The first preview of KDE SC 4.4, or KDE 4.4 "Kompilation" Beta 1 as it also known, is now available. With KDE SC 4.4 Beta brings with it a lot of improvements and features. This represents the first step towards KDE SC 4.4 which is scheduled to be released in Febuary 2010.

Among all the featues introduces in KDE SC 4.4 Beta 1, none sounds more interesting than tabbed windows. The KDE SC windows manager now makes it possible for you to arrange your open windows in the form of tabs. This may perhaps be the first time it has been implemented in a windows manager. While this may look like a rip-off from Google's browser Chrome, there is one big difference as you can tab together different applications.

Now for the other changes that has been introduced:

• Nepomuk Semantic Search is much more usable.
• There is a new automounter of removable media.
• Dolphin now has a much improved search interface.
• Gwenview now has a much better thumbnail management and a new import tool.
• KRunner is now top screen edge, like we wrote about a few days back.
• There is a new TimeLine Virtual File System which gives other applications access to recently used items.

As expected from a beta release, there are bugs which will be removed as it progresses toward the final release date.