Matthias Ettrich

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Matthias Ettrich
Matthias Ettrich LinuxTag 2005-06-23.jpg
Matthias Ettrich at LinuxTag, 23 May 2005
Born (1972-06-14) 14 June 1972 (age 51)
NationalityGerman
Occupation Software engineer
Employer Here
Known for KDE and LyX

Matthias Ettrich (born 14 June 1972) is a German computer scientist and founder of the KDE and LyX projects.

Contents

Early life

Ettrich was born in Bietigheim-Bissingen, Baden-Württemberg, West Germany, and went to school in Beilstein while living with his parents in Oberstenfeld. He passed the Abitur in 1991. Ettrich studied for his MSc in Computer Science at the Wilhelm Schickard Institute for Computer Science at the University of Tübingen.

Career

He currently resides in Berlin, Germany. He is currently focused on advising start-ups and corporations on digital transformation and in sound technical decision-making. [1]

Free software projects

Ettrich founded and furthered the LyX project in 1995, initially conceived as a university term project. LyX is a graphical frontend to LaTeX.

Since LyX's main target platform was Linux, he started exploring different ways to improve the graphical user interface, ultimately leading him to the KDE project. Ettrich founded KDE in 1996 when he proposed on Usenet a "consistent, nice looking free desktop environment"[ sic ] for Unix-like systems using Qt as its widget toolkit. [2] [3]

On 6 November 2009, Ettrich was decorated with the Federal Cross of Merit for his contributions to free software. [4] [5]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">KDE</span> Free software community

KDE is an international free software community that develops free and open-source software. As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that allow collaborative work on this kind of software. Well-known products include the Plasma Desktop, KDE Frameworks, and a range of cross-platform applications such as Amarok, digiKam, and Krita that are designed to run on Unix and Unix-like operating systems, Microsoft Windows, and Android.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Qt (software)</span> Object-oriented framework for software development

Qt is cross-platform software for creating graphical user interfaces as well as cross-platform applications that run on various software and hardware platforms such as Linux, Windows, macOS, Android or embedded systems with little or no change in the underlying codebase while still being a native application with native capabilities and speed.

In computing, a desktop environment (DE) is an implementation of the desktop metaphor made of a bundle of programs running on top of a computer operating system that share a common graphical user interface (GUI), sometimes described as a graphical shell. The desktop environment was seen mostly on personal computers until the rise of mobile computing. Desktop GUIs help the user to easily access and edit files, while they usually do not provide access to all of the features found in the underlying operating system. Instead, the traditional command-line interface (CLI) is still used when full control over the operating system is required.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LyX</span>

LyX is an open source, graphical user interface document processor based on the LaTeX typesetting system. Unlike most word processors, which follow the WYSIWYG paradigm, LyX has a WYSIWYM approach, where what shows up on the screen roughly depicts the semantic structure of the page and is only an approximation of the document produced by TeX.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ROX Desktop</span> Desktop environment for X Window System

The ROX Desktop is a graphical desktop environment for the X Window System. It is based on the ROX-Filer which is a drag and drop spatial file manager. It is free software released under the GNU General Public License. The environment was inspired by the user interface of RISC OS. The name "ROX" comes from "RISC OS on X". Programs can be installed or removed easily using Zero Install.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">KDE Display Manager</span>

KDE Display Manager (KDM) is a display manager developed by KDE for the windowing systems X11.

freedesktop.org (fd.o), formerly X Desktop Group (XDG), is a project to work on interoperability and shared base technology for free-software desktop environments for the X Window System (X11) and Wayland on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. Although freedesktop.org produces specifications for interoperability, it is not a formal standards body.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LabPlot</span> Application for interactive graphing and analysis of scientific data

LabPlot is a free software cross-platform computer program for interactive scientific graphing and data analysis, written mainly for the KDE desktop for Unix-like operating systems, and later available for Microsoft Windows. It is similar to Origin, and is able to import Origin's data files.

The Portland Project is an initiative by freedesktop.org aiming at easing the portability of application software between desktop environments and kernels by designing cross-platform APIs and offering implementations thereof as libraries to independent software vendors (ISVs).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Linux</span> Family of Unix-like operating systems

Linux is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution (distro), which includes the kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses and recommends the name "GNU/Linux" to emphasize the use and importance of GNU software in many distributions, causing some controversy.

