The KDE project released the first alpha version of KDE 4.1 yesterday; the official release date for the final version is late June this year.
Many observers expect this to be the first more-or-less bug free release of KDE 4, which will make it accessible to normal users. One of the biggest changes in KDE 4.1 is the introduction of Akonadi, and engine designed to facilitate Personal Information Management (PIM). KMail, KOrganizer and the other applications now offer centralized contact management thus allowing for a seamless exchange of data between them.
KDE 4.1 will also be available for the Windows, Mac OS X and OpenSolaris platforms and work is in progress on the ports. At the same time, the KDE developers now rely on Qt 4.4; in fact, this is necessary for some of the features originally announced. For example rendering performance for vector graphics is vastly improved, widgets and layouts can now also be drawn on canvas elements including the Plasma desktop, which is still under development and not stable at present. The download and more information on the alpha version is available here.
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