Here in this article I am sharing with you top 10 KDE4 applications that will be really useful for the developers who are in search of KDE4 applications.
Yakuake – Great Terminal Application
One of the very popular Quake-style terminal application is Yakuake. It remains in the background unless we invoke it with the (default) F12 global shortcut. It is able to inherit Konsole’s settings and probably it is the best alternative to Konsole. Yakuake is identical to Konsole, as it supports full transparency effects, various colour schemes and backgrounds, middle-click paste and tabs. I must say that it is definitely an essential tool.
Amarok 2 – The Most Popular Linux Audio Player
In the last few months Amarok’s port to KDE4 was probably one of the most controversial releases and it give rise to many discussions that whether Amarok 2 took the right way? My answer to this question is: yes.
Although in the beginning Amarok 2 did not have some major features, but instead of that it is a new ground for what is going to comes next. Yes it is not wrong that Amarok 2.0.2 was effectively full of bugs, but the upcoming 2.1 release comes with a new, customizable play list which should be alright.
Still Amarok 2 doesn’t contain a lot of features, but the appreciable thing is that developers know the needs of users and they have made plans to implement them in future versions. In between the new features this wonderful player are widget support, it comes with a completely rebranded playlist and interface (according to me, the way the space is managed in the interface is really appreciable), it gives support for many services like Last.fm, Magnatune, and several other music stores. The new development are arriving at a fast pace and I’m that soon Amarok 2 will be identical to Amarok 1.4 and even offers some more features.
K3b – Arguably The Best KDE Burning Application
K3b has a port for KDE4 now, even though it is currently in alpha.
There are no new features associated to it and there is no change in the interface, but this is the base for the upcoming applications in future. Probably the most powerful and full-featured, open-source CD/DVD burning application on Linux is K3b.
SMPlayer – Full-Featured Video Player Using Qt
Nowadays VLC also comes with a Qt interface, this has brought SMPlayer and VLC at the same level, but I have chosen SMPlayer because I think that it has a more compact interface and it appears that it is quite easier to use.
Although it’s true that SMPlayer does not actually depend on KDE4 libraries, still it is a Qt4 application, and it is considered to be one of the most powerful video players out there. Since the default Kubuntu video player is Dragon Player. It is not quite configurable and also it does not come with too many features, so it is necessary to install a alternative, and as an alternative SMPlayer does a great job.
As SMPlayer uses the mplayer engine, SMPlayer is a very powerful, feature-rich and highly configurable video player, which is able to play any format around, including DVD ISO images or Matroska MKV videos. SMPlayer comes with a great feature and that is for a long time now it has the ability to remember all the settings for a specific file (like the time position, video settings, window size and position etc).
This feature is very useful when you need to close the player, and then after some time when you have to restart a certain video without the need to scroll to the last position in the video. SMPlayer has such kind of interface which fits well with KDE4 and with it we can configure the shortcuts, it gives us icon themes, subtitles support, video functions such as rotate video, aspect ratio, or various filters.
DigiKam – Photo Management Application
DigiKam is one of the popular photo management applications which make the perfect alternative to the closed-source application from Google, Picasa.
It also has a KDE4 port too, starting with version 0.10. With digiKam you can organize your pictures and photographs into albums and collections. It has got a huge number of options and further more it gives support for many digital cameras.
Krusader – Powerful File Manager
Krusader 2.0 ‘Mars Pathfinder’ was released on April 11 having a funny codename, and it is the first version of Krusader for KDE4.
Krusader had always been the first alternative to Konqueror back in the KDE3 days, and any user who is in search for an advanced file manager for KDE4 can be pleased with its twin-panel interface and powerful features.
KTorrent – Full-Featured BitTorrent Client
KTorrent has travelled a long way and now it is a completely full-featured BitTorrent client.
It includes various useful plugins, torrent information, rich configuration settings, it has the ability to download only certain files in torrents, it made it possible for you to create your own torrents and there is much more features. If being a KDE user you have still not given it a try then I suggest you that you really need to try it now.
Gwenview – Image Viewer and Editor
Gwenview is continuously passing through the development process. Every new release comes with more features and improvements added to it. The new plans for the upcoming 2.3 release of Gwenview includes a redesigned places and history handling, which will now comes with a ‘URL bag’ (or probably it would be called ‘recent URLs’), it is done so that whenever you start Gwenview for having an image viewed on the web it will keep the address in the history so that afterwards you can access it in just a very little time.
Various image formats are being supported by Gwenview. It has a good KDE integration. It features a file browser and thumbnail previews. Gwenview has one more exclusive feature and that is its ability to use basic image manipulation plugins, with which its functionality also extends.
Kdenlive – Wonderful Video Editor
There are several popular video editors of Linux that are praised by some and hailed by others, and those also include Kino and Cinelerra. Kdenlive is a newer alternative to those. It is the opininon of many that it is just the perfect application for non-linear video editing in KDE.
Various video formats are supported by Kdenlive. It includes video and audio effects, and moreover it also organizes your work in projects. With the help of this application you can create, crop, delete and basically manipulate videos easily in any way possible.
SpeedCrunch – Complex Calculator
Maybe SpeedCrunch is not an application which can have a competition with a video player or image management application, but still for any desktop a calculator is an essential tool. SpeedCrunch is a complex calculator application which is built in Qt 4 and this calculator also features a scientific mode.
As by reading this article you may have seen that, I have decided not to include applications which come by default with KDE, so here you won’t find applications like Kopete or Konsole. Rather than doing that, this is a top of KDE4 applications which I consider most powerful and probably essential for any KDE4 user after installing a KDE-based distribution.
Noteworthy Applications Left Out
Unluckily I was unable to include several good programs the reason is that either they are currently in alpha state (due to porting to KDE4 libs) or they does not include a KDE4 version.
Here what I have included is Kaffeine, which is a Xine-based video player which is included in the top KDE players, BasKet, which is an extremely nice notes-taking application and not only this BasKet comes with other great features also with which you are able to build entire projects, not only take notes.
Currently KDevelop has a beta release of the KDE4 port too, and it provides a powerful integrated development environment which allows to program KDE applications. I want to say nothing about KOffice, for this in just the last month the first release candidate of version 2.0 was put out. Rosegarden is a powerful music editor for Linux.
I must agree with you on SMPlayer. I was sad when I first installed Kubuntu because I thought I couldn’t play .wav files. Turns out, that I just needed SMPlayer!