<chapter id="history">
<title>A Short Guided Tour of &kde;'s History</title>

<epigraph>
<attribution>The <abbrev>CEO</abbrev> of a big software company, at
the beginning of the 80s...(apocryphal)</attribution> 
<para>640KB ought to be enough for everybody </para>
</epigraph>

<sect1 id="before-kde">
<title>Before &kde;</title>

<para>Since the beginning of &UNIX; development, there has been one
great problem: There were stable kernels, and good, powerful software.
Unfortunately, only a few people could use &UNIX;, because it was
written mainly for those students and professionals who had studied
the system for a long time.  For example, the standard method for
reading USENET news was:</para>

<screen><userinput><command>find</command> <filename>/var/spool/news</filename> <parameter>-name '[0-9]*' -exec cat {} \;</parameter> | <command>more</command></userinput>
</screen>

<para>Although fast and relatively efficient, this couldn't be called
user friendly.  Today, there are many good front ends available, such
as <application>tin</application> and &knode;, which provide
easy-to-use, intuitive graphical user interfaces (&GUI;s).
Unfortunately, the &GUI;s lack a common look-and-feel.  Commercial
libraries for programmers like &Motif;
promised a solution to this, but these libraries remained, until
recently, far too expensive and far too slow. </para>

<para>The configuration of programs is also often difficult. While
compiling is usually done with a command line such as
<userinput><command>./configure</command> &amp;&amp;
<command>make</command> &amp;&amp; <command>make
<option>install</option></command></userinput> only a very few
programs can be configured with menus or scripts. In most cases, you
must edit text configuration files yourself. It often happens that a
misplaced period ruins the whole file, forcing you to restart the
configuration process. Whenever you need to change your settings or
reconfigure a program, the whole mess comes up again.</para>

<para>All this contributes to the fact that &Linux; and other &UNIX;'s
fail to reach a wider audience. At the same time, many people are not
satisfied with their current operating system, often because of the
lack of stability and performance found in those operating
systems. Other people hate to buy a new computer each time a new
version of the program they cannot live without comes out, because it
needs more <acronym>RAM</acronym> and more disk space.  Often the new
version provides functions few people really need. </para>

<para><emphasis>&kde; is different.</emphasis> Although we do not try
to replace the standard &UNIX; shell, we are working on a tool that
will make using &UNIX; easier. We also want to attract more users to
the &UNIX; environment.  Simple things will be made easy, yet complex
things will still be just as possible.  A single interface will be
provided, instead of the dozens currently required. </para>

</sect1>


<sect1 id="what-kde-can-do-for-you">
<title>What &kde; Can Do For You</title>

<para>&kde; is designed for everyone.</para>

<para>Those new to &UNIX;, or those who simply have no interest in
learning to use new technologies and commands not found in their
previous operating systems don't need to face the intricacies of the
command line unless they want to.  Yet there is much &kde; offers that
is of value to experienced &UNIX; users, with &GUI; tools to make
simple what were previously complex tasks, and the command line just a
mouse click away if you want it.</para>

<para>No matter what your level of experience with &UNIX; or any other
operating system, &kde; brings you:</para>

<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>A good looking, easy to use desktop environment.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>A powerful, easy to use file manager</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>An equally powerful and easy to use web browser</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>A simple, centralized configuration</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>A comprehensive list of applications, so you can be productive
within minutes of your first &kde; login.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Online help to support you in every situation.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>Consistency of interface.  Menus are in the same place across
applications, keybindings behave the same way, toolbar icons, once
learnt, always work the same.</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>

</sect1>

<sect1 id="background-of-kde">
<title>The Background Of &kde;</title>

<para>In October 1996, German <application>LyX</application> developer
Matthias Ettrich initiated the development of &kde; with a USENET
posting. Soon after, a couple of interested developers began planning
and programming parts of the new project. One year later, the window
and file managers, the terminal emulator, the help system and the
display configuration tool were released for Alpha and Beta testing
and proved to be relatively stable. </para>

<para>In July 1998, &kde; 1.0 was released. It was the stable version
for the next six months, while developers continued work on improving
&kde; without stability constraints.  In January 1999, their
improvements were consolidated and integrated to produce &kde; 1.1,
the new standard, stable version. </para>

<para>Development continued from there with &kde; 2.0, an almost
complete rewrite of the desktop, being released on October 23rd 2000.
The &kde; 2.x version evolved through six minor releases over the
period of a year, each bringing an already impressive desktop further
features and stability.</para>

<para>At the time of writing, &kde; 3.0 is in preparation for release,
introducing a broad range of improvements over the 2.0 series. Although
the &GUI; didn't change as dramatically as it did during the move from &kde; 1
to &kde; 2, many refinements like a completely new printing system, vastly improved
<acronym>SSL</acronym> support (for secure Internet transactions) or full
support for languages which are written right-to-left (like Arabic or Hebrew)
found their way into the desktop. You can find more information about this
exciting development at &kde-http;.
</para>

<para>The developers and users communicate primarily via several
mailing lists, as described in the <link
linkend="mailing-lists">Mailing Lists</link> section.  If you would
like to help, please do, &kde; is driven by volunteer contribution,
and you are always welcome to take part.</para>

</sect1>

<sect1 id="legal-status">
<title>Legal Notices</title>

<para>&kde; is open source software, and all of &kde; is released
under free licenses such as the GPL.</para>

</sect1>

<sect1 id="getting-kde">
<title>How To Get New Components</title>

<para>The main web site for &kde; is &kde-http;.  Here you can find
all important information regarding &kde;, including announcements,
bugfixes, developer information and much more.</para>

<para>For software upgrades, please visit our &FTP; site, &kde-ftp;,
or use a mirror if one exists near you.  You can find an up to date
list of mirrors at <ulink
url="http://www.kde.org/ftpmirrors.html">http://www.kde.org/ftpmirrors.html</ulink>.</para>

<para>On the &FTP; servers, the directory <filename>unstable</filename>
always contains brand new software, but it is often untested and may
not even compile. If you are looking for more reliable components,
please take a look in the <filename>stable</filename> directory, where
we put Beta and release versions. </para>

<para>If you are interested in developing &kde; applications of your
own, you should visit <ulink
url="http://developer.kde.org/">http://developer.kde.org/"</ulink>
where you will find a wealth of information, including tutorials,
<acronym>API</acronym> guides to the &kde; libraries, and much more.
You should also visit Troll Tech's server (<ulink
url="http://www.trolltech.com/">http://www.trolltech.com</ulink>) which features
a great deal of information concerning the &Qt; library used by &kde;.
You will probably find it valuable to join <link
linkend="mailing-lists">the &kde; developer mailing
list</link>.</para>

</sect1>

</chapter>
