Concept in Definition ABC

Many years ago, when GNU / Linux was about to attempt the assault on desktops, the community became realized that there were aspects to be polished, such as the installation or the graphic environment (the metaphor of desk).

It was in that context that what is now, together with GNOME, one of the best known and most used environments of this platform and other similar ones such as BSD: KDE was born.

KDE is a graphical desktop environment for Unix-like operating systems, such as GNU / Linux, or the various branches of BSD (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD), in addition to having grown to offer a whole series of resources to developers, all under the umbrella of software free.

These resources they are built on the libraries that allow to build the graphical environment, KDE Frameworks.

We also have a series of applications in categories such as games (Knights, chess, or Kajongg, Mahjong), production or reproduction multimedia (K3b, Amarok, KMPlayer, Kdenlive), or development (KDevelop, Kommander) among others.

Special mention should be made of the Calligra office suite, not as well known as its contenders LibreOffice and Microsoft Office, but which offers a complete set of utilities with processor of texts, spreadsheets, presentation program, database manager, and applications of He drew.

KDE was born in 1996 inspired by CDE (a very extended graphical environment for UNIX), but drinking also from Windows sources to seek to attract users of that platform to the desktop of Linux.

Version 1.0 was released in 1998 and contained elements inherited from CDE such as virtual desktops (which allowed the applications to be logically separated into a kind of of "drawers"), as well as Windows (such as the Start menu based on a button on the left side of the taskbar, an element also inherited from the Microsoft system).

Mixing elements selected from other environments worked very well, and KDE began to proliferate among GNU / Linux distributions that, At that time, they had very spartan graphical environments, like a clone of Sun Microsystems' Open Look, with hardly any elements visible.

The new desk, which would not get a competence It would be until the following year with GNOME, it allowed GNU / Linux to compete with Windows and Mac OS to become the users' desktop, although in the long run it ended up failing in this endeavor.

KDE was based on the QT libraries, owned by the Trolltech company. Fearing that it could close its development and charge for its use, the source code of these libraries was published under a free license.

It gave safety KDE developers and those betting on the future of this desktop environment.

In 2008, Trolltech would be acquired by Nokia to participate in the development of Meego and Maemo, which were called to be the following operating systems of the Finnish manufacturer for its mobile phones, until it opted for Windows.

KDE version 2, released in 2000, was a major improvement over version 1, its source code having been almost completely rewritten.

The look of the desktop was improved, it looked more polished (it was the era of Windows ME) and integrated into the system the rendering engine of the HTML language called KHTML, which constituted the base of administrator of files and browser web integrated with the system.

Version 3 was released in 2002, but from then on there would no longer be any significant changes until version 4, released in 2008.

The latter was completely rewritten, although it could not prevent most major distributions from adopting GNOME as their default graphical desktop environment.

The highlight of KDE 4 is that it introduces the concept of Plasma, a suite of software that Replaces various elements of the system, and it remains with the latest existing version currently, the 5.

Visually, it also represents a major change, more in keeping with the times (between Windows Vista and Windows 7), which sought to regain ground lost to GNOME.

With version 4, KDE developers were also looking to extend their tentacles to mobile devices, something that has never been done before. finished curdling, although there are KDE environments for smartphones and tablets, more experimentally and used by a very small minority.

It was also from this release that the KDE community focused on various areas, such as library development, applications, and development solutions.

Launched in 2014, version 5 of the environment is the last currently available (with successive minor updates).

The aspect of the desktop becomes more minimalist, in line with the trends in vogue on all platforms, and it is decided to migrate to OpenGL, which allows saving Energy, something very valuable in laptops.

Fotolia photos: Snowing12 / MJ.Spenelly

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