Putting the bow on 2024 is probably one of the easiest things we have done in recent years. It was a year that started with the big announcement of the megarelease, an effort across teams to deliver the next generation of our products. Ultimately, I think the effort paid off and we can all agree that was a great success.
Over the year we also adopted a new set of goals. This community vote prompted us to improve and extend our app developers’ experience, to improve the input hardware support on our products, and to improve the outreach to get new contributors. It’s been a pleasure so far to see many community members rallying around these topics and we are even starting to see it trickle down into our products, products that are enjoyed all over the world.
It’s invigorating to be able to work on all that with the support of our Supporting Members. A group that is bigger and more supportive than ever. We don’t take it as a gift but as a vote of confidence. We have difficult times ahead and we will need all the help and cooperation we can get. Still, we move forward towards a society where everyone has control over their digital life and enjoys freedom and privacy.
Featured article – KDE from the Outside In (and in three graphs)
By Paul Brown
Quick reality check: most of the world does not know KDE exists. Any of it: no Plasma, no apps, nothing.
Then again, only a fraction of a percent of the world population is aware of the existence of Free Software/Open Source at all.
Furthermore, and you may find this shocking, but the number of people who can define the term “operating system” is also vanishingly small. Absolutely nobody can explain what a desktop environment is — at least not succinctly and in plain English without resorting to technical terms or contrived metaphors. And the idea that younger generations are more technologically literate than their forebears is complete hogwash.
We know all this because we’ve experienced it first-hand. Early in 2024, we conducted a not-very-scientific survey for a talk and discovered that nobody had heard of KDE, Linux was “a programming language”, and an operating system was “that thing I use to find my apps” — which is not entirely off mark from a user’s perspective.
Then when we were helping a non-profit in New England upcycle obsolete computers with KDE software, the local journalist sent to cover the news had never heard of any kind of organization that created and gave away software for free. She initially found the concept of “Free Open Source Software” very hard to wrap her head around. When we attend non-FLOSS events (we go to those too!), we get similar reactions from visitors to our booths.
Speaking of booths, at a Linux Foundation event in Edinburgh, the general reaction was of shock when attendees stumbled upon our stand while looking for the toilets (they were definitely not looking for us), and the first question out of their otherwise gaping mouths was usually “KDE still exists?!”. At a GitLab event in New York, nobody I spoke to outside the organizers had heard of KDE or GNOME.
Let me be clear: none of the people we talk to are stupid. Most have college-level educations and are extremely competent in their field of work. As the last two examples show, in many cases they don’t even have to be strangers to the inner world of technology to be quite clueless about our slice of it.
Regardless, if we were to conduct a proper scientific study, I am pretty sure we would discover that KDE and the larger FLOSS ecosystem is entirely invisible to the general public.
Graph 1: The rise and rise of KDE’s public awareness
The good news is that within the FLOSS (and even general techie) bubble, coverage has increased, pushing KDE a couple of pegs up the awareness scale over the last few years.
In the first graph we can see that mentions of KDE in blogs, tech news sites and user forums were up (again) in 2024, from 645 mentions in 2023 to 799 in 2024, an increase of 24%.
Mentions in news outlets, blogs, etc.
That means that KDE or its products were mentioned on average about twice a day on sites that search engines considered worthy enough to trigger an alert.
Although a lot of the mentions often come from the same handful of outlets, new sites get added to the roster all the time. In 2024 we were mentioned in 167 publications; up 40% from 2023, and a whopping 90% up from 2022.
While it is true that many new publications mentioned KDE only once during 2024, and many news outlets blip out of existence as quickly as they appear, some stick around, and some, once they start, end up reporting on KDE periodically. Indeed, since we started measuring back in 2017, the needle counting “friendly” outlets has not once swung down.
What they say
New releases and development progress of KDE projects, especially of Plasma, are the favourite topics. Developer blogs (especially those that update frequently and regularly) and release announcements are the main contributors to the rise of mentions.
Tech journalists are both harried and lazy, and they need to fill their quota of articles and blog posts every day. Lifting wholesale from community contributors is an easy and reliable way to do that.
This “consensual plagiarism” works well for everybody involved. Outlets get content, their audiences gets reliable information from a trustworthy source (us), and we get to explain our projects in our own words. By making it easier and more tempting for bloggers and journalists to let themselves be influenced by the stuff we publish, we have managed to improve KDE’s reputation over time.
Of course, it helps that KDE’s main projects offer increasingly attractive features and have had no serious setbacks for quite a while now. Plasma 6.0’s release, an especially risky event, went really well. Further supported by waves of easily copy-and-paste-able positive content, the public perception ended up very favorable.
We know all this because we measure sentiment too, and articles that have a positive spin on KDE have increased from 8% of all articles published in 2022, to over 21% in 2024 (most others are just neutral).
Popular opinion
The way we reach the public directly is through social media. Here, again, our audience has grown and changed their opinion over time.
Even though 2024 was a strange time in the realm of tweets, toots and upvotes, and despite turmoil with Twitter/X, our audience continues to grow across the board and we have not reached a plateau yet.
We craft our messages depending on the platform, and select what we focus on to get people talking, sharing and boosting. The audiences in LinkedIn, Mastodon and Reddit are quite different from each other, and the same content often has to be written in different ways several times to adapt to the length, format and predominant moods of each platform.
That said, there are things all platforms have in common. Announcements of new releases (with details of what they contain and with screenshots or animations) again always work better than, say, announcements of events. The news that a public institution has adopted open source will work better than either, but clickbaity memes, jokes, and posts about how awful [insert name of any predatory proprietary tech corporation here] is will always work the best of all.
The point is we work hard growing our social media audience, as this does not only keep our users informed, but also helps improve KDE’s viability. How?
Graph 2: How social media helps KDE’s sustainability
To keep a project’s sustainability in sync with its popularity, you need two things: money and people. We’ll talk about the latter in the next section, but for the former we have come to rely more and more on fundraising.
So when donation season rolls around towards the end of the year, we appreciate having that larger audience that followed us, even those who did so just “for the lulz”.
Check out the yellow line of the following graph:
Number of donations from 2022 onwards.
It shows the number of quarterly donations we received in the last three years. Those humps towards the end of the year are fundraising campaigns, which are mostly executed through social media.
When we post requests for donations, the response tends to be loud and enthusiastic. Loud because we have worked on attracting a big crowd of followers that not only heeds our call, but amplifies it. Enthusiastic because we try to make campaigns rowdy and fun, and, as mentioned above, because we have worked hard to improve KDE’s reputation.
A case in point is what you can see in 2024. The online part of our 2024 end-of-year fundraising campaign was already on course to becoming KDE’s most successful fundraiser ever. You can see how the red line that tracks monthly donations starts creeping up in September, at the beginning of fundraising season. Then, in November, it surpasses anything we did before.
