KDE is an international free software community producing an integrated set of cross-platform applications designed to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Windows,

Solaris and Mac OS X systems. It is best known for its Plasma Desktop workspace, a desktop environment provided as the default working environment on many Linux distributions, such as openSUSE, Mandriva Linux, Kubuntu, Red Flag Linux, and Pardus. The goal of the project is to provide basic desktop functions and applications for daily needs as well as tools and documentation for developers to write stand-alone applications for the system. In this regard, the KDE project serves as an umbrella project for many standalone applications and smaller projects that are based on KDE technology. These include KOffice, KDevelop, Amarok, K3b and many others. KDE software is based on the Qt toolkit, although it has also support for programs based on GTK, as well as the GTK-based visual themes. The original GPL version of this toolkit only existed for the X11 platform, but with the release of Qt 4, LGPL versions are available for all platforms. This allows KDE software based on Qt 4 to also be distributed to Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. KDE was founded in 1996 by Matthias Ettrich, who was then a student at the Eberhard Karls University of Tbingen. At the time, he was troubled by certain aspects of the Unix desktop. Among his qualms was that none of the applications looked, felt, or worked alike. He proposed the formation of not only a set of applications, but rather a desktop environment, in which users could expect things to look, feel, and work consistently. He also wanted to make this desktop easy to use; one of his complaints with desktop applications of the time was that his girlfriend

could not use them. His initial Usenet post spurred a lot of interest, and the KDE project was born The name KDE was intended as a word play on the existing Common Desktop Environment, available for Unix systems. CDE was an X11-based user environment jointly developed by HP, IBM, and Sun, through the X/Open Company, with an interface and productivity tools based on the Motif graphical widget toolkit. It was supposed to be an intuitively easy-to-use desktop computer environment. The K was originally suggested to stand for "Kool", but it was quickly decided that the K should stand for nothing in particular - thus the KDE acronym expanded to "K Desktop Environment". Additionally, one of the tips in certain versions of KDE 3 incorrectly states that the K currently is just meant to be the letter before L in the Latin alphabet, the first letter in the word Linux (which is where KDE is usually run). In 2009, with ports to Windows and Mac OS X and popular applications such as Amarok released, KDE was no longer just a desktop and it was decided that the name should no longer be an acronym at all.

Major applications by KDE include:

Amarok Audio player Dragon Player - media player. Dolphin File manager K3b Optical disc authoring software Kate / KWrite Text editor KDevelop Integrated development environment KOffice Office suite

Konsole Terminal emulator Kontact Personal information manager featuring an email client, a news client, a feed aggregator, To-do lists and more. Konqueror Web browser and File manager Kopete Instant messaging client KTorrent BitTorrent client

GNOME (abbreviation of GNU Network Object Model Environment) is a desktop environmenta graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system composed entirely of free and open source software. It was created by two Mexican programmers, Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena. It is an international project that includes creating software development frameworks, selecting application software for the desktop, and working on the programs that manage application launching, file handling, and window and task management. GNOME is part of the GNU Project and can be used with various Unix-like operating systems, most notably GNU/Linux, and as part of the Java Desktop System in Solaris.

The GNOME project provides two things: The GNOME desktop environment, an intuitive and attractive desktop for users, and

the GNOME development platform, an extensive framework for building applications that integrate into the rest of the desktop.[2] The GNOME project puts heavy emphasis on simplicity, usability, and making things just work (see KISS principle). The other aims of the project are:

Freedomto create a desktop environment that will always have the source code available for re-use under a free software license. Accessibilityensuring the desktop can be used by anyone, regardless of technical skill or physical disability. Internationalization and localizationmaking the desktop available in many languages. At the moment GNOME is being translated to 161 languages.[3] Developer-friendlinessensuring it is easy to write software that integrates smoothly with the desktop, and allow developers a free choice of programming language. Organizationa regular release cycle and a disciplined community structure. Supportensuring backing from other institutions beyond the GNOME community.

In 1996, the KDE project was started. KDE was free and open source from the start, but members of the GNU project were concerned with KDE's dependence on the (then) non-GPL Qt widget toolkit. In August 1997, two projects were started in response to this issue: the Harmony toolkit (a free replacement for the Qt libraries) and GNOME (a different desktop not using Qt, but built entirely on top of GPL and LGPL licensed

software).[4] The initial project leaders for GNOME were Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena. In place of the Qt toolkit, GTK+ was chosen as the base of the GNOME desktop. GTK+ uses the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), a free software license that allows GPLincompatible software (including proprietary software) to link to it. The GNOME desktop itself is licensed under the LGPL for its libraries, and the GPL for applications that are part of the GNOME project. Having the toolkit and libraries under the LGPL allowed applications written for GNOME to use a much wider set of licenses (including proprietary software licenses).[5] In 2000, Qt was made available under GPL terms[6]. Troll Tech offered dual-licensing under both QPL terms and GPL terms and granted exceptions to other specific licenses like the Apache License. Qt's GPL derived license, however, continued to restrict linking Qt with arbitrary proprietary software at no charge; GTK+'s LGPL license did not impose this restriction and differentiated it from Qt. With Qt licensed under GPL terms, the Harmony Project stopped its efforts at the end of 2000, as KDE no longer depended on non-GPL software. In contrast, the development of GNOME continues (as of 2010). In March 2009, after Qt's owner company Troll Tech was bought by Nokia, Qt 4.5 was released and added a LGPL licensing as a third option. The California startup Eazel developed the Nautilus file manager from 1999 to 2001. de Icaza and Nat Friedman founded Helix Code (later Ximian) in 1999 in Massachusetts. The company developed Gnome's infrastructure and applications, and in 2003 was purchased by Novell.

[edit] Name GNOME is built from a large number of different projects. A few of the major ones are listed below:

Bonobo a (obsolete in current releases) compound document technology. GConf for storing application settings. GVFS a virtual file system. GNOME Keyring for storing encryption keys and security information. GNOME Translation Project translate documentation and applications into different languages. GTK+ a widget toolkit used for constructing graphical applications. The use of GTK+ as the base widget toolkit allows GNOME to benefit from certain features such as theming (the ability to change the look of an application) and smooth anti-aliased graphics. Sub-projects of GTK+ provide object-oriented programming support (GObject), extensive support of international character sets and text layout (Pango) and accessibility (ATK). GTK+ reduces the amount of work required to port GNOME applications to other platforms such as Windows and Mac OS X. Human interface guidelines (HIG) research and documentation on building easy-to-use GNOME applications. LibXML an XML library. ORBit a CORBA ORB for software componentry (obsolete in current releases[citation needed]).

A number of language bindings are available allowing applications to be written in a variety of programming

languages, such as C++ (gtkmm), Java (java-gnome), Ruby (ruby-gnome2), C# (Gtk#), Python (PyGTK), Perl (gtk2-perl) and many others. The only languages currently used in applications that are part of an official GNOME desktop release are C, C#, Python and Vala.[12