KDE has evolved into one of Linux’s finest desktops. Jonni Bidwell reminisces, explores and konfigures “The Plasma desktop is one of the most advanced in the world, and one of the most popular”

20 Years of KDE

About 21 years ago Matthias Ettrich announced his plans for the Kool Desktop Environment: “a GUI for endusers.” He recognised that there was much work to do, and initially sought between 20 and 30 developers to get the project underway.

Using an exciting new toolkit called Qt, he saw an opportunity to bring some uniformity to the hodge-podge of toolkits and homespun solutions used by applications hitherto. One year later KDE Beta 1 was released, and the rest, as they say, happened.

Active KDE contributors now number around 1,800 and the KDE codebase is made up of over six million lines of code. Today, criticism of the Linux desktop is commonplace (fragmentation, disregard for old paradigms, bloat, inconsistency, lack of integration) and it’s easy to forget how far things have come. The initial release of KDE 4 in 2008 may have upset some people (including Linus Torvalds), with its instability, glowing-by-default Windows and the undue burden it placed on older systems. But it also heralded a new era of innovation, where Linux desktops no longer sought just to imitate Windows and OS X.

The Plasma desktop today is one of the most advanced in the world and, thanks at least part to Gnome 3’s radical departure from the conventional, is now one of the most popular in the Linux ecosystem. KDE’s Visual Design Group ensures it’s also one of the most stylish, with its polished Breeze theme, slick yet subtle effects and support for HiDPI displays.