The big jump in December is when the notification requesting donations started showing up on users’ desktops for the first time. The fact that the notification was not only not reviled, but extremely popular and effective tells us a lot about how users perceive Plasma and KDE in general. As it turns out, our users get annoyed when they can’t donate to us, not when they are asked to do so.
KDE is a very efficient organization. It doesn’t need a lot to survive and even thrive, working well on shoe-string budgets. That said, it does need enough, and it needs enough on a regular basis. Getting support from public institutions and rich companies is nice, but policies change, institutional priorities get revised, and firms can go bust or become unfriendly. Direct support from users not only keeps KDE safe from political and corporate shifts, but also provides a degree of stability we would be hard-pressed to find elsewhere. We won’t lose those donations just because a new manager decides that supporting FLOSS is not worth the trouble anymore.
Graph 3: Not everything is great
There is still the problem of staffing the KDE core, though. KDE relies on volunteers to fill the most critical roles within its overall project.
After decades of proprietary software providers taking away agency from users, the general public has come to believe that there is a clear divide — perhaps even a barrier — between suppliers and customers. Actively participating in the production of KDE’s software by taking on responsibilities for the advancement of the digital tools they use is an alien concept for consumers.
But this is all part of giving control to the users that we talk about in our vision. We want users to take control, not only for their own benefit, but also because it is critical for the survival of projects like KDE.
The whole post is worth reading, and David’s conclusion is heartwarmingly positive. His gut feelings before looking at the data was that participation was down. He was happily surprised to see that that was not the case.
The caveat being that the spike in 2001 can be largely attributed to everybody being stuck at home during COVID. Conversely, the continued peak through to 2024 can be in part attributed to the interest Plasma 6 sparked.
The thing is we cannot always rely on global pandemics to increase the number of contributors! Plasma 5 was around for nearly 10 years, so we cannot boost a flagging number of contributors by drawing on massive tent-pole releases every couple of years either. Plasma 7 is a long way away.
Another thing is that KDE is so much more than a desktop environment nowadays. We have to consider all the other projects too, and it is a harsh truth that not a quarter goes by without a KDE project being retired or archived for a lack of support and updates.
Even successful projects have it hard. Kdenlive has recently gained a 100% increase in the number of developers, which sounds great until you realize that the number went from 1 to 2. GCompris, possibly the KDE project with the largest number of users worldwide, also has only two core developers. Many devs pop in on KDE Connect and fix or tweak stuff, but there only seems to be between 1 and 1.5 main developers keeping the project going at any given time.
Developers burn out and grow old. Some consider moving on to greener pastures, and FLOSS projects have to rely on a high user participation to make up for the lack of paid 9-to-5 programmers, bug triagers, and testers. This translates into a need for a constant influx of new volunteer contributors.
That’s why we have goals that make it easier for developers from different backgrounds to participate in our community, focus on globally useful and worthwhile development issues, and aim to boost contributor recruitment.
The Streamlined Application Development Experience goal makes it easier for new developers to contribute by improving training materials, opening KDE software up to other popular programming languages besides C++, and providing guidance on how to get started.
The We care about your Input project gives new developers plenty of opportunities to start contributing to meaningful tasks with well-defined goals, and not just test the waters building yet another media player. The We care about your input projects encompass accessibility, to usable design, to gaming, and then they solve issues that affect our software across the board.
The KDE Needs You! 🫵 goal will pave the way for would-be contributors. By extending and formalizing how we recruit people, and by extending and adding to our mentorship programs, we hope to get more people bitten by the FLOSS bug. The final aim is to make sure the community has enough skilled contributors to sustain the growth of its software.
These goals, and the future ones we decide upon, will help us meet the challenge of KDE’s ever-growing adoption.
Meanwhile, bask in what the first two graphs are telling us: we are on the cusp of something big. Everything seems to be driving KDE towards an inflection point — a moment not far in the future when our projects will raise above and overflow out into the mainstream, maybe even making KDE a household name at last.
Any day now…
Supported Activities – Developer Sprints and Conferences
conf.kde.in
Aniqa Khokhar
conf.kde.in 2024 group photo.
After a long break due to COVID, conf.kde.in 2024 marked a significant return for the KDE community in India. Held from 2nd to 4th February at COEP Technological University in Pune, Maharashtra, the conference aimed to attract both new and seasoned KDE contributors. The event provided updates on ongoing projects within the KDE community and offered guidance to newcomers on making meaningful contributions.
The conference featured over 20 talks and spanned three days, focusing on various aspects of KDE development and open-source software. The timetable included sessions on topics such as sustainability in free software and emulation tools for sustainable software development.
Pune, often referred to as the "Queen of the Deccan", served as an ideal backdrop for the event. Known for its rich cultural heritage and status as a hub for education and innovation, the city added a vibrant atmosphere to the conference.
Megarelease Parties
Aniqa Khokhar
Event celebrating the release of Plasma 6 in Dharan, Nepal.
The KDE community celebrated a significant milestone with the release of its 6th Megarelease on February 28, 2024. This comprehensive update included Plasma 6, Frameworks 6, and Gear 24.02, demonstrating KDE's commitment to providing a modern and feature-rich desktop environment for Linux-based operating systems.
Event celebrating the release of Plasma 6 in Berlin, Germany.
To celebrate this achievement, contributors and supporters organized release parties around the world, building community engagement and highlighting advancements in KDE software.
Event celebrating the release of Plasma 6 in Málaga, Spain.
Release parties were held in various locations, including Berlin, Nürnberg, Budapest, Ljubljana, Barcelona, Málaga, Cambridge, Montréal, New York City, Seoul, Dharan, Tokyo and Hangzhou.
Goals Sprint
From the notes of Albert Astals Cid, Ingo Klöcker, Méven Car and Nicolas Fella
Attendees to the 2024 Goals Sprint.
From the 20th to the 24th of April, the Goal Champions held the Goals Sprint at the MBition Office in Berlin, Germany.
Improvements focused on making KDE apps more screen-reader-friendly, including better icon labels and accessible date/time inputs.
Contributors worked on CI jobs for spellchecking, KDE Gear releases, and dashboards for tracking project progress.
Debugging efforts improved app efficiency, reducing energy consumption.
Akademy-es
By Aniqa Khokhar
The nineteenth edition of Akademy-es, KDE’s yearly event for the Spanish-speaking community, was held in Valencia on the 24th and 25th of May.
This year the event was jointly held with the esLibre event co-organized by the host association GNU/Linux València, in Las Naves, the center of social and urban innovation of the city of Valencia, and La Mutant, the space of living arts.
Just like previous years, attendees could participate both in person and online.
Akademy-es 2024 group photo.
For over 19 years, Akademy-es has been promoting and bringing this event to the general public as well as to Spanish-speaking community members.
