The KDE Community today announced the immediate availability of "Caterpillar", (a.k.a KDE 4.2 Beta 1), the first testing release of the new KDE 4.2 desktop. Caterpillar is aimed at testers and reviewers. It should provide a solid ground to report bugs that need to be tackled before KDE 4.2.0 is released. Reviewers can use this beta to get a first look at the upcoming KDE 4.2 desktop which provides significant improvements all over the desktop and applications.

With 885 bugs closed in the past week, the KDE community is now in bugfixing mode in order to provide a smooth KDE 4.2.0 to end users in January.

full announcement