Almost everyone knows that if you look out of your 'Windows', the world is much more vivid and beautiful. Apple is known for its good looks, but it's excessively expensive; while Vista is a big disappointment. Now, there is GNUlLinux which, in fact, is free and offers much more options and freedom than Windows or Mac. One of the most popular desktop environments on GNUlLinux platform has come out in a new flavour-KDE 4.0.

While discussing the tech side with Pradeepto Bhattacharya of KDE, he noted: "KDE Libs has been improved and new libraries have been added. Phonon is the new multimedia library and Solid is the hardware integration framework. KDEPIM, Akonadi, the PIM back¬end will be included in the future releases. KDE 4.0 is based on Qt 4, and is completely re-written. The memory foot prin~ has improved and it now offers Plasma desktop with all those jazzy icons and themes. The Oxygen team has worked very hard to give the eye-candy icons to the KDE 4.0 desktop. The KDE 4.0 has improved Dolphin as the file manager and Konqueror is the default browser. It includes Ocular as the document viewer which has beautiful usability features. We have worked with the Open Usability group on this and it supports many file formats."

KDE.org describes Phonon as the interface that offers applications multimedia capabilities such as playing audio and video. Internally, Phonon makes use of various backends, switchable at runtime. The default backend for various formats. Phonon also allows the user to choose output devices based on the type of multimedia. While, the Solid hardware integration framework integrates fixed and removable devices into KDE applications. Solid also interfaces with the underlying system's power management capabilities, handles network connectivity and integration of Bluetooth devices. Internally, Solid combines the powers of HAL, NetworkManager and the BlueZ blue tooth stack, but those components are replaceable without breaking applications to provide maximum portability.

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Along with Plasma and the new Oxygen theme, what enhances KDE's visual appeal is the updated Kwin window manager, which now supports advanced compositing features. Hardware accelerated painting takes care of a smoother and more intuitive interaction with windows.

The port to the Qt 4 series is expected to enable KDE 4 to use less memory and be noticeably faster than KDE 3. The port to Qt 4 will also facilitate support for non-Xll-based platforms, including Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. One of the overall goals of KDE 4 is to be more easily portable to different operating systems.