As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that enable collaborative work on its projects.

[1] Its products include the Plasma Desktop, KDE Frameworks, and a range of applications such as Kate, digiKam, and Krita.

[2] Many KDE applications are cross-platform and can run on Unix and Unix-like operating systems, Microsoft Windows, and Android.

In order to solve the issue, he proposed the creation of a desktop environment in which users could expect the applications to be consistent and easy to use.

His initial Usenet post spurred significant interest, and the KDE project was born.

[5] The name KDE was intended as a wordplay on the existing Common Desktop Environment, available for Unix systems.

[6] CDE was an X11-based user environment jointly developed by HP, IBM, and Sun through the X/Open consortium, with an interface and productivity tools based on the Motif graphical widget toolkit.

The original GNU General Public Licensed version of this toolkit only existed for platforms that used the X11 display server, but as of the release of Qt 4, GNU Lesser General Public Licensed versions are available for more platforms.

This allowed KDE software based on Qt 4 or newer versions to be distributed to Microsoft Windows and OS X.

Motivated by the perceived shift in objectives, the rebranding focused on emphasizing both the community of software creators and the various tools supplied by the KDE, rather than just the desktop environment.

[11] Since 2009, the name KDE no longer stands for K Desktop Environment, but for the community that produces the software.

It is a wiki (based on MediaWiki, like Wikipedia) that provides a platform to create and share open source textbooks.

[19] Since a large number of individuals contribute to KDE in various ways (e.g. code, translation, artwork), organization of such a project is complex.

A mentor program helps beginners to get started with developing and communicating within KDE projects and communities.

[20][21] Communication within the community takes place via mailing lists, IRC, blogs, forums, news announcements, wikis and conferences.

[26] This estimation does not include Qt, Calligra Suite, Amarok, digiKam, and other applications that are not part of KDE core.

This team communicates using the kde-core-devel mailing list, which is publicly archived and readable, but joining requires approval.

Instead, the KDE core team consists of several dozens of contributors who make decisions not by a formal vote, but through discussions.

[29] As of February 2024, there are nine such patrons: Blue Systems, Canonical Ltd., Google, GnuPG, Kubuntu Focus, Slimbook, SUSE, The Qt Company, and TUXEDO Computers.

Other dragons with different colors and professions were added to Konqi as part of the Tyson Tan redesign concept.

Kandalf's similarity to the character of Gandalf led to speculation that the mascot was switched to Konqi due to copyright infringement concerns, but this has never been confirmed by KDE.

It also accepts donations on behalf of the KDE community, helps to run the servers, assists in organizing and financing conferences and meetings,[35] but does not influence software development directly.

[36] The KDE official logo displays the white trademarked K-Gear shape on a blue square with mitred corners.

[38] Fruits of that cooperation are MediaWiki syntax highlighting in Kate and accessing Wikipedia content within KDE applications, such as Amarok and Marble.

[43] They have also been contracting KO GmbH to bring MS Office 2007 file format filters to Calligra.

In 2009 and 2011, GNOME and KDE co-hosted their conferences Akademy and GUADEC under the Desktop Summit label.

These include commercial distributors such as SUSE/Novell[47] or Red Hat[48] but also government-funded non-commercial organizations such as the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey with its Linux distribution Pardus.

helps travel and accommodation subsidies for presenters, BoF leaders, organizers or core contributor.

[56] Camp KDE 2010 took place at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) in La Jolla, US.

KDE software is also running on computers in Portuguese and Venezuelan schools, with respectively 700,000 and one million systems reached.