K Desktop Environment 1 was the inaugural series of releases of the K Desktop Environment. There were two major releases in this series.

Pre-release

The development started right after

Matthias Ettrich Matthias Ettrich (born 14 June 1972) is a German computer scientist and founder of the KDE and LyX projects. Early life Ettrich was born in Bietigheim-Bissingen, Baden-Württemberg, West Germany, and went to school in Beilstein, Württemberg, ...

's announcement on 1996-10-14 to found the ''Kool Desktop Environment''.Matthias Ettrich:
New Project: Kool Desktop Environment. Programmers wanted!
' on

Usenet Usenet (), a portmanteau of User's Network, is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose UUCP, Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Elli ...

, The word ''Kool'' was dropped shortly afterward and the name became simply ''K Desktop Environment''. In the beginning, all components were released to the developer community separately without any coordinated timeframe throughout the overall project. First communication of KDE via mailing list, that was called ''kde@fiwi02.wiwi.uni-Tubingen.de''. The first coordinated release was ''Beta 1'' on – almost exactly one year after the original announcement. Three additional Betas followed , , and .

K Desktop Environment 1.0

On 12 July 1998 the finished version 1.0 of K Desktop Environments was released: This version received mixed reception. Many criticized the use of the Qt software framework – back then under the ''Qt Free Edition License'' which was claimed to not be compatible with

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

– and advised the use of Motif or

LessTif LessTif is a defunct free software reimplementation or clone of the Motif computer programming toolkit. The project aimed for full source- and binary-code compatibility with Motif. While this was not achieved, many Motif applications could run ...

instead. Despite that criticism, KDE was well received by many users and made its way into the first

Linux distribution A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is oft ...

K Desktop Environment 1.1

An update, K Desktop Environment 1.1, was faster, more stable and included many small improvements. It also included a new set of icons, backgrounds and textures. Among this overhauled artwork was a new KDE logo by Torsten Rahn consisting of the letter K in front of a

gear A gear or gearwheel is a rotating machine part typically used to transmit rotational motion and/or torque by means of a series of teeth that engage with compatible teeth of another gear or other part. The teeth can be integral saliences or ...

which is used in revised form to this day. Some components received more far-reaching updates, such as the

Konqueror Konqueror is a Free and open-source software, free and open-source web browser and file manager that provides World Wide Web, web access and file viewer, file-viewer functionality for file systems (such as local files, files on a remote FTP ser ...

predecessor ''kfm'', the application launcher ''kpanel'', and the

KWin KWin is a window manager for the X Window System and a Wayland (display server protocol)#Wayland compositors, Wayland compositor. It is released as a part of KDE Plasma, for which it is the default window manager. KWin can also be used on its o ...

predecessor ''kwm''. Newly introduced were e. g. ''kab'', a software library for address management, and a rewrite of

KMail Kontact is a personal information manager and groupware software suite developed by KDE. It supports calendars, contacts, notes, to-do lists, news, and email. It offers a number of inter-changeable graphical UIs (KMail, KAddressBook, Akregator, ...

, called ''kmail2'', which was installed as

alpha version The software release life cycle is the process of developing, testing, and distributing a software product (e.g., an operating system). It typically consists of several stages, such as pre-alpha, alpha, beta, and release candidate, before the fi ...

in parallel to the classic KMail version. ''kmail2'', however, never left alpha state and development was ended in favor of updating classic KMail. K Desktop Environment 1.1 was well received among critics. At the same time Trolltech prepared version 2.0 of Qt which was released as

beta Beta (, ; uppercase , lowercase , or cursive ; or ) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Ancient Greek, beta represented the voiced bilabial plosive . In Modern Greek, it represe ...

on 1999-01-28. Consequently, no bigger upgrades for KDE 1 based on Qt 1 were developed. Instead only bugfixes were released: version 1.1.1 on 1999-05-03 and version 1.1.2 on 1999-09-13. A more profound upgrade along with a port to Qt 2 was in development as

K Desktop Environment 2 K Desktop Environment 2 was the second series of releases of the KDE Software Compilation, K Desktop Environment. There were three major releases in this series. Major updates K Desktop Environment 2 introduced significant technological improv ...

KDE Restoration Project

To celebrate KDE's 20th birthday, KDE and

Fedora A fedora () is a hat with a soft brim and indented crown.Kilgour, Ruth Edwards (1958). ''A Pageant of Hats Ancient and Modern''. R. M. McBride Company. It is typically creased lengthwise down the crown and "pinched" near the front on both sides ...

contributor Helio Chissini de Castro re-released 1.1.2 on 2016-10-14. That re-release incorporates several changes required for compatibility with modern Linux variants. Work on that project started one month earlier at QtCon, a conference for Qt developers, in Berlin. There Castro showcased Qt 1.45 compiling on a modern Linux system.

References

{{Use dmy dates, date=September 2019 1998 software Desktop environments KDE Software Compilation de:K Desktop Environment#K Desktop Environment 1.x

Pre-release

K Desktop Environment 1.0

K Desktop Environment 1.1

KDE Restoration Project

See also

References