<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>
<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> && <command>make</command> && <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>
<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>Consistency of interface. Menus are in the same place across applications, keybindings behave the same way, toolbar icons, once learned, always work the same.</para>
<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; 3.2 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>
<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 folder <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> folder, 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>
