About KDE 

KDE is an international team co-operating on development and distribution of Free, Open Source Software for desktop and portable computing. Our community has developed a wide variety of applications for communication, work, education and entertainment. We have a strong focus on finding innovative solutions to old and new problems, creating a vibrant, open atmosphere for experimentation.

What makes KDE so exciting?

The best thing about KDE is our amazing community! We are open to new members, offering help and allowing them to experiment, learn and grow. Our products are used by millions of home and office workers, and are being deployed in schools around the world - Brazil alone has over 50 million school children using KDE-based software to browse, learn and communicate!

Is it difficult to get involved?

Not at all! Every day more and more people join our ever-growing family of contributors. KDE has a strong infrastructure of web resources, forums, mailing-lists, IRC and many other communication services. We can provide feedback on your code and other contributions with the goal of helping you learn. Of course, a pro-active attitude and a friendly personality helps.

What does KDE produce?

For users on Linux and Unix, KDE offers a full suite of user workspace applications which allow interaction with these operating systems in a modern, graphical user interface. This includes Plasma Desktop, KDE's innovative desktop interface. Other workspace applications are included to aid with system configuration, running programs, or interacting with hardware devices. While the fully integrated KDE Workspaces are only available on Linux and Unix, some of these features are available on other platforms.

In addition to the workspace, KDE produces a number of key applications such as the Konqueror web browser, Dolphin file manager and Kontact, the comprehensive personal information management suite. However, our list of applications includes many others, including those for education, multimedia, office productivity, networking, games and much more. Most applications are available on all platforms supported by the KDE Development.

KDE also brings to the forefront many innovations for application developers. An entire infrastructure has been designed and implemented to help programmers create robust and comprehensive applications in the most efficient manner, eliminating the complexity and tediousness of creating highly functional applications.

It is our hope and continued ambition that the KDE team will bring open, reliable, stable and monopoly-free computing to the everyday user.

KDE is about freedom

All of the software that KDE produces is a Free and Open Source Software. KDE brings together hundreds of artists, designers, programmers, translators, users, writers and other contributors from across the globe. The team is committed to the development and spirit of free software. Every single line of KDE source code is made available under an open source license. The current licensing policy is also available online. This effectively means that everyone is free to modify and distribute source code written by KDE. Implications of this are several, in particular KDE software is available free of charge to anyone, and will always be so.

  • KDE e.V. is the foundation which oversees the community for financial and legal representation.
  • KDE Free Qt Foundation governs our agreement with Qt Group.