The KDE project is a Free Software project. KDE groups together hundreds of software engineers from across the globe, committed to the development of; and the spirit of free software. Every single line of KDE source code is made available under an open source license. The current licensing policy is also available online. This effectively means that everyone is free to modify and distribute KDE source code. Implications of this fact are several, in particular the fact that KDE is available free of charge to anyone, and will always be so.

[ The need for KDE | The users view | The Current KDE Distribution | History | Facts and Figures]

Why is there a need for KDE?

The traditional X11 desktop exhibits amidst others, the following shortcomings:

No easy dialog based desktop configuration
No unified application help system
No common application development framework
No compound document framework
Lack of network transparency on the application level
Authoring of applications is extremely difficult and tedious

KDE - The users view

For its users KDE brings out an entire barage of new ideas. Some are:

A "Beautiful" contemporary desktop
Complete network transparency and minimal need for configuration
An integrated help system, thus allowing convenient and consistent access to help on the use of the desktop and applications
Consistent look and feel
Standardized menus, toolbars, keybindings, color-schemes, etc.
Internationalization: KDE is available in more than 50 languages
Centralized, consistent, dialog driven desktop configurations
A host of useful KDE applications

The Current KDE distribution

The current official KDE distribution consists of the following packages:

KDE-Libs: Various run-time libraries.
KDE-Base: The base components (window-manager, desktop, panel, Konqueror)
KDE-Plasma-Addons: Additional themes and applets for the desktop and panel
KDE-Network: Networking applications such as an instant messenger and download manager.
KDE-Pim: Mail client, addressbook, organizer and groupware integration.
KDE-Graphics: Document viewer, image viewer and selected other graphics applications.
KDE-Multimedia: Includes a video player as well as different audio players.
Phonon: Multimedia layer that supports different backends, on different operating systems, for multimedia output.
KDE-Accessibility: Applications to improve computer access for disabled people such as a text-to-speech system.
KDE-Utilities: Useful utilities like an archiving tool and a calculator.
KDE-Edu: Education and science applications.
KDE-Games: Classic and modern games.
KDE-Toys: KDE's fun stuff.
KDE-Artwork: Additional icons, styles, wallpapers, screensavers and window decorations.
KDE-Admin: Various tools to aid with system administration.
KDE-SDK: Script and tools which simplify development of KDE applications.
KOffice: Integrated office suite.
KDevelop: C/C++ Integrated Development Environment.
KDE-Bindings: bindings for various programming languages (Python, Ruby, Perl, Java...).
KDEWebdev: Web development applications and tools.

Two pseudo-packages not part of the official release are also available.

KDE-Extragear: Extragear is a collection of applications associated with the KDE project, not part of the official release for various reasons. These are however still part of the project and can be downloaded separately. This gives them higher visibility to Translators and Documentation Writers.
KDE-Playground: Similar to KDE-Extragear, this pseudo-package also contains software not part of the main KDE release.

And last but certainly not the least, there are literally thousands of excellent KDE applications not part of KDE releases or the Official KDE project. You can find these using KDE's central database.

