K Desktop Environment 1
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K Desktop Environment 1.0
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| Developer(s) | KDE |
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| Initial release | 12 July 1998 |
| Stable release |
1.1.2 / 13 September 1999
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| Development status | Superseded by K Desktop Environment 2 Commemorative re-release in 2016 |
| Written in | C++ |
| Operating system | Unix-like with X11 |
| Platform | Qt 1 |
| Available in | Multiple languages |
| Type | Desktop environment |
| License | GNU GPL |
| Website | kde |
K Desktop Environment 1 was the inaugural series of releases of the K Desktop Environment. There were two major releases in this series.
The development started right after Matthias Ettrich’s announcement on 14 October 1996 to found the Kool Desktop Environment. 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 20 October 1997 – almost exactly one year after the original announcement. Three additional Betas followed 23 November 1997, 1 February 1998, and 19 April 1998.
On 12 July 1998 the finished version 1.0 of K Desktop Environments was released:
With KDE there is now an easy to use, contemporary desktop environment available for UNIX. Together with a free implementation of UNIX such as Linux, UNIX/KDE constitutes a completely free and open computing platform available to anyone free of charge including its source code for anyone to modify. While there will always be room for improvement we believe to have delivered a viable alternative to some of the more commonly found and commercial operating systems/desktops combinations available today. It is our hope that the combination UNIX/KDE will finally bring open, reliable, stable and monopoly free computing to the average computer.
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 – and advised the use of Motif or LessTif instead. Despite that criticism, KDE was well received by many users and made its way into the first Linux distributions.
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 which is used in revised form to this day.
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