During the two days, there were talks for both users and developers, as well as practical workshops and other activities of a more social nature. The conference started with the opening ceremony hosted by Adrián Chaves, president of KDE Spain. Then there were talks on various topics such as Craft: The KDE Distribution for Non-Linux Platforms, Python and Qt, Typst as an alternative to LaTeX and Markdown, Painting with Krita: illustration techniques, How you can use OSS KB to develop KDE, as well as lightning talks and more.
PIM Sprint
From the notes of Carl Schwan, Daniel Vrátil, Kevin Ottens, and Volker Krause
From the 15th to the 16th of June, the PIM team met for the PIM Sprint in Toulouse, France.
Key decisions included retiring legacy apps like KJots and KNotes, improving Akonadi’s performance, and unifying the MIME Tree Parser for better email rendering. Developers worked on syncing iCal categories with Akonadi tags, modernizing configuration dialogs, and strengthening end-to-end testing. The team also set clear milestones to attract new contributors.
Alongside productive sessions, attendees enjoyed Toulouse’s food and culture. The sprint successfully advanced KDE PIM’s future development.
Akademy Pre-event—Making a Difference
Aniqa Khokhar
On 10 August 2024, the Akademy team organized an online event to help participants know more about KDE and Akademy.
This was a workshop on how to make a difference in the world of free software by getting involved with the KDE Community, learn about our vision and community structure, and discover our impact on today’s world. KDE community members explained to viewers participating in KDE how we encourage skill development, fosters volunteering, and boosts career and personal growth.
Akademy 2024 - The Akademy of Many Changes
By Paul Brown
This year’s Akademy , held from the 7th to the 12th of September in Würzburg, Germany, was all about resetting priorities, refocusing goals, and combining individual projects into a final result greater than the sum of its parts.
Akademy 2024 group photo.
A shift — or, more accurately, a broadening of interest in the KDE community has been gradually emerging over the past few years, and reached a new peak at this year’s event. The conference largely focused on delivering high quality, cutting-edge Free Software to end users. However the keynote “Only Hackers will Survive” by tech activist and environmentalist Joanna Murzyn, and Joseph De Veaugh-Geiss’ “Opt In? Opt Out? Opt Green!” talk took attendees down a left turn by addressing growing concerns about the impact of IT on the environment and discussed how Free Software can help curb CO2 emissions.
KDE has always had a social conscience. The community’s vision and mission of providing users with the tools to control their digital lives and protect their privacy is now combined with concern for the preservation of the planet we live on.
Joanna Murzyn and Joseph De Veaugh-Geiss during their respective presentations.
But KDE can do more than one thing at a time, and our software is also undergoing profound changes under the hood. Joshua Goins, for example, explained how he was working on ways to enable framework, Plasma, and application development in Rust. Joshua told us how Rust has many advantages, such as its memory safety capabilities, while adding a Qt front-end to Rust projects is much easier than many people believe.
This is in line with one of the new goals adopted by the community during this Akademy: Nicolas Fella, Plasma contributor and key developer of KDE’s all-important Frameworks, championed “Streamlined Application Development Experience”, a goal aimed at making it easier for new developers to access KDE technologies.
And onboarding new developers is what the “KDE Needs You! 🫵” goal is about. While the growing popularity of KDE software is great, growth puts more stress on the teams creating the software. Add to that the fact that the veteran developers are getting gray around the temples, and you need a constant influx of new contributors to keep the community and its projects running. The “KDE Needs You! 🫵” goal was devised to address this challenge and was being spearheaded by members of the Promo and Mentoring teams. The champions want to formalize and strengthen KDE’s processes for recruiting active contributors, and to make recruiting active contributors to projects a priority and an ongoing task for the community.
These two goals aim to benefit the community and projects in general. KDE’s third goal, “We care about your input”, builds on their work: proposed by Jakob Petsovits, Gernot Schiller and Joshua Goins, “input” in this case refers to “input from devices”. The goal addresses the fact that there are still a lot of languages and hardware that are not optimally supported by Plasma and KDE applications, and with the move to Wayland, some devices have even temporarily lost a measure of support they enjoyed on X11. Jakob, Gernot, and their team of supporters said they planned to solve this problem methodically, working to make KDE’s software work smoothly and effortlessly on drawing tablets, accessibility devices, game controllers, software virtual keyboards, and input methods for users of the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean languages.
One way to achieve the desired level of integration is to control the entire software stack, right down to the operating system. This was also in the works for KDE, as Harald Sitter revealed he was working on a new technologically advanced operating system tentatively named “KDE Linux”. This operating system aims to break free of the constraints currently limiting KDE’s existing Neon OS and offer a superior experience for KDE’s developers, enthusiast users, and everyday users.
KDE Linux will provide users with a solid, stable, and secure environment, without sacrificing the ability to run the latest and greatest KDE software.
As the proof of the pudding is in the eating, Harald surprised the audience when he revealed towards the end of his talk that his entire presentation had been delivered using KDE Linux!
The user-facing side of KDE was shown to be changing with the work of Arjen Hiemstra, Andy Betts and the Visual Design Group at large. Arjen is working on Union, a new theming engine that will eventually replace the different ways of styling in KDE. Up until now, developers and designers have had to deal with multiple ways of doing styling, some of which are quite difficult to use. Union, as the name implies, will end the fragmentation and provide something that is both easier for developers to maintain and more flexible for designers to interact with.
And then Andy Betts of KDE's visual design group (VDG) told us about Plasma Next, while introducing the audience to the concept of Design Systems -- management systems that allow all aspects of large collections of icons, components, and other graphical assets to be controlled. Using design systems, the VDG is developing a new systematic method of making design changes for Plasma and KDE applications, allowing for a more unified roll-out of visual and layout changes.
This means that in the not too distant future, KDE users will be able to enjoy a rock-solid and elegant operating system with a matching brilliant look.
In other Akademy news…
Kevin Ottens added another KDE success story to the list, telling us how a wine producing company in Australia has been using hundreds of desktops running KDE Plasma for more than 10 years.
Natalie Clarius explained how she was working on adapting Plasma to work better on our vendor partners’ hardware products.
The “Openwashing” panel took on companies that call themselves “open source” but are anything but, ably moderated by Markus Felner, Cornelius Schumacher of KDE, Holger Dyroff of OwnCloud, Richard Heigl of HalloWelt! and Leonhard Kugler of OpenCode.
David Schlanger shared the harsh truth about AI, and his wishful positive vision for the technology, and then faced questions and comments from Lydia Pintscher and Eike Hein in the keynote session on day 2.
Ben Cooksley, Volker Krause, Hannah von Reth, and Julius Künzel took a deep dive into the frameworks, services, and utilities that help KDE projects get their products to users quickly and on a wide variety of platforms.
Akademy Awards
The prestigious KDE Awards were given to:
Friedrich W.H. Kossebau for his work on the Okteta hex editor.
Albert Astals Cid for his work on the Qt patch collection, KDE Gear release maintenance, i18n, and many, many other things.