A bit of KDE History

KDE was founded in October 1996. Its announcement is dated 14th October 1996.
August 15, 1997: KDE-ONE in Arnsberg, Germany, 15 participants
December 1997: KDE e.V.i.G. was founded to shield core members from legal and financial liabilities
April 8, 1998: The KDE Free Qt Foundation was announced
Beta 1 Oct 20, 1997 - Beta 2 Nov 23, 1997 - Beta3 February 1, 1998 - Beta4 April 19, 1998
1.0 was released on July 12, 1998
1.1 was released on February 6th, 1999
1.1.1 was released on May 5th, 1999
1.1.2 was released on Sep 13th, 1999
KDE-Two meeting in Erlangen, Oct 7-10 1999
1.89 was released on Dec 15th, 1999
1.90 (KDE2 beta1) May 12th, 2000 - 1.91 (KDE2 beta2) June 14th, 2000 - 1.92 (KDE2 beta3) July 31st, 2000
KDE-Three Beta meeting in Trysil (Norway), July 9-19 2000
1.93 (KDE2 beta4) was released on August 23th, 2000
Qt goes GPL September 04th, 2000
1.94 (KDE2 beta5) was released on September 15th, 2000
2.0 Release Candidate was released on October 10th, 2000
2.0 was released on October 23th, 2000
2.0.1 was released on December 5th, 2000
2.1 Beta 1 was released on December 16th, 2000
2.1 Beta 2 was released on January 31st, 2001
2.1 was released on February 26th, 2001
2.1.1 was released on March 27th, 2001
2.1.2 was released on April 30th, 2001
2.2 Beta1 was released on July 4th, 2001
2.2 was released on August 15th, 2001
2.2.1 was released on September 19th, 2001
2.2.2 was released on November 21st, 2001
3.0 was released on April 3rd, 2002
3.0.1 was released on May 22th, 2002
3.0.2 was released on July 2nd, 2002
3.1 Alpha1 was released on July 11th, 2002
3.0.3 was released on August 19th, 2002
3.1 Beta1 was released on August 21st, 2002
3.1 Beta2 was released on October 2nd, 2002
3.0.4 was released on October 9th, 2002
3.0.5 was released on November 18th, 2002
3.0.5a was released on December 21st, 2002
3.1 was released on January 28th, 2003
3.1.1 was released on March 20th, 2003
3.1.2 was released on May 19th, 2003
3.1.3 was released on July 29th, 2003
3.2 Alpha 1 was released on September 10th, 2003
3.1.4 was released on September 16th, 2003
3.1.5 was released on January 14th, 2004
3.2 was released on February 3rd, 2004
3.2.1 was released on March 9th, 2004
3.2.2 was released on April 19th, 2004
3.2.3 was released on June 9th, 2004
3.3 was released on August 19th, 2004
3.3.1 was released on October 12th, 2004
3.3.2 was released on December 8th, 2004
3.4 was released on March 16th, 2005
3.4.1 was released on May 31st, 2005
3.4.2 was released on July 28th, 2005
3.4.3 was released on October 13th, 2005
3.5 was released on November 29th, 2005
3.5.1 was released on January 31st, 2006
3.5.2 was released on March 28th, 2006
3.5.3 was released on May 31st, 2006
3.5.4 was released on August 2nd, 2006
3.5.5 was released on October 11th, 2006
3.5.6 was released on January 25th, 2007
4.0 Alpha 1 was released on May 11th, 2007
3.5.7 was released on May 22nd, 2007
4.0 Alpha 2 was released on July 4th, 2007
4.0 Beta 1 was released on August 2nd, 2007
4.0 Beta 2 was released on September 6th, 2007
3.5.8 was released on October 16th, 2007
4.0 Beta 3 was released on October 18th, 2007
4.0 Beta 4 was released on October 30th, 2007
4.0 Development Platform Release Candidate 1 was released on October 30th, 2007
4.0 RC 1 was released on November 20th, 2007
4.0 RC 2 was released on December 11th, 2007
4.0 was released on January 11th, 2008
4.0.1 was released on February 5th, 2008
3.5.9 was released on February 19th, 2008
4.0.2 was released on March 5th, 2008
4.0.3 was released on April 2nd, 2008
4.1 Alpha1 was released on April 29th, 2008
4.0.4 was released on May 7th, 2008
4.1 Beta 1 was released on May 27th, 2008
4.0.5 was released on June 4th, 2008
4.1 Beta 2 was released on June 24th, 2008
4.1 RC1 was released on July 15th, 2008
4.1 was released on July 29th, 2008
3.5.10 was released on August 26th, 2008
4.1.1 was released on September 3rd, 2008
4.1.2 was released on October 3rd, 2008
4.1.3 was released on November 5th, 2008

KDE Facts and Figures

KDE is a very large project. While it is hard to quantify what this means, for an idea consider the fact:

The KDE SVN source code repository holds currently over 4.0 million lines of code. (To put things into perspective: The Linux kernel version 2.5.71 consists of about 3.7 million lines of code.)
Over 1900 contributors help to develop KDE.
The translation team itself consists of about 300 individuals.
11,014 SVN commits were made during May 2002.
KDE has more than 20 official website mirrors in over 14 countries.
KDE has more than 130 official download mirrors in over 40 countries.