KDE: 30 years of the Linux desktop
https://media.ccc.de/v/glt26-691-kde-30-years-of-the-linux-d...
Other than the really bad KDE 4 release, the project has consistently been great for me. I've submitted a few smaller patches over the years and that experience was also low friction for a project of this size. KDE is highly customizable, full of power user features but also really simple with its current defaults (looks pretty much like Windows) and generally robust.
Shoutout to some KDE applications like Okular (great document viewer), Kate (solid tech editor), Krusader (double pane file manager) and KolourPaint (a simple image editor even I can use).
But also just fast and low memory. You can run KDE on ancient hardware. If you have something like 512MB of ram, you can do KDE just fine.
It's kind of a shame that Konqueror fell to the wayside, but modern browsers are so complicated I cannot fault them for focusing elsewhere.
KHTML became webkit (Safari) and then blink (Chrome) so they created the foundation for quite many browsers ...
Not just in the Linux world, it's also far better than Windows and macOS.
Sometimes I wonder what the desktop landscape would look like today if that branch of software gained wider adoption in the free software communities. :-)
I think it’s the closest thing to that dream today.
It's derived from GNUStep which was from NeXstep who Apple bought. OSX and now macOS are descendants of that design. That's where the macOS dock comes from. Not a 1 to 1 design obviously but a marriage between the operating systems thanks to Steve Jobs.

Three decades of passionate community effort against all odds; delivering control, privacy, and freedom to our users; and tons and tons of software.
We will be updating this page frequently with new content, exciting 30th Anniversary news, things you can participate in, updated merch you can get, and much more!
Read on and discover interesting facts you never knew, new merch you didn’t know you needed (but you do now!), how you too can help ensure we thrive the next 30 years, and where and how you can celebrate KDE’s birthday.
Let’s start with that…
Join an event happening near you. If there are none, organize your own!
Whether it is a meetup over drinks, a nice meal with friends, an installfest, or a full conference, let us know what, where, and when you are celebrating KDE’s birthday.
We’ll include your event in our list and it will show up in the map below.
HOW TO ADD YOUR EVENT: Visit our wiki page and add your event using the template.
Most of our funds (70%!) come from private end users just like you. Become a Supporting Member and help ensure we receive a regular amount of money we can count on. This helps us plan and know what to expect for the next month, quarter, or year.
Use the box at the top of this page and select Become a Member to become a Supporting Member.
Or make a one-time donation and provide us with emergency funds to get us through the following year.
Use the box at the top of this page and select 1-time Donation to make your donation.

Our goals are ambitious and we need funds to carry them out. We need:
KDE contributes to cleaning up the world and you can too.

KDE contributor Farid inspired us to take on the “30 for 30” challenge: for our 30th birthday, we are asking you to do something to help the environment and make the planet a nicer place to live in. Farid is planting 30 trees and we want you to come up with something similar.
Film you and your crew carrying out your effort and we will promote your project on social media.
Here are some more ideas:
KDE has had a long and exciting history. Here we present a brief summary of what has happened over the last few decades, but if you want to see all the details, visit our timeline website, which gets updated every time something important happens.
Did you know that…?
We did! And we have the graphical evidence to prove it:

That is from the documentary Good Night Oppy, about the Opportunity Mars rover. In the scene you can see a NASA engineer troubleshooting the rover while in flight towards Mars from a KDE 3 workstation.
You can watch Good Night Oppy on Amazon Prime.
Submitted by Paul Brown
It’s true!
KDE’s web engine was written back in 1998 - 1999 and was subsequently used as the basis for Apple’s Webkit and Google’s Blink engines. This means that most modern browsers, including Safari, Chrome, Chromium, Microsoft Edge, Opera, Vivaldi, and Brave, use KDE software at their core.
Indeed, if you ever check out your web server’s access logs, you will see “KHTML” on nearly every single line.
And, yes, the “K” in “KHTML” stands for “KDE”.
Submitted by Paul Brown
Do you have a KDE Trivia Nugget you would like to share? Tell us about it!

'KDE One', probably the first KDE event. Held in Arnsberg, Germany in 1997. Matthias Ettrich, founder of KDE, is on the left.


Initial release of KDE 3 on SuSE - 2002. Thanks to Manuel Alberto Ascencio Ramirez.


Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, and Matthias Ettrich, founder of KDE, in 2005


Attendees to an Amarok dev sprint held in 2007.


Initial release of KDE 4 on Kubuntu - 2008. Thanks to Manuel Alberto Ascencio Ramirez.


Adriaan de Groot at FOSDEM 2008 (Brussels), posing at a KDE-branded machine at the KDE booth. Picture by Bart Coppens


The group photo of the KDE devroom at FOSDEM 2008 (Brussels).


The group photo of the KDE devroom at FOSDEM 2009 (Brussels).


Akademy 2013 in Bilbao, Spain. Thanks Gorka Palazio.


Sometimes fixing a clipboard bug requires the power of three generations of David. From left to right: David Faure, David Edmundson, David Redondo. Picture by Neofytos Kolokotronis during the Onboarding Sprint 2019


The group photo of the KDE devroom at FOSDEM 2010 (Brussels).


The Brazilian team with Konqi at Latinoware 2012.


2024 Anniversay party held in Berlin.


Tobias Leupold (KGeoTag) meets Johannes Zarl-Zierl (KPhotoAlbum) in person for the first time in 2024 after working together for 10 years.