Nicolas Fella received his award for his work on KDE Frameworks and Plasma.
As is traditional, the Akademy organizing team was awarded for putting on a fun, interesting, and safe event for the entire KDE community.
KDE’s 28th Anniversary Celebrations
By Aniqa Khokhar
On October 14, 2024, the KDE community marked its 28th anniversary, celebrating nearly three decades of dedication to free and open-source software. To celebrate this milestone, community members worldwide organized various events throughout October, reflecting the global reach and collaborative spirit of KDE.
Anniversary parties were held in various locations, including Kochi, Kozhikode, New Delhi, Berlin, Budapest, and Florida.
This goal focuses on improving the application development process. By making it easier for developers to create applications, KDE hopes to attract more contributors and deliver better software for both first-party and third-party applications. A notable task within this goal is enhancing the experience of building KDE apps with languages beyond C++, such as Rust or Python.
KDE has a diverse users base with unique input needs: artists using complex monitor and drawing tablet setups; gamers with controllers, fancy mice, and handhelds; users requiring accessibility features or using a language optimally types with complex input methods; students with laptops, 2-in-1s, and tablets — and more! While KDE has made significant progress in supporting these diverse sources of input over the years, there are still gaps to be addressed. This goal aims to close those gaps and deliver a truly seamless input experience for everyone.
Champions: Gernot Schiller, Jakob Petsovits and Joshua Goins
KDE’s growth depends on new contributors, but a lack of fresh involvement in key projects like Plasma, Kdenlive, Krita, GCompris, and others is a concern. This goal focuses on formalizing and enhancing recruitment processes, not just for individuals but also for institutions. Ensuring that bringing in new talent becomes a continuous and community-wide priority, vital for KDE’s long-term sustainability.
Champions: Aniqa Khokhar, Johnny Jazeix and Paul Brown
Opt Green — KDE Eco's New Sustainable Software Project
Opt Green: Sustainable Software For Sustainable Hardware
By design, Free Software guarantees transparency and user autonomy. This gives you, the user, control of your hardware by removing unnecessary vendor dependencies. With Free Software, you’re able to use your devices how you want, for as long as you want. There’s no bloatware and you can block unwanted data use and ads from driving up energy demands and slowing down your device—while shutting the door to uninvited snooping in your private life as well. With software made for your needs and not the vendors’, you can choose applications designed for the hardware you already own. Say goodbye to premature hardware obsolescence: lean, efficient Free Software runs on devices which are decades old!
Independent and sustainable Free Software is good for the users, and good for the environment.
The “Think Global, Act Local” campaign urged people to consider global health while taking action in their local communities. This new project urges people to do the same, but with computing. (Image from Karanjot Singh published under a CC-BY-4.0 license.)
Over the next two years, the “Opt Green” initiative will bring what KDE Eco has been doing for sustainable software directly to end users. A particular target group for the project is those whose consumer behavior is driven by principles related to the environment, and not just price or convenience: the “eco-consumers”.
Through online and offline campaigns as well as installation workshops, we will demonstrate the power of Free Software to drive down resource and energy consumption, and keep devices in use for the lifespan of the hardware, not the software.
Our motto: The most environmentally-friendly device is the one you already own.
The topic of software-driven sustainability is relevant for all Free Software applications and developers. We’d love to have you join us and become partners in combatting the issue of software-driven environmental harm. Check out the project’s Invent repository or the contact page to get involved today!
Software’s Environmental Harm
On 14 October 2025, the end of support for Windows 10 is estimated to make e-waste out of 240 million computers ineligible for the upgrade to Windows 11. Moreover, macOS support for Intel-based Apple computers—the last of which were sold in 2020—is predicted to end (at the earliest) one year later in 2026, rendering even more millions upon millions of functioning devices obsolete. When users have no control over the software they rely on, they are left at a security risk when software support ends… unless, of course, they purchase a new computer. By comparison, consider that only in 2022 did Linus Torvalds first suggest ending Linux kernel support for Intel 486 processors from 1989. That’s 33 years of support!
Vendors frequently require buying a new device to support software updates. All too often, this is driven by economic imperatives rather than technological requirements. Moreover, while new hardware has become more and more powerful, new software offering similar or identical functionality has frequently become less efficient and more energy-intensive, which has rendered older, less powerful devices useless.
Already in 2015 Achim Steiner, former Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), warned of the “tsunami of electronic waste rolling out over the world”.
In 2016, 44.7 million tonnes of e-waste were generated, estimated to be equivalent to 4500 Eiffel Towers. If you were to stack those Eiffel Towers on top of each other, the result would be 17 times higher than Mount Everest.
In 2022, the amount of e-waste reached 59.4 million tonnes, a 33% increase since 2016.
The flow of e-waste continues to rise today.
In 2016, 44.7 million metric tons of e-waste was generated. This is estimated to be equivalent to 4,500 Eiffel Towers, which, when stacked, is 17 times higher than Mount Everest. (Image from KDE published under a CC-BY-SA-4.0 license. Design by Anita Sengupta.)
Software is a frequently unacknowledged yet significant factor for sustainability. Software determines a hardware’s energy consumption and minimum system requirements. It determines how long a device can remain safely in use. With software running on everyday devices, from coffee machines to smartphones, from trains to drones, the role of software in keeping functioning hardware in use and out of the landfill grows more critical every day.
For consumers, the environmental harm may be out-of-sight and out-of-mind. Yet the environment is registering its effects, from the CO2 pumped into the atmosphere to the landfills that receive our discarded devices at their end of life, and the air, soil, and waters around them—not to mention the people and animals.
A young man is pictured burning electrical wires to recover copper at Agbogbloshie, Ghana, as another metal scrap worker arrives with more wires to be burned. A 2018 article in the “International Journal of Cancer” reports a correlation between proximity to e-waste burn sites and childhood lymphoma. (Image by Muntaka Chasant, published under a CC-BY-SA-4.0 license.)
It is particularly devastating when you consider the environmental and social harm caused by e-waste, especially when e-waste is generated earlier than necessary because of premature obsolescence. The production and transportation of a device accounts for 50–80+% of its carbon footprint over its lifecycle. A German Environment Report estimates you’d need to use a computer for over 30 years before efficiency gains in newly-produced devices justify their purchase.
Furthermore, the extraction of rare earth metals in production consumes copious amounts of energy and takes place under miserable social conditions, often in the Global South. For disposal, devices are typically returned to the Global South for end-of-life treatment, where they pollute the environment as toxic waste and cause enormous damage to workers’ health or even death.
Apple’s carbon footprint. From Apple (2019), “Environmental Responsibility Report: 2019 Progress Report, covering fiscal year 2018”. (Image from KDE published under a CC-BY-SA-4.0 license. Design by Anita Sengupta.)
