KDE (K Desktop Environment) is a free software project which aims to be a powerful system for an easy-to-use desktop environment. The goal of the project is to provide basic desktop functions and applications for daily needs as well as tools and documentation for developers to write stand-alone applications for the system. In this regard the KDE project serves as an umbrella project for many standalone applications and smaller projects that are based on KDE technology, such as KOffice, KDevelop, Amarok and K3b.

KDE was founded in 1996 by Matthias Ettrich, who was then a student at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen. At the time, he was troubled by certain aspects of the UNIX desktop. Among his qualms 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. His initial Usenet post spurred a lot of interest, and the KDE project was born. The name KDE was intended as a word play on the existing Common Desktop Environment available for Unix systems. The K was originally suggested to stand for "Kool", but it was quickly decided that the K should stand for nothing in particular.

KDE's highly modular design and portable implementation enables it to run successfully on many UNIX™ derivatives, most notably KDE FreeBSD and KDE Solaris.

OpenSolaris

KDE