PPA to your sources:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports

2.- Update:

sudo apt-get update

3.- And now upgrade (note that I am using dist-upgrade purposedly to force the upgrade through):

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Enjoy!

NOT A REVIEW!

Just to clarify, this is by no means a KDE 4.7.0 review, not even a preview.

Installing KDE 4.7.0 on Kubuntu 11.04 like this is not the best way to try it for many reasons. For one, the Kubuntu developers don't get a fair chance of polishing things down to their tastes and needs. Another reason is that Kubuntu tends to limit or simplify some of KDE's features, so there will be things that you won't find here. Last but not least, it seems like the KDE 4.7.0 version that was packaged on that PPA is not the latest, or at least not complete (things like Kmail 2 were missing).

In any case, I think it is a good opportunity to take a look into KDE edge, and a fairly simple one as well. If you decide to go ahead, have fun exploring 4.7!