A desktop environment is a collection of software designed to give functionality and a certain look and feel to an operating system.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of free and open-source software</span>

In the 1950s and 1960s, computer operating software and compilers were delivered as a part of hardware purchases without separate fees. At the time, source code, the human-readable form of software, was generally distributed with the software providing the ability to fix bugs or add new functions. Universities were early adopters of computing technology. Many of the modifications developed by universities were openly shared, in keeping with the academic principles of sharing knowledge, and organizations sprung up to facilitate sharing. As large-scale operating systems matured, fewer organizations allowed modifications to the operating software, and eventually such operating systems were closed to modification. However, utilities and other added-function applications are still shared and new organizations have been formed to promote the sharing of software.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trisquel</span> Linux distribution based on Ubuntu

Trisquel is a computer operating system, a Linux distribution, derived from another distribution, Ubuntu. The project aims for a fully free software system without proprietary software or firmware and uses a version of Ubuntu's modified kernel, with the non-free code removed. Trisquel relies on user donations. Its logo is a triskelion, a Celtic symbol. Trisquel is listed by the Free Software Foundation as a distribution that contains only free software.

Linux began in 1991 as a personal project by Finnish student Linus Torvalds to create a new free operating system kernel. The resulting Linux kernel has been marked by constant growth throughout its history. Since the initial release of its source code in 1991, it has grown from a small number of C files under a license prohibiting commercial distribution to the 4.15 version in 2018 with more than 23.3 million lines of source code, not counting comments, under the GNU General Public License v2 with a syscall exception meaning anything that uses the kernel via system calls are not subject to the GNU GPL.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">K Desktop Environment 1</span> Free software

K Desktop Environment 1 was the inaugural series of releases of the K Desktop Environment. There were two major releases in this series.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NimbleX</span>

NimbleX is a small Slackware-based Linux distribution optimized to run from a CD, USB drive or a network environment. NimbleX has been praised for how fast it boots, as well as for its small disk footprint, which is considered surprising for a distribution using KDE as desktop environment. NimbleX was also remarked for its website that allows users to generate custom bootable images by using a web browser. It was also covered in mainstream Romanian press as the first Linux distribution put together by a Romanian.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">KDE Software Compilation</span> Desktop environment and an associated range of KDE Applications produced by KDE

The KDE Software Compilation was an umbrella term for the desktop environment plus a range of included applications produced by KDE. From its 1.0 release in July 1998 until the release of version 4.4 in February 2010, the Software Compilation was simply known as KDE, which stood for K Desktop Environment until the rebrand. The then called KDE SC was used from 4.4 onward until the final release 4.14 in July 2014. It consisted of the KDE Plasma 4 desktop and those KDE applications, whose development teams chose to follow the Software Compilation's release schedule. After that, the KDE SC was split into three separate product entities: KDE Plasma, KDE Frameworks and KDE Applications, each with their own independent release schedules.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Manjaro</span> Linux distribution based on Arch Linux with rolling releases

Manjaro is a free and open-source Linux distribution based on the Arch Linux operating system that has a focus on user-friendliness and accessibility. It uses a rolling release update model and Pacman as its package manager. It is developed mainly in Austria, France and Germany.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">KDE Gear</span> Set of applications and supporting libraries

The KDE Gear is a set of applications and supporting libraries that are developed by the KDE community, primarily used on Linux-based operating systems but mostly multiplatform, and released on a common release schedule.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNOME 1</span> First major release of GNOME

GNOME 1 is the first major release of the GNOME desktop environment. Its primary goal was to provide a consistent user-friendly environment in conjunction with the X Window System. It was also a modern and free and open source software alternative to older desktop environments such as the Common Desktop Environment (CDE), but also to the K Desktop Environment (KDE). Each desktop environment was built-upon then proprietary-licensed widget toolkits, whereas GNOME's goal from the onset, was to be freely-licensed, and utilize the GTK toolkit instead.

References

  1. "Matthias Ettrich". LinkedIn.
  2. Ettrich, Matthias (14 October 1996). "New Project: Kool Desktop Environment (KDE)". Newsgroup:  de.comp.os.linux.misc. Usenet:   53tkvv$b4j@newsserv.zdv.uni-tuebingen.de . Retrieved 4 December 2010.
  3. "Matthias Ettrich: The KDE-Man!". EFY Enterprises Pvt. Ltd. EFY Times.com. 15 March 2008. Archived from the original on 30 October 2015. Retrieved 30 April 2011.
  4. "KDE founder Ettrich receives German award".
  5. Boehm, Mirko (6 November 2009). "Matthias Ettrich Receives German Federal Cross of Merit". KDE. KDE.NEWS. Retrieved 30 April 2011.