History
Karamba was originally written by Hans Karlsson as a school project in March 2003. [2] It gained a lot of popularity when it was uploaded to KDE-Look [3] and people began writing themes for it. Karamba only functioned on text files that were written with pseudo-XML format. It became so popular so quickly that Hans had to hand over the project to others who had time to expand upon what he had begun.
By the end of April 2003, Adam Geitgey [4] took over maintenance of the project. He added python scripting support to karamba, which is where it took on a new name, SuperKaramba. Adam kept the project alive, added new features and applied patches from other developers until around April 2005. At that point, a group of developers who wanted to move SuperKaramba even further pushed to get it included in a KDE major release.
SuperKaramba was integrated into KDE 3.5 [5] as part of the kdeutils package, and some of the ideas that it presents have become part of KDE 4’s desktop and panel interface called Plasma, which also has support for the SuperKaramba widgets.
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.
Yahoo Widgets is a discontinued free application platform for Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows, specifically Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. The software was previously called Konfabulator, but after being acquired by computer services company Yahoo on July 25, 2005, it was rebranded. The name Konfabulator was subsequently reinstated as the name of the underlying rendering engine. The engine uses a JavaScript runtime environment combined with an XML interpreter to run small applications referred to as widgets, and hence is part of a class of software applications called widget engines. On February 27, 2012, Yahoo updated the License agreement stating that as of April 3, 2012 Yahoo! Widgets will continue to be available for download but support and development would stop.
KDE Software Compilation 4 was the only series of the so-called KDE Software Compilation, first released in January 2008 and the last release being 4.14.3 released in November 2014. It was the follow-up to K Desktop Environment 3. Following KDE SC 4, the compilation was broken up into basic framework libraries, desktop environment and applications, which are termed KDE Frameworks 5, KDE Plasma 5 and KDE Applications, respectively.
Kicker is the main panel used in KDE 3 and earlier, and also in the TDE desktop. Together with KDesktop, it forms the graphical shell. It can be customized by the user. By default, it has the K Menu, a Desktop Access button, a Home button, a Konqueror button, a Kontact button, and a Help button. It also has the Desktop Preview & Pager, the Taskbar, the System Tray, and the Clock.
This is a comparison of widget engines. This article is not about widget toolkits that are used in computer programming to build graphical user interfaces.
The Oxygen Project is a project created to give a visual refresh to KDE Plasma Workspaces.
KDE Platform 4 was a collection of libraries and software frameworks by KDE that served as technological foundation for KDE Software Compilation 4 distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). KDE Platform 4 was the successor to KDElibs and the predecessor of KDE Frameworks. KDE Platform 4 is the only version of KDE Platform, and in 2013 it was replaced by KDE Frameworks 5.
KDE Plasma 4 is the fourth generation of the KDE workspace environments. It consisted of three workspaces, each targeting a certain platform: Plasma Desktop for traditional desktop PCs and notebooks, Plasma Netbook for netbooks, and Plasma Active for tablet PCs and similar devices.
KDesktop is the component of the K Desktop Environment 3 and earlier, which provides a virtual background window to draw icons or other graphics on. In conjunction with Kicker and SuperKaramba, it constitutes the graphical shell.
Tk is a cross-platform widget toolkit that provides a library of basic elements of GUI widgets for building a graphical user interface (GUI) in many programming languages. It is free and open-source software released under a BSD-style software license.
K Desktop Environment 3 is the third series of releases of the K Desktop Environment. There are six major releases in this series. After the release of KDE 4, version 3.5 was forked into the Trinity Desktop Environment.
A software widget is a relatively simple and easy-to-use software application or component made for one or more different software platforms.
ZK is an open-source Ajax Web application framework, written in Java, that enables creation of graphical user interfaces for Web applications with little required programming knowledge.
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.
In computer science and visualization, a canvas is a container that holds various drawing elements. It takes its name from the canvas used in visual arts. It is sometimes called a scene graph because it arranges the logical representation of a user interface or graphical scene. Some implementations also define the spatial representation and allow the user to interact with the elements via a graphical user interface.
KDE Frameworks is a collection of libraries and software frameworks readily available to any Qt-based software stacks or applications on multiple operating systems. Featuring frequently needed functionality solutions like hardware integration, file format support, additional graphical control elements, plotting functions, and spell checking, the collection serves as the technological foundation for KDE Plasma and KDE Gear. It is distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).
KDE Projects are projects maintained by the KDE community, a group of people developing and advocating free software for everyday use, for example KDE Plasma and KDE Frameworks or applications such as Amarok, Krita or Digikam. There are also non-coding projects like designing the Breeze desktop theme and iconset, which is coordinated by KDE's Visual Design Group. Even non-Qt applications like GCompris, which started as a GTK-based application, or web-based projects like WikiToLearn are officially part of KDE.
Plasma is a graphical shell developed by KDE for Unix-like operating systems. Plasma is a standard desktop interface. It was declared mature with the release of KDE SC 4.2. It is designed for desktop PCs and larger laptops. In its default configuration it resembles KDesktop from K Desktop Environment 3, and Microsoft Windows XP; however extensive configurability allows radical departures from the default layout.