Giving Consumers What They Want
Globally, interest in environmental harm and sustainable goods has been rising steadily from 2015 to 2021. In Europe, a 2020 Eurobarometer poll found that 50% of consumers indicate that two reasons they purchase new devices are performance issues and non-functioning software, and 8 in 10 consumers believe manufacturers should be required to make it easier to repair digital devices.
Free Software already gives consumers what they want, but most don’t know it yet. Transparency in code makes lightweight, highly performative software possible, even on much older devices, while user autonomy ensures the right to repair when applications stop functioning.
KDE’s popular multi-platform PDF reader and universal document viewer Okular was awarded the Blue Angel ecolabel in 2022. (Image from KDE published under a CC-BY-4.0 license.)
In fact, the Blue Angel criteria for desktop software are at the forefront in recognizing the critical role of transparency and user autonomy in sustainable software design. From 2021-2023, the KDE Eco project “Blauer Engel Für FOSS” (BE4FOSS) had the goal of collecting and spreading information about the Blue Angel ecolabel among developer communities. In 2022, KDE’s popular PDF and universal document reader Okular became the first ever Blue Angel eco-certified software! The BE4FOSS project culminated with the KDE Eco handbook “Applying The Blue Angel Criteria To Free Software”, which you can read here. KDE’s Sustainable Software goal has continued this work by developing emulation tools like KdeEcoTest and Selenium AT-SPI to measure software’s energy consumption in KDE’s KEcoLab.
Now we want to take what we have achieved and bring it directly to eco-consumers.
Through educational campaigns and workshops, the “Opt Green” project aims to combat e-waste by keeping hardware in use with Free Software. Although the problem of software-driven e-waste is relevant for an increasing number of digital devices, the focus will be on desktop PCs, laptops, and, when possible, smartphones and tablets. We are planning to set up info-stands at fair-trade, organic, and artisanal markets as well as sustainability festivals such as the Umweltfestival in Berlin. We will distribute leaflets to consumers, and demo vendor-abandoned devices which are not only usable, but also a joy to use thanks to the tireless work of inspiring Free Software communities. Installation workshops will give users the know-how to keep their devices in use for as long as they want.
Consumers don’t need a new computer to get secure, cutting-edge software; they just need the right software. Free Software already gives consumers what they want today, and we will be working hard to make sure they know that.
OptiImage Image Optimizer
By Carl Schwan
OptiImage.
First published in 2024, OptiImage is a useful image compressor that supports PNG, JPEG, WebP, and SVG file types. It doesn’t do the compression itself but uses various tools like oxipng behind the scenes.
It supports both lossless and lossy compression modes, with an option whether to keep or not metadata of images. It additionally has a safe mode, where a new image is created instead of overwriting the old one.
It uses the following tools:
oxipng for PNG images
jpegoptim for JPEG images
scour for SVG images
cwebp for WebP images
Hash-o-Matic
By Carl Schwan
Hash-o-Matic is a tool to compare and generate checksums for your files to verify their authenticity. It also verifies files via their use PGP signatures.
Verifying that a file you downloaded or received is actually the one you were expecting is often overlooked or too time-consuming to do. At the same time, it has become very easy to get your hands on a file that has been tampered with, due to the mass increase of malicious web pages and other actors.
This new release of Hash-o-Matic provides updated translations and some small visual changes. In the background, the application was ported to the new QML type registration, we now support building Hash-o-Matic on Haiku and require a released version of KDE Frameworks instead of a pre-released version.
This tool aims to solve that. Hash-o-matic comes with a simple and clean UI, allowing anyone, from any age and experience group, to generate, compare and verify MD5, SHA-256 and SHA-1 hashes.
Hash-o-Matic also supports verifying files with the help of PGP signatures.
Mentorship Programs
Google Summer of Code
By Benson Muite and Johnny Jazeix
2024 was a successful year for KDE’s Google Summer of Code (GSoC) projects. GSoC is a program in which contributors new to Free and Open Source software spend between 175 and 350 hours across 10 to 22 weeks working on an Open Source project. In 2024, the projects and contributors were:
The main aim of ShellWen Chen’s project was to update Apache Mina SSHD from 0.14.0 to 2.12.1. The older version has a few listed vulnerabilities. The newer library required additional code to enable it to work on older Android phones, up to Android API 21.
João Gouveia created the Mankala engine, a library to enable the easy creation of Mancala games. The engine contains implementations for two Mancala games, Bohnenspiel and Oware. Both games contain computerized opponents, João also started on a QtQuick graphical user interface. The games are functional, and additional investigation is ongoing to improve the effectiveness of the computerized opponents.
Subtitling support has been improved for Kdenlive. Chengkun Chen added support for using the Advanced SubStation (ASS) file format and for converting SubRip files to ASS files. To support this format, Chengkun Chen also made improvements to the subtitle editor. The work has been merged into the main repository. Documentation has been written, and will hopefully be merged soon.
Ken Lo worked on implementing Pixel Perfect lines in Krita. As explained by Ricky Han, such algorithms remove corner pixels from L Shaped blocks and ensure the thinnest possible line is 1 pixel wide. Implementing such algorithms well be of use not only in Krita, but also in rendering web graphics where users’ screen resolutions can vary significantly. The algorithm was implemented to work in close to real time while lines are drawn, rather than as a post processing step. Ken Lo’s work has been merged into Krita.
Israel Galadima worked on improving Python support in LabPlot. Shiboken was used for this and it is now possible to call some of the LabPlot functions from Python and integrate these into other applications.
Kuntal Bar added 3D graphing capabilities to LabPlot. This was done using QtGraphs. The work has yet to be merged, but many nice examples of 3D plots for bar charts, scatter and surface plots exist.
Pratham Gandhi worked on improving support for JavaScript-based forms in Okular. Around 25 requests have been merged to improve various features, some in the backend and some directly visible, such as fixing the size of the radio buttons or check boxes, or the one pictured below to improve the handling of floating numbers in different locales.
Snaps are self contained Linux application packaging formats. Soumyadeep Ghosh worked on improving the tooling necessary to make KDE applications easily available in the Snap Store. In addition, Soumyadeep improved the packaging of a number of KDE Snap packages, and packaged MarkNote. Finally, Soumyadeep created the Snap KCM, a graphical user interface to manage permissions that Snaps have when running.
Season of KDE
By Johnny Jazeix and Joseph P. De Veaugh-Geiss
Another year, another successful Season Of KDE for 12 contributors!
Translation Projects
KDE counts on a very active translation community and translates software into over 50 different languages. In SoK 2024, we had 2 projects that focused on translating multiple apps into Hindi. Asish Kumar and Akash Kumar joined the KDE Hindi community to translate multiple apps into Hindi. They both worked together on translating Merkuro, then Akash focused on Tellico while Asish worked on KDE Connect and Cantor.
