No, I am not talking about der verdammte Eisbär. 'Knut' also happens to be the name of the first alpha release of KDE 4.0. The final version of KDE 4.0 is only due to come out by the end of October; as you can imagine, 'Knut' (besides being just a transposition way from a major spelling embarrassment) is therefore a rather unstable beast, more of a show of look-at-all-the-cool-things-we're-doing than a usable desktop. But it serves its purpose well; what follows is an overview of some of the new KDE features that can be found in 'Knut', plus some other stuff that is still in development but coming our way with the KDE 4.0 betas and the final version.

• Phonon: A framework that simplifies immensely the task of creating simple multimedia applications. It wraps around Xine, GStreamer, or whatever else is available on the system.
• Solid: A framework for hardware configuration and control, which should simplify tremendously the handling of those pesky removable devices and provide easy access to webcams and such.
• Decibel: Provides a service architecture to make instant messaging and Internet telephony easily accessible to any application.
• Sonnet: A framework for language processing. Among the cool features is automatic language detection for spell checking. It even works if you have a document with multiple paragraphs, each written in different languages!
• Akonadi: A storage system for PIM applications. It should provide for easy synchronisation between your desktop calendar and organiser-type devices.
• Strigi: A tool for automatic extraction of metadata from files. This ties in into the whole semantic desktop concept, which Nepomuk-KDE should expand even further (though possibly only for KDE 4.1).
• Kross: A scripting framework, enabling full scripting capabilities for KDE applications. At the moment Kross supports Javascript, Python, and Ruby scripts.
• Oxygen: A combination of a pseudo-photo-realistic icon theme (somewhat reminiscent of the one that ships with OSX), and a matching window decoration theme. It's looking quite slick, though there are still a few rough edges here and there.
• Plasma: Though there's still not much to see in Knut about Plasma, in the past few weeks progress has come to the point where flashy demos have started to surface. In short, Plasma aims to replace the traditional desktop metaphor with a more dynamic workspace. There are other even fancier ideas on the horizon, such as 'organic interfaces' and using a physics engine.
• Compositing support in Kwin: Yap, all those fancy 3D effects are being added to an already solid window manager! (Beryl/Compiz already make OSX look dull and Vista pre-historic).
• SVG rendering in applications: Not only does it make the development a lot easier (since one can focus on the decoration part without having to worry about the code and vice-versa), but it also brings us one step closer to the resolution-independent desktop. On top of that, the already-SVGfied games look stunning!
• Dolphin: A new file manager, focused on simplicity and usability. Power users will be glad to know that good old Konqueror is still available, but newcomers to KDE are likely to find Dolphin more user-friendly.
• Okular: A new document viewer. It can handle most document formats (PDF, Postscript, CHM, etc) under the sun, thus replacing the assortment of specialised applications that shipped with KDE 3.
• At last, KDE 4 will be based on QT4, which besides a bunch of exciting new features should also bring some speed improvements.

Now, I've been using KDE since the 1.0 beta days (sometime in 1998, if my memory is correct). Before it appeared, your average Linux desktop looked like this or this. As you can imagine, this has been a project that excited me from day one. And now with version 4.0, at long last we are on the verge of having a Free Software desktop that can take over the world. 1998 should be an interesting year.