The KDE team have just released the final schedule for KDE 4.

I’m definitely looking forward to this one, as KDE still remains one of my favourite desktop environments. Some of the new features in KDE 4 look quite cool, but I think the best features are the new stuff they’re doing with the architecture.

It is a fairly long wait though – but at least we have a target date to look forward to!

• April 1, 2007: Subsystem Freeze
  From this date forward, no new KDE subsystem or major changes can be committed to kdelibs.
• May 1, 2007: Alpha Release + kdelibs soft API Freeze
  Alpha will be a source-only release without translations. The kdelibs API is “soft-frozen”, meaning that changes can be made but only with the consent of the core developers.
• June 1, 2007: trunk/KDE is feature frozen

  Trunk is frozen for feature commits. Internationalised string changes are allowed. A list of main modules that will be included in the final release will be made.

• June 25, 2007: Beta1
  Beta 1 is prepared and released after some initial testing. The incoming bugs will be reviewed for their severity. After this release, a new Beta version will be released every month.
• September 23, 2007: Total Release Freeze
  This is the very last date for committing anything that isn’t reviewed on the development lists.
• September 25, 2007: Release Candidate 1
  Targetted date for first release candidate. Only regressions (breakage caused by the KDE 4 port) or grave bugs can be fixed. Starting with this Release Candidate, a new Release Candidate will be put out every two weeks until the codebase is sufficiently stable and all showstopper bugs have been fixed.
• October 23, 2007: Targetted Release Date