KDE SC 4.7 Hits Beta With Some Fun Changes

The KDE community this morning has announced the first beta for the upcoming major release of KDE Software Compilation 4.7. Many of the KDE packages have received major work during the 4.7 cycle, but in particular there's some prominent changes to KWin, Dolphin, KDM, and Marble.

KDE SC 4.7 is due for release at the end of July, so to begin rounding up some tests, the KDE community released their first beta to solicit wider-scale testing. Some of the prominent changes for KDE SC 4.7 include OpenGL ES 2.0 support in KWin (the compositing window manager for the KDE Plasma desktop), the Dolphin File Manager is boasting an improved user-interface, KDM (the KDE Display Manager) now plays with the GRUB2 boot-loader, and Marble now supports off-line address searches.

More information on the planned summer release of KDE SC 4.7 and for today's Beta 1 can be found in this KDE press release. A second beta release is due at the beginning of June while the first release candidate will arrive in approximately one month.