K Desktop Environment 3

K Desktop Environment 3 is the third series of releases of the K Desktop Environment (after that called KDE Software Compilation). There are six major releases in this series.

K Desktop Environment 3.0

K Desktop Environment 3.0 introduced better support for restricted usage, a feature demanded by certain environments such as kiosks, Internet cafes and enterprise deployments, which disallows the user from having full access to all capabilities of a piece of software. To address these needs, KDE 3.0 included a new lockdown framework, essentially a permissions-based system for altering application configuration options that supplements the standard UNIX permissions system. The KDE panel and the desktop manager were modified to employ this system, but other major desktop components, such as Konqueror and the Control Center, had to wait for subsequent releases.

K Desktop Environment 3.0 debuted a new printing framework, KDEPrint. KDEPrint's modular design enabled it to support different printing engines, such as CUPS, LPRng, and LDP/LPR. In conjunction with CUPS, KDEPrint was able to manage an elaborate enterprise networked printing system. Since KDEPrint provides a command-line interface, its framework, including its GUI configuration elements, is accessible to non-KDE applications, such as OpenOffice.org, the Mozilla Application Suite, and Acrobat Reader.