Kdenlive brings you all you need to edit and put together your own movies. We had 2 projects for KDE’s full-featured video editor:
Ajay Chauhan implemented multi-format rendering for Kdenlive by adding a filter to adjust the aspect ratio of video clips in the main track, allowing users to select the desired aspect ratio during export, and integrating it into the final rendering profile. Ajay also added code to apply filters to clips, calculate crop parameters, handle video cropping to the desired ratio, and implement the GUI component ComboBox that selects the aspect ratio and ensures that the selected ratio is passed to the RenderRequest object. Additionally, various issues were fixed during development, such as temporary file handling issues, preventing crashes, and refactoring code.
aisuneko icecat created a prototype keyframe curve editor GUI for Kdenlive. Based on recent progress in introducing advanced keyframe types and capabilities into the editor, the widget allows the user to intuitively view and control the current animation curve of keyframable effect parameters. As of now, the widget supports basic interactions such as dragging and double clicking, and integrates well with other existing Kdenlive components.
There were 5 new projects that made measuring the energy consumption of software easier and more integrated into the development pipeline. This helps make KDE software more efficient and environmentally friendly, as well as more accessible at the same time:
Sarthak Negi focused on testing, bug-fixing and integrating measurement workflows on KEcoLab. After setting up the testing environments, Sarthak worked on creating a CI test and refactoring code for efficiency and the code has been merged into the main repository.
Pradyot Ranjan worked on improving and updating the setup guide for selenium, a tool to automate GUI testing. The result can be found on this wiki page.
Amartya Chakraborty added support for KdeEcoTest on the Windows platforms. To do this, Amartya replicated test scripts for the Okular test using KdeEcoTest which previously used xdotool. The test script can now be executed on any platform, and the conditional installation of packages based on the platform using pipenv has been implemented.
Athul Raj Kollareth worked on bringing support for KdeEcoTest on Wayland systems. The initial work consisted of adding an abstraction layer so that KdeEcoTest could be run on different platforms including Windows. To build support for Wayland, we had to first restrict our scope and finally decided to move with only supporting the KWin compositor as it had built-in functionalities for automating window related manipulations on the GUI. To automate input devices, the Linux kernel’s evdev module was used which allowed us to monitor input devices and also emulate them using uinput. With these changes integrated into KdeEcoTest, we were able to run tests on Wayland, X11 and Windows thanks to Amartya’s implementation.
Aakarsh MJ worked on integrating KEcolab into Okular’s pipeline. This will allow the Okular team to measure energy consumption for each release. This paves the way for the creation of a template which will be further helpful for other projects as well.
Cantor is an application that lets you use your favorite mathematical programming language from within a friendly worksheet interface, while Labplot is KDE’s user-friendly data visualization and analysis software. Both applications are closely intertwined, and have had three projects completed during SOK:
Dhairya Majmudar worked on extending the embedded documentation for the supported Computer Algebra Systems Project. Dhairya created the common styles for several mathematical system documents, enhancing the users’ experience and allowing them to use them simultaneously; and Python scripts were written to link the stylesheets to the HTML files. These Python scripts are further extended to convert HTML files into Qt Help files that can be uploaded to the KDE Store.
Israel Galadima contributed to the "LabPlot: Download/Import of datasets from kaggle.com" project. Since Kaggle seems to be the central place nowadays for finding datasets in the data science community, we wanted LabPlot’s users to be able to access the datasets on kaggle.com directly from within LabPlot. Thus, Israel worked on a new dialog in LabPlot that allows users to search for and import datasets directly into LabPlot spreadsheets, using the official kaggle cli tool to facilitate the communication between LabPlot and Kaggle.
Raphael Wirth introduced the support for data stored in the MCAP format to LabPlot. Throughout the project, Raphael extended the backend of LabPlot to allow the loading of JSON-encoded MCAP files into its internal data structure as well as the export back to the MCAP file format. Additionally, the user interface was adapted to accommodate these advancements. This required the extension of the existing import dialog and the introduction of a new export dialog tailored specifically for saving MCAP files.
OSPP is largely organized by The Institute of Software at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Its goal is to encourage college students to engage in developing and maintaining open-source software.
2024 marked KDE Community’s first year of participation in OSPP mentoring one of the projects.
Porting KDE Games to the Android Platform
KDE Games and educational games are integral parts of the KDE Gear suite. Under the guidance of Benson Muite, Hanyang Zhang undertook work in this area. Hanyang Zhang was responsible for porting some KDE Games to the Android platform.
Slimbook’s sleek new laptop was revealed during Akademy 2024, KDE’s annual community event. The KDE Slimbook VI is the sixth iteration of the KDE Slimbook product, produced in partnership with KDE. The VI refreshes the product both inside and out, with an AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS CPU and up to 96GB of RAM (replacing the 64GB cap on the previous version), a heftier 83 watt-hour battery, a better quad-speaker sound system, a more robust chassis with a firmer keyboard, and a “space blue” aluminium case.
This laptop came pre-installed with KDE Plasma 6.1, and has received regular updates since then.
Specifications
AMD 8845HS CPU, with 8 cores 16 threads, up to 5.1GHz and 24MB cache
AMD 780M integrated GPU, with 12 cores and RDNA 3
Up to 96Gb of RAM, 5600 MHz DDR5
16-inch 16:10 display, with 2560x1600 resolution and 120 Hz refresh rate
83 Wh battery
4 speakers (2 tweeters, 2 woofers)
Full aluminium chassis, new “Space Blue” color.
NPU, ready for local AI
Software:
KDE Plasma desktop environment
LibreOffice office suite
Massive catalog of free software installable via the built-in Discover app store
Trade Shows and Community Events
FOSDEM
By Aniqa Khokhar
KDE’s booth at FOSDEM 2024.
After a successful return to in-person events last year, the Free and Open Source Developers European Meeting (FOSDEM) once again brought together thousands of open-source enthusiasts in Brussels on the 3rd and 4th of February. KDE had a strong presence at FOSDEM 2024, with an engaged team, exciting demonstrations, and a booth that remained bustling throughout the event.
The KDE team interacted with attendees, providing insights into the latest projects and innovations. Demos of Plasma 6, the Steam Deck, and RISC-V technology drew significant interest, while attendees also had the chance to explore KDE software on a Raspberry Pi with an OLED touchscreen running the latest Yocto master build.
KDE merchandise was in high demand, with T-shirts and amigurumi Konqi figures running out on the first morning. The success of the booth helped raise funds to support ongoing KDE development. Additionally, the event served as a great opportunity to encourage attendees to contribute to KDE, whether by testing Plasma 6 Beta, joining as supporting members, or simply using KDE software in their daily lives.
Plasma 6 and App Demos
One of the main attractions at the KDE stand was the highly anticipated Plasma 6 demo. Attendees got a firsthand look at the latest advancements, and many were encouraged to install the Plasma 6 Beta 2 version on their own devices. For those interested in KDE applications, Plasma 5.27 was used to showcase app demos, allowing visitors to explore tools like Krita and other KDE software in action.
