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KDE (K Desktop Environment) () is a free desktop environment and development platform built with Trolltech's Qt toolkit. It runs on most Unix and Unix-like systems, such as Linux, BSD, AIX, Unixware, OpenServer and Solaris. There are also ports to Mac OS X using its X11 layer and Microsoft Windows using Cygwin. Some KDE applications like Kexi, work natively on Microsoft Windows• and with KDE4 all KDE applications will run natively on Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows•, •. KDE is developed in conjunction with KDevelop, a software development suite, and KOffice, an office suite. The "K" originally stood for "Kool" (the name was intended to be a pun on the acronym CDE for the Common Desktop Environment), but was changed soon after to stand simply for "K".• The project's mascot is a green dragon named Konqi. Konqi can be found in various applications, including when the user logs out and in the "About KDE" screen.
History KDE was founded in 1996 by Matthias Ettrich, who was then a student at the University of Tübingen. At the time, he was troubled by certain aspects of the UNIX desktop. Among his qualms, outlined in a now-famous newsgroup post, were that none of the applications looked, felt, or worked alike. He proposed the formation of not only a set of applications, but rather a desktop environment, in which users could expect things to look, feel, and work consistently. He also wanted to make this desktop easy to use. One of his complaints with desktop applications of the time was that his girlfriend could not use them. That post spurred a lot of interest, and the KDE project was born. Matthias chose to use the Qt toolkit for the KDE project. Other programmers quickly started developing KDE/Qt applications, and by early 1997, large and complex applications were being released. At the time, Qt did not use a free software license and members of the GNU project became concerned about the use of such a toolkit for building a free software desktop and applications. Two projects were started: "Harmony", to create a Free replacement for the Qt libraries, and the GNOME project to create a new desktop without Qt and built entirely on top of free software. In November 1998, the Qt toolkit was licensed under the open source Q Public License (QPL). This same year the KDE Free Qt foundation was created which guarantees that Qt would fall under a variant of the very liberal BSD license should Trolltech cease to exist or no open source version of Qt be released during 12 months. But debate continued about compatibility with the GNU General Public License (GPL). In September 2000, Trolltech made the Unix version of the Qt libraries available under the GPL, in addition to the QPL, which has eliminated the concerns of the Free Software Foundation. Starting with the release of Qt 4.0, it is available as free software for the Unix, Mac and Windows platforms, indicating that the next major version of KDE applications and libraries will have native support on these platforms. Both KDE and GNOME now participate in Freedesktop.org, an effort to standardize Unix desktop interoperability, although there is still some friendly competition between them. Organization of the KDE project Like many open source/free software projects, KDE is primarily a volunteer effort, although various companies, such as Novell (in the form of SUSE), Trolltech, and Mandriva employ developers to work on the project. Since a large number of individuals contribute to KDE in various ways (e.g. code, translation, artwork), organization of such a project is complex. Most problems are discussed on a number of different mailing lists. Important decisions, such as release dates and inclusion of new applications, are made on the kde-core-devel list by the so-called core developers. These are developers who have made significant contributions to KDE over a long period of time. Decisions are not made by a formal voting process, but by discussion on the mailing lists. In most cases this seems to work well, and major discussions (such as the question of whether the KDE 2 API should be broken in favour of KDE 3) are rare. While developers and users are now located all over the world, the project retains a strong base in Germany. The web servers are located at the universities of Tübingen and Kaiserslautern, a German non-profit organization (KDE e.V.) owns the trademark on "KDE", and KDE conferences often take place in Germany. Release cycle and version numbers
Major release
Minor release A minor KDE release has three version numbers, e.g. KDE 1.1.1, and a focus on fixing bugs, minor glitches and making small usability improvements, as opposed to adding new features. For minor releases, a shortened release schedule is used. KDE 4
Architecture Packaging
Major KDE applications For a full list, see list of KDE applications. Applications for KDE include: Timeline Naming convention Most KDE applications have a K in the name, mostly as an initial letter and capitalized. However, there are notable exceptions like kynaptic, whose K is not capitalized, Gwenview, which doesn't have a K in the name at all, and Amarok which has a K at the end. Many KDE applications get their K by spelling a word which originally begins with C or Q differently, for example Konsole and Kuickshow. Also, some just prepend a commonly used word with a K, an instance being KOffice. It should be noted that some application names (such as Konsole) are correctly spelled German words. Licensing issues Qt, to which native graphical KDE applications link for their graphical widgets (buttons, check boxes, scrollbars...), is freely available under the GNU GPL and QPL licenses (a license for proprietary software may be purchased however). Considering the freely available licenses, programs which link to Qt must be released as FOSS (under the GPL or another license permitted by the QPL, such as the BSD or LGPL for example). After the release of Qt under the GPL, the controversy over licensing with the Free Software Foundation ended. Some closed source developers argue that paying for a license, similar to the relatively expensive development tools of other systems, removes most of the financial incentive for writing closed source, native graphical KDE applications. However, it is not necessary to use Qt or the KDE libraries to write software which integrates well to the KDE desktop. Software using any other toolkit, following the freedesktop standards or using KDE facilities such as kprinter and kdialog can integrate nicely to the KDE desktop (both kprinter and kdialog use Qt, they are under the GPL licence), however the widgets will not have the exact behavior of Qt widgets. Additional integration efforts are being discussed in the Portland Free Desktop initiative •, and are planned for KDE 4. Some other open source desktop platforms (such as GNOME, Xfce, EDE...) use toolkits licensed under the LGPL. The LGPL permits closed source applications to link to LGPLed libraries with some restrictions: the Section 6 of the LGPL v2.1 prohibits linking to software with a license that restricts reverse-engineering and modification of the work for the customer's own use. The commercial (paid) Qt license does not carry these restrictions. As of December 2005 a Qt license costs from 1420 to 2630 euro per developer. Updates for one year are included, after which the license must be renewed (550 to 1020 USD per year) to benefit from software updates and support under the commercial license. Usability KDE aims to make easy-to-use programs without sacrificing features. KDE's Usability page states its goal as: "Working within the existing design goals of a system, usability efforts aim to make the implementations of these designs easier to use, faster to learn, more consistent and obvious, and generally more ergonomic for their target audience." • To improve the user interface, work has gone into reducing visual complexity for versions 3.2 to 3.5. The most promising effort is the close work with the OpenUsability Project. One of the major goals of KDE 4.0 is to identify further areas that are lacking from a usability perspective and address these concerns. In particular, new human interface guidelines are being developed for KDE 4.0. KDE strives to make otherwise onerous or difficult tasks easier, such as adding printers (local or networked), setting up 802.11 Wireless security settings (such as WEP), and installing new fonts and window decorations. Third-party web sites LinuxPrinting and KDE-Look support KDE through adding devices or customizing the environment's look and feel. Criticisms The KDE interface has been criticised for being too complex and including too many configurable options. However, a usability report • evaluating a customized version of KDE 3.1 showed, as early as 2003, that the users were quickly familiar with KDE, enjoyed it and were able to accomplish the proposed task as quickly as with Windows XP. This was quite an accomplishment at the time, because those users were all long-time Windows users, so familiarity should have played heavily in favor of Windows XP. Sponsorship The KDE project and related events are frequently sponsored by individuals, universities, and businesses such as Dell and IBM.• On 15 October 2006 it was announced that Mark Shuttleworth became the first patron of KDE, the highest level of sponsorship available.• See also | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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