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<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>


