FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 19, 1999
(Hanover, Germany) The K Desktop
Environment(KDE), an advanced and user-friendly desktop for the
increasingly popular Linux/Unix operating system, was awarded top
honors at CeBIT, the worlds largest computer trade fair, as
“Innovation of the Year 1998/99” in the category “Software”.
According to an article
published by Ziff-Davis, sponsor of the award, the criterion for
granting this award of technical excellence was not commerical
success but creativity behind the product’s design, an exceptional
solution for a specific problem or a completely new concept. The
other two finalists for the award were Lotus eSuite and Microtest
Virtual CD.
KDE developers were very pleased by the announcement. In
announcing the award to the KDE community, Kalle Dalheimer, a KDE
developer, beamed, “This award is a great achievement for the whole
KDE team! Congratulations to all of you!”
The availability of the high quality and mature desktop is
considered a key software for enterprise and home use of Linux.
Several large software vendors have announced support of KDE in
recent weeks, including Red Hat Software, Inc. and Corel
Corporation.
ABOUT KDE
KDE released version 1.1 of its desktop on February 19, 1999.
KDE runs on Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, HP-UX and other Unix variants.
It is available in all major Linux and BSD distributions, and is
also downloadable free of charge from KDE’s web site.
KDE’s major contributions to Unix are related to the ease of
installation, configuration and use. KDE provides users with an
attractive, functional desktop, applications that provide a
consistent look-and-feel as well as internationalization. KDE
offers also a consistent user interface across all Unix systems and
numerous hardware platforms, from PCs to powerful Internet servers,
thereby permitting organizations to freely switch hardware without
incurring the costs associated with switching operating
systems.
The KDE project was launched in Octrober 1996 by a small group
of developers. The project immediately adopted the open source
model and grew quickly. Today, it is one of the largest open source
development projects, with several hundred contributing developers,
1.2 million lines of source code, hundreds of translators who
translate KDE into 32 different languages and thousands of
interested users assisting in testing and debugging.