# Introduction

What is &kde;?

&kde; is the K Desktop Environment. It is a project initiated by Matthias Ettrich in 1996. The aim of the &kde; project is to connect the power of the &UNIX; operating systems with the comfort of a modern user interface.

In short, &kde; will bring &UNIX; to the desktop!

If you want further information about &kde;, have a look at What is &kde;?

On which platforms can I expect &kde; to work?

&kde; is a Desktop Environment for all flavors of &UNIX;. While it is true that most &kde; developers use &Linux;, &kde; runs smoothly on a wide range of systems. You may, however, need to tweak the source code a bit to get &kde; to compile on a not-so-popular variant of &UNIX;, or if you are not using the &GNU; development tools, in particular the &gcc; compiler.

For an almost complete list of systems &kde; is running on, please refer to this list of systems for KDE

Is &kde; a window manager?

No, &kde; is not a window manager. While &kde; includes a very sophisticated window manager (&kwin;), &kde; is much more than that. It is a full-blown Integrated Desktop Environment.

&kde; provides a complete desktop environment, including a web browser, a file manager, a window manager, a help system, a configuration system, uncountable tools and utilities, and an ever increasing number of applications, including but not limited to mail and news clients, drawing programs, a &PostScript; and a &DVI; viewer and so forth.

Is &kde; a CDE, &Windows; 95 or &Mac; OS clone?

No, &kde; is not a clone. Specifically &kde; is not a CDE or &Windows; clone. While the &kde; developers have and will continue to glean the best features from all existing desktop environments, &kde; is a truly unique environment that has and will continue to go its own way.

Is &kde; free software?

Yes, &kde; is free software according to the &GNU; General Public License. All &kde; libraries are available under the LGPL making commercial software development for the &kde; desktop possible, but all &kde; applications are licensed under the GPL.

&kde; uses the &Qt; C++ crossplatform toolkit, which is also released (since version 2.2) under the GPL.

It is absolutely legal to make &kde; and &Qt; available on &CD-ROM; free of charge. No runtime fees of any kind are incurred.