KDE 3.2 was released this week, and I have moved my normal account from 3.1 to the new version. The upgrade was painless on this machine, but I still copied .kde first. Confidence is a fine emotion; it is not a backup strategy.

The feature I notice most is Kontact. Having KMail, KOrganizer, the address book, and related tools in one window sounds cosmetic until one uses it all day. The components remain useful separately, but the shared shell reduces window hunting and makes the PIM suite feel like one piece of software rather than neighbours who happen to share a fence.

Konqueror feels more polished as both browser and file manager. KHTML handles more of the troublesome pages I encounter, although “works in Safari” still does not guarantee “works in Konqueror.” They share ancestry and code, not every platform integration or every patch. Web developers should test both instead of converting the relationship into a new browser-detection shortcut.

I also like the many small improvements more than any single headline. Configuration pages are easier to navigate, applications agree more often about behaviour, and the visual result is cleaner. KDE already had enough knobs to operate a modest submarine. The useful work now is choosing good defaults and making the common paths obvious.

My post-upgrade check is deliberately mundane:

send and receive mail
open old calendar entries
print from two applications
test file associations
visit SSL sites
check keyboard shortcuts
log out and back in

That last step catches session restoration and startup problems that a quick tour misses. I also removed third-party panel applets before upgrading and added them back one at a time. Plugins compiled against an older set of libraries are not where I want to begin debugging the desktop itself.

Performance is difficult to judge scientifically from a chair, but the desktop remains responsive and startup is reasonable. The larger applications naturally consume memory; integration does not repeal arithmetic. On a modest machine I would choose which Kontact components to load rather than assuming the complete suite is free.

KDE 3.2 is a substantial release, but it succeeds because the desktop feels more connected, not because the version contains a longer feature list. I can do the same work with fewer interruptions. That is not glamorous, and it is exactly what I want from a desktop.