KDE is a powerful graphical desktop environment for Unix workstations.

It combines ease of use, contemporary functionality and outstanding graphical design with the technological superiority of the Unix operating system. It is an Internet project and truly open in every sense.

Development takes place on the Internet and is discussed on our mailing lists and USENET news groups to which we invite and welcome everyone. No single group, company or organization controls the sources. All sources are open to everyone and may be distributed and modified by anyone subject to the well known GNU licenses.

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What's New in This Release: [ read full changelog ]

· This release is doubly important because it marks the return to the headlines of the KDE Windows Initiative after a lot of hard background work and because it brings the KDE SC 4.5 series to the Windows users

Improvements:
· The lastest version of Phonon-VLC backend is available as the default backend;
· Support for two new compilers: mingw-w32, a more updated distribution of Gcc for Windows provided by the mingw-w64 project, and vc100, the Microsoft compiler provided in Visual Studio 2010 Express Edition. These, in the future, will respectively replace mingw4 and vc90 (both of which are however supported in this release).

· Aside from the software improvements mentioned above, the Windows team has worked under the hood to lower the barrier of contribution to development and community participation. This release itself is the result of a common release effort to fix the remaining compiling issues.