<!-- <?xml version="1.0" ?> <!DOCTYPE chapter PUBLIC "-//KDE//DTD DocBook XML V4.2-Based Variant V1.1//EN" "dtd/kdex.dtd"> --> <chapter id="introduction"> <title >Introduction</title> <qandaset> <qandaentry> <question> <para >What is &kde;?</para> </question> <answer> <para >&kde; is the K Desktop Environment. It is a project initiated by <ulink url="mailto:ettrich@kde.org" >Matthias Ettrich</ulink > in 1996. The aim of the &kde; project is to connect the power of the &UNIX; operating systems with the comfort of a modern user interface.</para> <para >In short, &kde; will bring &UNIX; to the desktop!</para> <para >If you want further information about &kde;, have a look at <ulink url="http://www.kde.org/whatiskde/index.html" >What is &kde;?</ulink ></para> </answer> </qandaentry> <qandaentry> <question id="platform"> <para >On which platforms can I expect &kde; to work?</para> </question> <answer> <para >&kde; is a Desktop Environment for all flavours of &UNIX;. While it is true that most &kde; developers use &Linux;, &kde; runs smoothly on a wide range of systems. You may, however, need to tweak the source code a bit to get &kde; to compile on a not-so-popular variant of &UNIX;, or if you are not using the &GNU; development tools, in particular the &gcc; compiler.</para> <para >For an almost complete list of systems &kde; is running on, please refer to <ulink url="http://promo.kde.org/kde_systems.php" >this list of systems for KDE</ulink > </para> </answer> </qandaentry> <qandaentry> <question> <para >Is &kde; a window manager?</para> </question> <answer> <para >No, &kde; is not a window manager. While &kde; includes a very sophisticated window manager (&kwin;), &kde; is much more than that. It is a full-blown Integrated Desktop Environment.</para> <para >&kde; provides a complete desktop environment, including a web browser, a file manager, a window manager, a help system, a configuration system, uncountable tools and utilities, and an ever increasing number of applications, including but not limited to mail and news clients, drawing programs, a &PostScript; and a &DVI; viewer and so forth.</para> </answer> </qandaentry> <qandaentry> <question> <para >Is &kde; a <acronym >CDE</acronym >, &Windows; 95 or &Mac; <acronym >OS</acronym > clone?</para> </question> <answer> <para >No, &kde; is not a clone. Specifically &kde; is not a <acronym >CDE</acronym > or &Windows; clone. While the &kde; developers have and will continue to glean the best features from all existing desktop environments, &kde; is a truly unique environment that has and will continue to go its own way.</para> </answer> </qandaentry> <qandaentry> <question> <para >Is &kde; free software?</para> </question> <answer> <para >Yes, &kde; is free software according to the &GNU; General Public Licence. All &kde; libraries are available under the <acronym >LGPL</acronym > making commercial software development for the &kde; desktop possible, but all &kde; applications are licensed under the <acronym >GPL</acronym >.</para> <para >&kde; uses the <link linkend="qt" >&Qt; C++ crossplatform toolkit</link >, which is also released (since version 2.2) under the <acronym >GPL</acronym >.</para> <para >It is absolutely legal to make &kde; and &Qt; available on &CD-ROM; free of charge. No runtime fees of any kind are incurred.</para> </answer> </qandaentry> </qandaset> </chapter>