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 Kontact screenshot | |
| Developer(s) | KDE |
|---|---|
| Stable release | 5.19.3[1] / March 3, 2022 (2022-03-03) |
| Repository | |
| Written in | C++ |
| Operating system | Unix-like,Microsoft Windows (Experimental) |
| Type | Personal Information Manager |
| License | GNU GPLv2 or later[2] |
| Website | kontact |
Kontact is apersonal information manager andgroupware software suite developed byKDE. It supports calendars, contacts, notes, to-do lists, news, and email. It offers a number of inter-changeable graphical UIs (KMail, KAddressBook, Akregator, etc.) all built on top of a common core.
Technically speaking,Kontact only refers to a small umbrella application that unifies different stand-alone applications under one user interface.KDE PIM refers to a work group within the larger KDE project that develops the individual applications in a coordinated way.
In popular terms, however,Kontact often refers to the whole set ofKDE PIM applications. These days many popularLinux distributions such asKubuntu hide the individual applications and only placeKontact prominently.
| KDE PIM New Year Meeting | |
|---|---|
| Year | Date |
| 2003 | 1/3-1/5 |
| 2004 | 1/2-1/5 |
| 2005 | 1/6-1/9 |
| 2006 | 1/6-1/8 |
| 2007[3] | 1/12-1/15 |
| 2008[4] | 2/1-2/3 |
| 2009 | 1/09-1/11 |
| 2010[5] | 1/8-1/10 |
| 2011[6] | 2/25-2/27 |
The initial groupware container application was written in an afternoon by Matthias Hölzer-Klüpfel and later imported into the KDE source repository and maintained by Daniel Molkentin. This container application is essential for Kontact to operate, but without embedded components it is not useful by itself.
The first embedded components were created by Cornelius Schumacher. He modified theKAddressBook andKOrganizer applications to create the initial address book and organizer components. At this stage no mail client component existed, so KDE still lacked a functional integrated groupware application. However, Cornelius' groundbreaking work acted as a prototype for other developers to base their efforts on.
Don Sanders created the missing mail client component by modifying theKMail application. He then integrated the mail client component with the other components, and the groupware container application, assembled and released the initial Kontact packages, and created the initial Kontact website.
Daniel Molkentin, Cornelius Schumacher and Don Sanders then formed the core Kontact team. The KMail and container application changes were imported into the KDE source repository, and Kontact was released as part of KDE 3.2.[7]
During the construction of the Kontact application suite, theKolab groupware server was being worked on by Erfrakon,[8] Intevation.net[9] and Klarälvdalens Datakonsult[10] simultaneously and was completed at approximately the same time. This work was done as part of the Kroupware[11] project that also involved modifying the KMail and KOrganizer applications to enhance them with additional groupware features.
The core Kontact team, the Kolab consortium, and several independent KDE PIM developers then worked together to enhance Kontact by integrating the Kroupware functionality and making Kolab the primary Kontact server.
Additionally, a news component was created from theKNode application by KDE developerZack Rusin, and Kontact was modified to support an array of mainly web based suites of collaboration software.
Kontact embeds the following
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 KMail using the default layout: the folder list on the left side and the preview pane below the message list (top right) | |
| Stable release | 6.3.1[12] / January 9, 2025 (2025-01-09) |
|---|---|
| Repository | https://invent.kde.org/pim/kmail |
| Website | kontact |
KMail supports folders, filtering, viewingHTML mail, and international character sets. It can handleIMAP,IMAP IDLE,dIMAP,[13]POP3, and local mailboxes for incoming mail. It can send mail viaSMTP orsendmail protocols. It can forward HTML mail as an attachment but it cannot forward mail inline.[14]
KMail uses two special filters to provide a modular access to spam-filtering programs:
These modular filters can be combined with text filters to detect (for example) e-mail which has been flagged by SpamAssassin by looking for the special headers it added.
KMail allows manual filtering of spam directly on the mail server, a very interesting feature for dial-up users. Emails that exceed some threshold size (standard is 50 kb, but it may be set to any value) are not automatically copied to the local computer. With "get, decide later, delete" options, KMail lists them but does not download the whole message, which allows the deletion of spam and oversized messages without wasting time.
