KDE has released a release candidate of the upcoming 4.7 release of the Plasma Desktop and Netbook workspaces, the KDE Applications and the KDE Frameworks, which is planned for July 27, 2011. With API, dependency and feature freezes in place, the KDE team's focus is now on fixing last-minute showstopper bugs and finishing translation and documentation that comes along with the releases.

KDE has released the first release candidate of the next version of the KDE Software Compilation (KDE SC). KDE SC 4.4 Release Candidate 1 provides a testing base for identifying bugs in the upcoming KDE Software Compilation 4.4, with its components the KDE Plasma Workspaces, the Applications powered by KDE, and the KDE Development Platform.

Mobile devices that adapt to who you are, reflecting what you are doing when you are doing it. This concept is at the heart of the Plasma Active user experience. Plasma Active One was released in October 2011, providing early adopters the first opportunity to experience Activities on a tablet.

The KDE Plasma team is inviting everyone to participate in a contest to create Plasma themes from which a select few will be chosen to be included as a part of the upcoming KDE 4.1 release. This is a great opportunity to contribute to a very visible component of the KDE project, the Plasma desktop.

Ubuntu 10.10 Release Candidate has just been released. There aren't too many visual changes since the beta version (most of the visual changes happened before the beta so see THIS post), but there are a few things worth mentioning like a new installer slideshow, the new Ubuntu font, changes to the Ubuntu Software Center, Sound Menu and default theme as well as a new default wallpaper and others.

Over the last weekend, the Plasma team held their second meeting in Porto, Portugal... The purpose of Tokamak II was to design features and concepts to be worked on over the next year in Plasma and the KDE desktop.

Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you the brand new shiny Plasma theme that will be used for KDE 4.1. You can see the new applet and KRunner backgrounds, the new panel, our brand-new carbon fiber clock and some items that once upon a time weren't themed at all, like the pager and the taskbar. The theming support is now even more extensive.

Right before Christmas, KDE has published the first candidate for the upcoming release of KDE 4.6.0. The focus at this stage is on fixing bugs and completing translations and artwork. As such, the rework of the Oxygen icon set is nearing completion, many bugs reported by testers in the past weeks have been fixed and stabilization is still in full swing.

the Plasma team is making great progress these days. I particularly like the new Plasma style notifications that are part of the new system tray: