Seven Years of KDE!

Monday, 20 October 2003  |  Thibs

In this article (french), LinuxFrench reveals that 7 years ago, October 14th 1996 to be exact, Matthias Ettrich announced and detailed a new project that was in search of contributers. The project was temporarily dubbed the Kool Desktop Environment, later to simply become the K Desktop Environment. Of course, 7 years later and KDE is about to reach version 3.2, consists of 4.5 millions lines of code and represents the effort of nearly 1400 man-years. So Happy Birthday KDE, and long live Konqi!

Comments:

Seven Wonderful Years - jpaqman - 2003-10-20

Just want to say thanks to all who have made KDE what it is today, an awesome desktop. Many thanks!

Me too - Patrick - 2003-10-20

Thank you, and for only this long KDE has certaubly grown incredibly, especially recently.

Second that - Rayiner Hashem - 2003-10-20

Yay for KDE! Thanks so very much everyone!

Woohoo! - Timothy R. Butler - 2003-10-20

Thanks to everyone who's worked on KDE. It's amazing the accomplishments in such a short time! BTW, where's the cake?

Great.. - anon - 2003-10-20

We've come so far, yet have so far to go. Go KDE!

So great! - Pieere Pi - 2003-10-20

Just do it!

InKredible! - Eike Hein - 2003-10-20

Aye Karamba! Let's hope for another successful seven years :o).

w00t - Mark Hannessen - 2003-10-20

now i finally now where the K is from... thanks kde for all those great years!!

Re: w00t - ac - 2003-10-20

yeah, so it should actually be cde anyway, beginning almost every app with a K is uncool with a C thanks for kde anyway

Re: w00t - Konrad D. - 2003-10-21

AFAIK CDE was the common desktop environment and ran on UNIX(TM), so KDE was called the *Kool* Desktop Environment to make fun of this. (I think this is somewhere on KDE myths). As KDE gathered life the Kool was shortened to K since it looked silly. (Personally i prefer Kool.) P.S. I love the app-naming konvetion :).

Re: w00t - ac - 2003-10-22

I guess I'm an `ak` poster around here then ;)

happy birthday and thank you - gunnar - 2003-10-20

i ve just donated 50€ Euro to kde e.v. as an birthday present!!!

Happy Birthday, KDE - David Parks - 2003-10-20

You all are doing excellent work. KDE is my favorite desktop of all time. I even prefer it over Apple's OS X desktop. Please keep up the great job you are doing.

Quote - Calle - 2003-10-20

I like this quote from Matthias Ettrich original Announcment. "I admit the whole thing sounds a bit like fantasy." Looks like KDE is quite real after 7 Years. Keep up the good work!

Happy Birthday KDE - Nassos Koyrendas - 2003-10-20

Congratulations to all those that have made KDE so amazingly successful !

Kool! - Jonathan Smith - 2003-10-20

Happy Birthday, KDE! A great effort. P.S. Can you say "person-years"? I know you can!

is about to reach version 3.2 - step - 2003-10-20

<i>...is about to reach version 3.2....</i> Can you please tell us when?! BTW, nice job and thanx! ;)

Re: is about to reach version 3.2 - anon - 2003-10-20

Probably sometime in december. Beta1 real soon now.

Happy Birthday! - Tackat - 2003-10-20

Happy Birthday!

Gefeliciteerd! - Dion Mes - 2003-10-20

Thx to all kde ppl, for making a great piece of software!

Thanks for so much goodies KDE ;) - Darkelve - 2003-10-20

Thanks to KDE, integration with file types and other applications becomes a piece of cake! And Konqueror has the most excellent HTML/CSS rendering :--) Darkelve

Re: Thanks for so much goodies KDE ;) - Gerry - 2003-10-21

kake

KDE Rules! - tom - 2003-10-20

KDE Rules. It is a superior desktop to anything I have seen (may be with the exception of two: Amiga and Max OSX). KDE needs more documentation and it is ready to top the world.

Re: KDE Rules! - John - 2003-10-20

Happy Birthday!! I was a long time advocate of the "simple" Window Managers, but KDE has bacome my all time favourite!! :-)

Well what's more to say... - jadrian - 2003-10-21

Happy Birthday! :)

this is the path to choose - Marcel Partap - 2003-10-21

...and we will prevail. anyways, happy birthday to KDE, this is a great step in history. And I've looked at the post that started it all, well, it quite got what it should. I am using KDE 3.1.4. (for everydaystuff) on my freshly compiled Gentoo together with Gnome 2.4. (adminning) and it is beautiful, hell fast, and it rocks XP right out of the box. Gee, phun came back to computers, thank you KDE guys and have a good 3.2 release :) regards, Marcel

Awesome Work Guys - Gregory Carter - 2003-10-21

Way to go to the KDE team. Fabulous job.

Wow.... - Eugene - 2003-10-21

Rules! :-)

Happy Birthday KDE! - Tom Hayward - 2003-10-21

Many, many thanks to Matthias & KDE contributors for a truly awesome desktop environment that just keeps getting better! :-)

congrats - nite - 2003-10-21

Good job guys! Let's see KDE strong for another 7 years... And to think, I use to think GNOME was the best desktop around :P

¡Muchas felicitaciones!! - R.A.P.P. - 2003-10-21

¡KDE es mi aplicación desktop favorita!! ¡Felíz cumpleaños, KDE! Happy birthday! Gratulere med dagen!

Cheers! - Georgi - 2003-10-22

cheers! happy burthday!

Congratulations! - KW - 2003-10-22

I've been using it since 1.0beta2. It sucked back then, but it sucked less than the other desktop environments available. The reason I started using it was that I came from a windows environment and I wanted the basics to behave like in windows. For example, I was used to using ALT+F4 to close a window and I didn't want to learn another shortcut just because some project descided aother shortcut was more logical. Today KDE is awesome and still provides an easy way for newbies that come from MacOS or Windows to start using Linux and it gives a lot of power to experienced users. KDE developers: THANK YOU!

Obrigado programadores do kde - Daniel Silva - 2003-10-23

Actualmente na minha casa, toda a gente usa o linux, e o desktop é kde. Uma prova viva de que o kde está cada vez mais perto do sonho de se tornar um desktop de massas. Parebéns a todos e muito obrigado!

Happy Birthday - Vajsravana - 2003-10-23

... and a great Kongratulation to the whole developer group AND the faithful and supportive user base. Way to go people!

Happy Birthday! - Happy KDE User - 2003-10-23

Thanks to everyone who involved in this project, it is simply the best desktop environment. Keep up the good work!

thanks - protoman - 2003-10-25

And the thing that makes me happier is that it's getting better and better with age. Kde 3.2 will be great, and I can't even imagine how good KDE will get when it reaches it's 10th anniversary. Maybe we can get a special version then? :)

Re: thanks - Jooram - 2003-10-25

Good Work!

Happy birthday,KDE. - Liu Xiao Gang - 2003-10-25

A marvelous work.Thanks to all contributors.

Happy birthday,KDE. - Liu Xiao Gang - 2003-10-25

A marvelous work.Thanks to all contributors.

Great as Miracle! - Davoud Seyedin - 2003-10-28

Thank you for this great work and thank you for your open minds, all people around the world can use KDE equally and it is really wonderfull :)

Thanks - Howard Coles Jr. - 2003-10-29

I must also throw my two cents into the ring. To all those who have worked on making KDE as good as it is, THANKS! You've done a fine job.

Hurra for KDE!!! - Matija "hook" Suklje - 2003-10-29

I've been using KDE from 1.x on ...and i have to say it's getting better and better :D I'd like to thank all the devs (old and new) and express my great love and gratitude towards KDE!!! Keep up the great work, guys (and gals!)