Going to Akademy has certainly turn my head to the KDE Project, and this documentary is sort of a continuation on how to analyze the project through it's 30 year history. The trailer is out and my reaction is sort of a sweet sour taste as the project seem that it tried to do something different and somewhat got burned for it. And now is struggling to find it's own footing.
From the beginning of the KDE history, is somewhat the beginning of Linux history. When the Linux kernel was launched with the GNU Operating System, the Xorg project that put the GUI on the operating system through the 90s. I have written articles on the chronology of the Linux kernel and the evolution of distributions. For people that don't know what a distribution means, is a company or organization that put together the software to make the operating system run with a certain environments and apps that they think people will need.
The first quasi distribution was called Softlanding Linux System (SLS) in March 1992. Later a true and complete distribution was launched under the Slackware brand, which was the first GNU/Linux distribution on July 1993. Slackware 1.00 came with OLVWM (Open look virtual window manager), the view was rough and primitive, and this is where KDE came through. They were focused on not settling with Windows Managers and create a whole Desktop Environment. The difference? A Window Manager just allow you to move applications across the screen, while a desktop environment involves applications, like most graphical operating systems like Windows or OSX with a control panel, a user management, and utilities like resource viewers, text editors, calculators, clocks, and even games. This is what KDE became, the Kool Desktop Environment.
Fast forward to 2026 and we have seen KDE been rebranded to Plasma to separate the desktop from the individual apps. KDE kept the name as the name of the organization as KDE E.V. registered in Germany. The story of KDE is a bit rocky as there are many wins, but also a lot of drawbacks. From the whole Open source growth pains, to Linux growth pains, to competitions like GNOME and holy wars that took place. RMS rejected KDE at the beginning as their technology was built on top of Qt which was a toolkit that was not open source. GNOME people saw that and built GTK, a fully 'free' toolkit without that dark spot on their resume. And finally internal issues in the KDE community that lost people as the technology changed and evolved and all the protocols were moved to new versions of Qt. This lost a lot of projects, others just grew unmaintained and incompatible as KDE3, and later on KDE4 came through.
But KDE always wanted to innovate and innovation sometimes can take you places that not everyone wants to go. By 2008 web2 was starting and having a modern desktop mean having a webservice powered desktop. New projects from KDE people were also starting to write for the web like NextCloud from the same developer that had OpenDesktop and KDE Marketplace. So the vision was to make it behave less than a desktop and more like an environment. Even the term desktop was somewhat repurpose as Activities, and view devices as multipurpose as Smart TVs, Netbooks and of course Mobiles were coming in. So Desktop might become outdated looking forward and activities were more of an inspiration of how to manage your information.
This also pushed other projects like Plasma Mobile and pushing Plasma desktop to a Plasma activity environment that can be worked through a touchscreen. This was the late 2010s and 2020s. Akademy in 2023. Plasma Mobile was launched in 2015 and has been worked, however, the Akademy people of 2026 remembers little of the Plasma mobile which was a big shock to me, as I couldn't find much about it, 3 years later. Ironically now that I have seen more and more people trying Linux on their phones with GrapheneOS and Sailfish.
What I did found on 2026, is a project that has been trying to get itself back to a more efficient, more conservative and more manageable ecosystem. Still not sure if its the right way to go, as it seems that creativity should always be the main point of open source, and the minute you try to be less bleeding edge, you also loose most of the enthusiast. Maybe is a sign of the age of the project and their devs?
Most of the KDE community are very anti-AI, and many of the project are a bit on their soapbox to separate the forest from the tree. So hope that KDE can find it's footing or maybe is just me drawing an erroneous conclusion that might not reflect the true feelings of the community.
