Today KDE released the first release candidate for its Workspaces, Applications, and Development Platform. With API, dependency and feature freezes in place, the KDE team's focus is now on fixing bugs and further polishing. Compared to Beta2, RC1 contains hundreds of fixes. Please give this release another good round of testing to help us release a rock-solid 4.8 in January.

Highlights of 4.8 include:

* Qt Quick in Plasma Workspaces -- Qt Quick is making its way into the Plasma Workspaces. The new Plasma Components provide a standardized API implementation of widgets with native Plasma Look and Feel. The device notifier widget has been ported using these components and is now written in pure QML. KWin's window switcher is now also QML-based, paving the way for newly designed window switchers.

* Dolphin's file view has been rewritten for better performance, scalability and more attractive visual appearance.

More here or here