Steam Deck and RISC-V
The Steam Deck, a consumer device preloaded with KDE software, continued to draw attention at FOSDEM 2024. Attendees were excited to see KDE’s growing presence in the gaming world and beyond traditional computing platforms.
Meanwhile, the KDE team also demonstrated a VisionFive-2 RISC-V board running a Yocto-based system with Plasma Bigscreen. This display highlighted the progress KDE has made in supporting emerging hardware platforms, reinforcing its commitment to innovation in open-source computing.
Linux App Summit
By Aniqa Khokhar
The Linux App Summit (LAS) 2024 took place from October 4th to 5th in Monterrey, Mexico, at the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM). Co-hosted by KDE and GNOME, the conference united the global Linux community to learn, collaborate, and advance the Linux application ecosystem.
This year’s event featured a diverse range of talks, panels, and Q&A sessions. Notable presentations included discussions on the latest developments in Linux applications, strategies for enhancing user experiences, and insights into the future of open-source software. The conference provided a platform for advocates of open-source technology to engage in dynamic sessions filled with creativity, collaboration, and enjoyment.
The choice of Monterrey as the venue marked the first time LAS was held outside of Europe, offering attendees the opportunity to connect with the vibrant Linux community in Mexico.
For those who couldn’t attend in person, the event was also accessible online, ensuring broader reach and inclusivity.
This year, KDE was represented at numerous events worldwide, engaging with the community, showcasing the latest developments, and advocating for free and open-source software (FOSS). KDE representatives participated in a variety of FOSS and non-FOSS events, setting up stalls, hosting booths, delivering talks, and networking throughout the year
2024 marked a year of planning for the sysadmin team, although still populated with many achievements.
Big achievements among this included the retirement of the Binary Factory, marking the completion of our migration to Gitlab CI. This was a significant piece of work which also included a new notary service that allows privileged actions to be undertaken from Gitlab CI jobs securely. We also completed the retirement of Drupal, continuing the trend of migrating to Hugo for KDE websites. In addition to this we provided infrastructure for the deployment of Sentry, which collects crash reports for KDE software and deployed an instance of Listmonk that allows for newsletter mailing lists to be more easily maintained.
Planning for the future state of KDE.org infrastructure occupied a significant amount of time in 2024. Over the past few years our current approach of hosting services has started to reach the end of its useful life, which has required a new approach to be adopted. This new infrastructure will be based on a smaller number of more powerful servers that will utilise the Proxmox virtualisation platform. This new infrastructure will enable us to support the community in a more sustainable way, generating less toil and opening the door to further automation, and is expected to begin rolling out in the next few months.
Looking ahead, the rollout of this will enable a reduction in infrastructural complexity as well as technical debt, with ARM builders also likely to join our CI system.
Financial Working Group
By Eike Hein
We are happy to report that KDE e.V. closed its 2024 financial year with an exceptionally strong performance.
In the early 2020s, the organization had set itself the financial goal to reduce its relatively high reserve, which had recently been boosted by unusually large one-time donations. It was initially unable to immediately achieve this due to the Covid-19 pandemic (which e.g. resulted in a downturn rather than an uptick of traditional funding activities, for example, travel assistance and event organization), but in both 2022 and 2023 we did manage to significantly increase the scope of our activities and spending: Travel activities by the community resumed, and KDE e.V. is also increasingly contracting development work on KDE software. As a result, we managed to significantly outspend our income in both years and reduce our reserve as planned, and as we are obligated to under non-profit law.
In late 2023 we started to take aim at the next phase in our financial roadmap, and took steps to streamline our expenses to make sure we retain the flexibility to scale our activities when needed, but most importantly by asking the community and our working groups to turn their attention to new fundraising activity. The new goal is to make sure we can sustain the increased size and scope of the organization long-term, and eventually achieve a balanced budget again, with the potential aim of further growth.
Based on conservative projections of our burn rate and fundraising opportunities vis-a-vis our reserve, we set and announced a goal to return to a balanced budget by 2026 or latest 2027, without rolling back any of the improvements and initiatives we began during the intentional "spending years".
As many have experienced, asking the KDE community to take on a job and get it done tends to outperform expectations, and this is certainly what happened to our fundraising activity in 2024. With several creative new campaigns and instruments - a very well-received End of the Year fundraiser, and the new timed Donation popup integrated into our flagship product Plasma - we were able to greatly increase our income from individual donors, from approx. €192,000 in 2023 (already boosted by an end-of-year campaign leading into the Q1/24 Plasma 6 release) to approximately €468,000 in 2024.
The biggest thank you, of course, we owe to those donors. Your generous response to these campaigns has resulted in the highest-ever donation income in any year of the organization. It is no exaggeration to say - we have it in numbers - that you are the biggest factor in making KDE e.V. possible. Thank you very much!
With everything said and done, this fantastic response by our donors has put our financial reserve back to where it was at the end of 2022, though still below its peak at the end of 2021. This gives us a lot more breathing room on our journey to ensure we achieve a long-term sustainable, balanced budget, and perhaps to try out a few new activities and ideas along the way. We will hope for, but not plan with, similar fundraising performance in future years.
The rest of our 2024 financials are relatively uneventful, and closely match the budget plan we had set forward at the beginning of the year, giving us a lot of confidence in our ability to forecast. Our annual flagship conference event Akademy saw a modest reduction in sponsorship income compared to the previous year. It still broke even, which is our financial goal for the event. A similarly modest increase is visible in our personnel expenses, which, as previously outlined, we were aiming to neither significantly reduce, nor increase in 2024 to stay on top of our burn rate. Other numbers are broadly very similar to the preceding financial year as well, with a slow but steady increase in our year-over-year infrastructure costs (servers, domain registrations and similar) being the most noteworthy change; an area we see some potential to cost-optimize in the coming years.
Income (€):
Patrons/Corporates:
67,377.93
Supp. members & donations:
467,889.26
Akademy:
47,958.90
Other events:
938.01
Other
57,360.90
Total Income:
641,525.00
Expenses (€):
Personnel:
-331,518.61
Akademy:
-45,320.51
Sprints
-7,429.49
Other events:
-8,094.75
Infrastructure:
-21,787.99
Office:
-7,294.11
Taxes and Insurance:
-25,938.97
Other:
-23,148.25
Total:
-470,532.68
Fundraising
By Aniqa Khokhar
KDE’s work is made possible thanks to the contributions from KDE Community members, donors, and companies that support us. In 2024, we launched a major fundraising campaign that turned out to be a resounding success.
Support Good People
Support Good People Fundraiser was initiated to Support the Good People of Tech and KDE!