KMail supports theOpenPGP standard and can automatically encrypt, decrypt, sign, and verify signatures of email messages and its attachments via either the inline or OpenPGP/MIME method of signing/encryption. KMail depends on theGnuPG software for this functionality. As a visual aid, KMail will colour verified email messages green fortrusted signatures; yellow for untrusted signatures; red for invalid signatures; and blue for encrypted messages.
KMail also supportsS/MIME messages as well asChiasmus,[15] a proprietary cryptographic system created by the GermanFederal Office for Information Security (BSI).
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| Stable release | 6.3.1[16]  / 9 January 2025 |
|---|---|
| Repository | |
| Website | userbase |
KAddressBook is anaddress book application.
KAddressBook is agraphical interface to organizing the addresses and contact information of family, friends, business partners, etc. It integrates withKDE Plasma, allowing interoperability with other KDE programs, including the e-mail clientKMail – allowing one-click access to composing an e-mail – and the instant messengerKopete – showing the online status of and easy access to instant messaging contacts. It can be synchronized with other software or device using Kitchensync andOpenSync.
A contact may be classified into customizable categories, such as Family, Business, or Customer. Many of the fields can have multiple entries, for example, if the contact has several e-mail addresses. A contact's fields are separated into four tabs and one tab for custom fields.
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 KOrganizer’s Calendar view | |
| Stable release | 20.01.90[17] / 10 January 2024 |
|---|---|
| Repository | |
| Website | kontact |
KOrganizer is thepersonal organizer. It has the ability to manage calendars, journals, and a to do list.
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 Akregator running under Plasma 5 | |
| Stable release | 6.1.0[18] / 23 May 2024 |
|---|---|
| Repository | |
| Website | apps |
Akregator is afeed aggregator that supports both theRSS andAtom specifications. It allows individual feeds to be combined by assignment into user-configured categories, and will aggregate all feeds in a category into a single list of new entries. It also provides anincremental search feature for the titles of all the entries in its database.
Akregator can be configured to fetch feeds within regular intervals. The user can also manually request to fetch all feeds, individual ones, or those in a selected category. It supports feed icons and embedsKHTML as an internal,tabbedweb browser. Any external browser can also be called.
Akregator has been part of theKDE Applications suite since the 3.4 release, and it is distributed with thekdepim module.
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 KNode 0.10.4 | |
| Repository | |
|---|---|
| Website | userbase |
KNode is thenews client program for theKDEdesktop environment.
It supports multipleNNTP servers, message threads, scoring,X-Face headers (reading and posting), and international character sets.
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| Initial release | 1997 (1997) |
|---|---|
| Final release | 5.1.0[19] / 20 February 2021 |
| Repository | |
| Website | userbase |
KJots is a simpleoutlinertext editor which can be used to create apersonal wiki. It uses a basictree structure to organize information: it refers to nodes as ‘books’ and leaves as ‘pages’. It includes a book view, which shows atable of contents, and a view mode for all entries.
Similar wiki-style programs areZim (based onGTK and Python), Wixi (based onPython and GTK),KeepNote (based on Python and GTK), Notecase (based on GTK), BasKet (based onQt), Gnudiary (also based on Qt),Tomboy (GTK, based onMono),Gnote (Tomboy port toC++) andTiddlywiki (self-modifying, single-HTML contained personal wiki, written inJavaScript and expandable with plugins). AlsoTreeline, an advanced outliner written in Python and personal database available forLinux andMicrosoft Windows, has similar functions.
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| Initial release | 1997 (1997) |
|---|---|
| Stable release | 24.05.2[20] / 4 July 2024 |
| Repository | |
| Website | [1] |
Along with theKDE Software Compilation 4 life cycle, Kontact moved toAkonadi for storing its data, when in the past every Kontact component implemented the storage technologies itself. Akonadi is currently mostly developed by theKDE PIM team, but its design is done in an agnostic way and thus not depending on KDE technologies.
The first SC 4 release of Kontact was officially shipped withKDE 4.1. That release did not use Akonadi. Since then the Kontact components have been gradually migrating towards Akonadi. The first stable version of KDE PIM using Akonadi was released together withKDE 4.6.4 in June 2011.[21]
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
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