About KDE

• KDE is an open source development project of a graphical desktop environment. Other than being the first letter of the acronym, the K doesn't stand for anything. It is just a name.
• The KDE software is constructed using Qt. The project began in 1996, the year after the first version of Qt was released. Since then, the project has grown to become a very complete desktop environment with a large collection of applications.
• From the software developer's point of view, KDE is quite simple. While most of the software written as part of the KDE project is used as an integral part of the desktop environment, a large number of classes have also been developed; and they are included as part of a core KDE API. These classes are meant to help give KDE applications a standard look and feel.
• Most of these classes inherit from one or more classes of the Qt library, and some of the KDE classes add capabilities beyond that of Qt, but most of them are simply for the sake of maintaining the standard appearance of KDE. It would be easy enough to write your entire application using only the classes of Qt, but if you use the KDE classes, your application is more likely to appear integrated with the rest of the desktop.