While Microsoft beats the drum loudly for Vista, the K Desktop Environment open-source community has more quietly been improving its popular desktop interface. The upcoming version of KDE 3.5 will include many small, but significant, improvements. In addition, the latest edition of the KDE-based office suite, KOffice 1.4.1, has already improved its interoperability with other office programs.
First in KDE's new feature set is Storage Media Notification. With this, when you place any new media, such as a CD, DVD or USB memory stick, on a KDE-enabled Linux or Unix system, it will present you with a dialog asking what you want to do with the content. This kind of functionality is already present in Windows XP and in some Linux distributions like Mandriva. KDE's Kicker, the desktop's application-launcher menu bar, is also getting numerous improvements.
News source: eWeek
