KDE has released the next beta in their 4 series of the infamous desktop suite, making KDE 4.1 available today. This is the first beta release of 4.1, and is not aimed at people looking for stable desktops, but rather pioneers and bug testers to help smooth it for an official release later this year.
The KDE team is planning a final release of 4.1 in July. The primary updates so far with 4.1 include expanded functionality of the default desktop shell and configuration interfaces. They also include new and newly ported programs, which is definitely needed as the existing KDE 3.5 installations have a much wider native application base. If you simply can't wait for the official release of 4.1, you can download and build it yourself today to try out. For anyone still using KDE 3.5, it's important to note that you can simultaneously have KDE 3.5 and 4.0/4.1 installed in most circumstances.