People could support us by…
…making a one-time donation using the donation box on this page
…setting up regular periodic donations (also possible via the donation box) or even becoming a Supporting Member
…adopting an App
The campaign’s original goal was to raise €30,000, but raised over over €200,000; €54,115 directly from the campaign, and even more from the end-of-year donation notification in Plasma. This is impressive support by the community and users!
Community News
Highlights
By Paul Brown
The MegaRelease
The most obvious highlight of the year was the release of Plasma 6, in which KDE’s desktop technology stack underwent two significant upgrades: a transition to the latest version of Qt, and a migration to the modern Linux graphics platform, Wayland.
But that was not the only thing that was released on the 28th of February. KDE Gear 24.02, containing dozens of new versions of KDE apps was also published, as well as a new version of Plasma Mobile, KDE’s open platform for mobile devices; and a new version of KDE Frameworks, the massive collection of libraries and tools developers use to make creating KDE’s software a bit easier.
All this was successfully pulled off by a crowd of unpaid volunteers who altruistically poured their time, hard work, and knowledge into KDE.
The Goals
KDE’s goals for the following two years confirmed the KDE’s group maturity. The chosen projects will benefit KDE as a whole, rather than exclusively benefiting specific projects.
This has been a consistent trend in the goals chosen by the community over the years. The norm is goals that intend to make KDE’s technologies more useful to society by improving accessibility and controlling environmental impact, as well as safeguarding the survival of the whole community by improving its sustainability.
The Fundraising
The end of year fundraiser was a surprise. Although we worked hard on creating a series of themes to keep interest high, we still did not expect to surpass our initial goals so quickly.
With an initial target of €30,000 by the end of January, we had already reached this figure by the end of the year. By that time, the new Plasma pop-up requesting donations had started showing up on users’ desktops and was a huge success: in just a month, it raised another €150,000+, giving us the monetary resources we needed to confidently look forward to a 2025 full of projects and activities.
We cannot thank our generous users enough for this support, undoubtedly the biggest highlight of them all.
New Members
KDE e.V. welcomed the following new members in 2024:
Bart Ribbers
Emir Sarı
Jack Thomas Hill
James Graham
Julius Enriquez
Julius Künzel
Kieryn Darkwater
Kisaragi Hiu
Oliver Beard
林博仁(Buo-ren, Lin)
Partners and Sponsors
MBition Becomes a KDE Patron
MBition supports the work of the KDE community with its generous sponsorship.
MBition designs and implements the infotainment system for future generations of Mercedes-Benz cars and utilizes KDE’s technology and know-how for its products.
“After multiple years of collaboration across domains, we feel that becoming a patron of KDE e.V is the next step in deepening our partnership and furthering our open-source strategy” says Marcus Mennemeier, Chief of Technology at MBition.
“We are delighted to welcome MBition as a Patron,” says Lydia Pintscher, Vice President of KDE e.V. “MBition has been contributing to KDE software and the stack we build on it for some time now. This is a great step to bring us even closer together and support the KDE community, and further demonstrates the robustness and hardware readiness of KDE’s software products.”
MBition joins KDE e.V.’s other patrons: Blue Systems, Canonical, g10 Code, Google, Kubuntu Focus, Slimbook, SUSE, The Qt Company and TUXEDO Computers, who support free open source software and KDE development through KDE e.V.
Thoughts from Partners
The relationship between Qt Group and KDE is a unique and long-standing
partnership in the open source ecosystem. For almost three decades, KDE
has been one of the most active and passionate communities building on
top of Qt technology, helping shape the evolution of Qt through
contributions and real-world use cases.
This collaboration has not only resulted in exceptional end-user
experiences, but it has also set a benchmark for how commercial and
community-driven projects can work together successfully. By sharing
expertise, driving innovation, and fostering open standards, Qt Group
and KDE have played a significant role in advancing open source
technologies and inspiring the broader software industry to embrace
openness and collaboration.
Our partnership with KDE reflects our shared commitment to open
collaboration and community-driven innovation, and we’re excited to
continue this journey together.
Volker Hilsheimer, Director, R&D, Chief Maintainer of the
Qt Project
Since our very beginnings, Slimbook has proudly supported and
contributed to KDE, sharing the same vision of creating high-quality,
user-friendly, and privacy-respecting technology. Over the years, our
joint efforts — from developing the KDE Slimbook edition laptops to
collaborating on events and community projects — have shown that when
hardware makers and open-source innovators work together, we can achieve
more.
United, we help strengthen the Linux ecosystem, inspire innovation, and
make the experience better for everyone
Since 2008, FOSS Nigeria has been deeply engaged in open source
advocacy, training, and conferences, and KDE has been a steady and
invaluable partner throughout this journey. Their support has helped us
build stronger communities and open more doors for developers and users
across Nigeria.
We are especially grateful for KDE’s recognition of FOSS Nigeria as part
of its Advisory Board, which reflects the trust and spirit of
collaboration we share. Together, we remain committed to advancing open
source as a driver of innovation, inclusion, and sustainable growth.
Mustapha Abubakar, President of FOSS Nigeria
2024 was a banner year, and KDE is in amazing shape for the future.
Across macro topics like competitiveness with proprietary offerings and
adoption in institutions, through micro topics like Wayland adoption and
better input device support, KDE made significant strides throughout the
year.
I’m particularly pleased to see how KDE has taken the initiative to
begin construction on major projects like the KDE Linux operating
system, Union theming engine, and Ocean design system.
These initiatives that began in 2024 promise to propel KDE into the
coming decade with modernized distribution channels and styling, and
signify the community’s maturity and capacity to coordinate large
cross-team projects. With these initiatives added to the success of
KDE’s software as adopted by hardware partners and large institutions,
clearly KDE has grown up and now the sky’s the limit!
KDE e.V. is a
registered non-profit organization that represents the KDE Community in legal and
financial matters. The KDE e.V.’s purpose is the promotion and distribution of
free desktop software in terms of free software, and the program package
“Plasma Desktop Environment” in particular, to promote the free exchange of
knowledge and equality of opportunity in accessing software as well as
education, science and research.
Report prepared by Aniqa Khokhar and Paul Brown, with help and
sections written by Aleix Pol, Joseph P. De Veaugh-Geiss, Nate Graham,
Volker Krause, Kevin Ottens, Ben Cooksley, Johnny Jazeix, Carl Schwan,
the KDE Eco Team, the GSOC Contributors, the Plasma Team, and the Promo
Team at large.
This report is published by KDE e.V., copyright 2025, and licensed
under Creative
Commons-BY-3.0.
Welcome to KDE’s Annual Report 2024
conf.kde.in
Megarelease Parties
Goals Sprint
Akademy-es
PIM Sprint
Opt Green — KDE Eco's New Sustainable Software Project
OptiImage Image Optimizer
Hash-o-Matic
Google Summer of Code
Season of KDE
KDE participates in OSPP 2024
KDE Slimbook VI
FOSDEM
Linux App Summit
MBition Becomes a KDE Patron
