Information AboutKde |
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name = K Desktop Environment
KDE ('''K''' '''D'''esktop '''E'''nvironment) 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 . Currently, a large portion of the primary KDE Libraries and a few other applications can work Natively on Microsoft Windows, thanks to the KDElibs/win32 Project . Ports of other KDE applications are being discussed. KDE is developed in conjunction with KDevelop , a software development suite, and KOffice , an Office Suite . The "K" originally stood for "Kool" (as the "C" as in "cool" was already used in the acronym for the Common Desktop Environment ), but was changed soon after to stand simply for "K", which is "the first letter before 'L' (which stands for Linux ) in the Latin alphabet." 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 project mascot]] KDE was founded in 1996 by , 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 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), 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. To prevent the codebase from being lost should Trolltech fail commercially, ownership of the code is held in a trust to be released under a BSD license should Trolltech cease to exist or stop updating the code. Both KDE and GNOME now participate in Freedesktop.org , an effort to standardise 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 List s. 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 KDE desktop running daily common applications.]] As the project history below shows, the KDE team releases new versions on a frequent basis. It is rare that a release is delayed for more than one or two weeks. An exception was KDE 3.1, which was delayed for more than a month because of a number of security issues in the code base. There are two main types of releases: Major release There have been 11 major releases: 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4 and 3.5. A major KDE release has two version numbers, e.g. KDE 1.1. All KDE releases in the same major version (e.g. KDE1, KDE2 and KDE3) are both binary and Source-compatible . This means for instance that software developed against KDE 3.0.x will work with all KDE3 releases. Only a major KDE release will incorporate new features. Changes requiring recompilation or porting never occur except during major version changes; this maintains a stable API for KDE application developers. The changes between KDE 1 and KDE 2 series were large and many, while the API changes between KDE 2 and KDE 3 were comparatively minor, meaning that applications could be easily ported to the new architecture. Up to now the KDE major version numbers follow the Qt release cycle. , and GKrellM .]] As soon as a major release is ready and announced, work on the next major release starts. A major release needs several months to be finished and many bugs that are fixed during this time are Backport ed to the stable branch, meaning that these fixes are incorporated into the last stable release. The current major release is 3.5, which arrived on November 29, 2005. KDE 4 will succeed 3.5 sometime in 2006, and will be based on Qt 4.x encompassing some major changes to the desktop. Minor release A minor KDE release has three version numbers, e.g. KDE 1.1.1, and the developers focus on fixing bugs, minor glitches and small usability improvements, as opposed to adding new features. For minor releases, a shortened release schedule is used. A minor release is based on a Subversion branch of a previous release and does not affect the "HEAD branch", the branch where the current development of the next major release takes place. new features, The somewhat unusual name "3.0.5a" was used because of a lack of version numbers. Work on KDE 3.1 had already started and, up to that day, the release coordinator used version numbers such as 3.0.5, 3.0.6 internally in the main CVS repository to mark snapshots of the upcoming 3.1. Then after 3.0.3, a number of important and unexpected bug fixes suddenly became necessary, leading to a conflict, because 3.0.6 was at this time already in use. More recent KDE release cycles have tagged pre-release snapshots with large revision numbers, such as 3.1.95, to avoid such conflicts. While development on KDE 2.x in general has stopped, important security fixes are backported to KDE 2.x, since many people still use it. KDE 4 .]] KDE 4 will be a major revision of KDE, based on the version 4 series of or early 2007 . Some of the planned features are: [http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2006/01/12/kde4.html
ARCHITECTURE
Packaging Due to the size of KDE, it is divided into several package categories to simplify installation. This is a reference scheme, packagers are free to use their own packages for KDE. icons.]]
There is also a Subversion module, Extragear (utils, network, multimedia... applications), which is used by applications which are part of the KDE project but don't depend on the release cycle of the main codebase; K3b and AmaroK are part of this module. More info can be found on the homepage . 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, AmaroK , which has its ''K'' in the end and Gwenview , which doesn't have a ''K'' in the name at all. 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 append a commonly used word to a ''K'', an instance being KOffice . It should be noted that some application names (such as Konsole ) are correctly spelt 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. Additional integration efforts are being discussed in the Portland Free Desktop initiative {Link without Title} , and are planned for KDE 4. Some other open source desktop platforms (such as 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 [http://openusability.org Open Usability 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. The KDE interface has been criticised for being too complex and including too many configurable options. However, a usability report {Link without Title} 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. KDE strives to make otherwise onerous or difficult tasks more easy, 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. SEE ALSO
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