| K Desktop Environment 1 | |
|---|---|
 K Desktop Environment 1.0 | |
| Developer(s) | KDE |
| Initial release | 12 July 1998; 27 years ago (1998-07-12) |
| Final release | 1.1.2 / 13 September 1999; 25 years ago (1999-09-13) |
| Repository | |
| Written in | C++[1] |
| Operating system | Unix-like withX11 |
| Platform | Qt 1[2] |
| Successor | K Desktop Environment 2 |
| Available in | Multiple languages[which?] |
| Type | Desktop environment |
| License | GNU GPL |
| Website | kde |
K Desktop Environment 1 was the inaugural series of releases of theK Desktop Environment. There were two major releases in this series.
The development started right afterMatthias Ettrich's announcement on 1996-10-14 to found theKool Desktop Environment.[3] The wordKool was dropped shortly afterward and the name became simplyK Desktop Environment.[2]
In the beginning, all components were released to the developer community separately without any coordinated timeframe throughout the overall project. First communication of KDE via mailing list, that was calledkde@fiwi02.wiwi.uni-Tubingen.de.[4]
The first coordinated release wasBeta 1 on 20 October 1997 (1997-10-20) – almost exactly one year after the original announcement.[5] Three additional Betas followed 23 November 1997 (1997-11-23), 1 February 1998 (1998-02-01), and 19 April 1998 (1998-04-19).[6]
| Release schedule | |
|---|---|
| Date[6] | Event |
| 1.0 | |
| 20 October 1997 (1997-10-20) | KDE Beta 1 released |
| 12 July 1998 (1998-07-12) | KDE 1.0 released |
| 1.1 | |
| 4 March 1999 (1999-03-04) | KDE 1.1 released |
| 3 May 1999 (1999-05-03) | 1.1.1 Maintenance release |
| 13 September 1999 (1999-09-13) | 1.1.2 Maintenance release |
| 14 October 2016 (2016-10-14) | 20th anniversary re-release[7] |
On 12 July 1998 the finished version 1.0 of K Desktop Environments was released:
KDE is a network transparent, contemporary desktop environment forUNIXworkstations. KDE seeks to fill the need for an easy to use desktop for Unix workstations, similar to the desktop environments found under theMacOS orWindow95/NT [sic]. We believe that the UNIX operating system is the best operating system available today. In fact UNIX has been the undisputed choice of theinformation technology professional for many years. When it comes to stability, scalability and openness there is no competition to UNIX. However, the lack of an easy to use contemporary desktop environment for UNIX has prevented UNIX from finding its way onto the desktops of the typical computer user in offices and homes.With KDE there is now an easy to use, contemporary desktop environment available for UNIX. Together with a free implementation of UNIX such as Linux, UNIX/KDE constitutes a completely free and open computing platform available to anyone free of charge including itssource code for anyone to modify. While there will always be room for improvement we believe to have delivered a viable alternative to some of the more commonly found and commercial operating systems/desktops combinations available today. It is our hope that the combination UNIX/KDE will finally bring open, reliable, stable and monopoly free computing to the average computer.
— KDE 1.0 Release Announcement[8]
This version received mixed reception. Many criticized the use of theQt software framework – back then under theQt Free Edition License[9] which was claimed to not be compatible withfree software[2][10][11] – and advised the use ofMotif orLessTif instead. Despite that criticism, KDE was well received by many users and made its way into the firstLinux distributions.[12]
An update, K Desktop Environment 1.1, was faster, more stable and included many small improvements. It also included a new set of icons, backgrounds and textures. Among this overhauled artwork was a new KDE logo by Torsten Rahn consisting of the letter K in front of agear[13] which is used in revised form to this day.
Some components received more far-reaching updates, such as theKonqueror predecessorkfm, the application launcherkpanel, and theKWin predecessorkwm. Newly introduced were e. g.kab, a software library for address management, and a rewrite ofKMail, calledkmail2, which was installed asalpha version in parallel to the classic KMail version.kmail2, however, never left alpha state and development was ended in favor of updating classic KMail.
K Desktop Environment 1.1 was well received among critics.[2]
At the same time Trolltech prepared version 2.0 of Qt which was released asbeta on 1999-01-28.[14] Consequently, no bigger upgrades for KDE 1 based on Qt 1 were developed. Instead only bugfixes were released: version 1.1.1 on 1999-05-03[15] and version 1.1.2 on 1999-09-13.[16]
A more profound upgrade along with a port to Qt 2 was in development asK Desktop Environment 2.
To celebrate KDE's 20th birthday, KDE andFedora contributor Helio Chissini de Castro re-released 1.1.2 on 2016-10-14.[7]
That re-release incorporates several changes required for compatibility with modern Linux variants. Work on that project started one month earlier at QtCon, a conference for Qt developers, in Berlin. There Castro showcased Qt 1.45 compiling on a modern Linux system.[7]
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)"KDE Project releases KDE 1 !". 13 October 2016.| Software compilation |  | ||||||||||||||||||
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