KDE4 has a lot of hype. It is a significant change, reportedly a big jump forward. There is a lot of new technology and names: Plasma, Oxygen, Phonon, Okular, Solid and more . Depending on what you read, and where you read it, it is either the second coming of the DE Christ, or the first coming of the DE Anti-christ.

Air was the wallpaper we introduced in KDE 4.2, but that is just the beginning of something larger. Air is supposed to be different than what Oxygen is, something that tries to appeal to a user base looking for a more "sexy" experience than Oxygen (yeah I know you are out there :) ), but to still have the capability of merging nicely with what we have now.

KDE has reached version 4.1.2. The new series includes updates to several of KDE’s core components, notably a port to Qt 4. It contains a new multimedia API, called Phonon, a device integration framework called Solid and a new style guide and default icon set called Oxygen.

The fact that the KDE team has pulled this off is inspiring. My stupid little top ten lists do not do justice to this accomplishment. Trying to narrow things I love to ten was not easy. I decided to focus on what was immediate. The big-picture changes are just too big to be dropped into a little list. Phonon, Solid, Decibal and all of the other big technologies didn’t even get on the list. They need their own articles to get the attention they deserve. The changes are so big and so interesting that it is easy to become overwhelmed trying to write about them. If that is true, imagine coding them!

The main objective of this blog is to help narrow down the list of Linux- and BSD-based distributions that a new user will feel comfortable using. Distributions that provide the same or better level of user-friendliness than the malware-infested and DRM-riddled operating system that they currently use.

Every few weeks Nuno Pinheiro and the KDE Oxygen Icons team are publishing a new usability survey online to get feedback from users on the look and feel of icons.

Developers of the Fedora Project have put together a fine distribution that's rock-solid and user-friendly. ts purpose in life is to be the Linux desktop, with the flexibility to function as a solid work or development platform. Can it sit on a netbook and do cloud? Sure, but that's not its main goal.

Plasma, ZUI, Oxygen, Dolphin, Okular, and Phonon are terms that seem more at home in a science experiment than in a Window Manager. But this is one science experiment that didn't go bad.

Today we are announcing the project release of MeeGo v1.0. This release provides developers with a stable core foundation for application development and a rich user experience for Netbooks. The MeeGo Netbook user experience is the first to appear, with the development of the MeeGo Handset user experience moving to the open in June.