What is &tde;? &tde; is the Trinity Desktop Environment. The project was initiated by Matthias Ettrich in 1996 and originally called the K Desktop Environment. The aim of the &tde; project is to connect the power of the &UNIX; operating systems with the comfort of a modern user interface. In short, &tde; will bring &UNIX; to the desktop! If you want further information about &tde;, have a look at About Trinity On which platforms can I expect &tde; to work? &tde; is a Desktop Environment for all flavors of &UNIX;. While it is true that most &tde; developers use &Linux;, &tde; runs smoothly on a wide range of systems. You may, however, need to tweak the source code a bit to get &tde; 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. Is &tde; a window manager? No, &tde; is not a window manager. While &tde; includes a very sophisticated window manager (&twin;), &tde; is much more than that. It is a full-blown Integrated Desktop Environment. &tde; 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. Is &tde; a CDE, &Windows; or &Mac; OS clone? No, &tde; is not a clone. Specifically &tde; is not a CDE or &Windows; clone. While the &tde; developers have and will continue to glean the best features from all existing desktop environments, &tde; is a truly unique environment that has and will continue to go its own way. Is &tde; free software? Yes, &tde; is free software according to the &GNU; General Public License. All &tde; libraries are available under the LGPL making commercial software development for the &tde; desktop possible, but all &tde; applications are licensed under the GPL. &tde; uses the &Qt; C++ crossplatform toolkit, which is also released (since version 2.2) under the GPL. It is absolutely legal to make &tde; and &Qt; available on &CD-ROM; free of charge. No runtime fees of any kind are incurred.