Could it be that KDE intentions were described here almost a year ago http://ev.kde.org/announcements/2010-07-16-akademy2010-concludes.php, which includes this quote:

Using KDE software on mobile devices was another big subject of discussion and coding. The KDE community is very interested in providing their software for mobile platforms such as MeeGo.

Many linux desktop users have been reporting serious difficulty with KDE4 over 3.x. But not only with the desktop but with apps as well.


Mobile devices are the hot new thing, so is KDE leaving the desktop behind?

Short answer: No.

Slightly longer answer: No - KDE is exploring new possibilities. The cross-platform nature of Qt (which KDE Software is built on) makes it possible to run KDE Workspaces and Applications on other platforms that includes mobile platforms, Windows and Mac OS X. Thanks to the flexibility of Plasma we can have very different workspaces for different devices. Right now there is Plasma Desktop, Plasma Netbook and Plasma Mobile in development.

KDE is expanding its horizon.

An honorable pursuit however. It seem that the focus has been put on mobile devices at the expense of the desktop.

Dolphin is very smartphone-esque and being pushed to the fore.


Koffice Which I personally like, is in the dust.
Kooka lost ground to xsane
Konqueror in limbo
Digikam, Kontact and Kmail have problems

These are all desktop-centric applications that are where?, while plasma meego and other stuff is full steam ahead. This leads me to believe that KDE may not have the number of developers necessary to continue on a parallell development track.

Is this true?

LXDE and Xfce just don't have the look or feature set.
GNOME is visually unappealing and hides too much.

Adventure is fun and great . . but not on my production machines. Distros have decided to drop KDE3.x and go with KDE4 which HAS not produced results. If it ain't broke don't fix it and KDE3.x was not broke. It just didn't use QT4 and I beleive that is what developers are chasing.

Maybe not intentionally, but they have caused serious problems on production linux desktops.

Hope it gets sorted out soon.

Only a handful of developers are actively working anything other than desktop interfaces. There are a few working on plasma-mid, but most plasma developers are working either on the desktop and netbook interfaces or more general components that apply to all interfaces. Nokia hired a few developers to work on a tablet/smartphone interface for koffice (now calligra), but that is once again a small fraction of all calligra developers (and I suppose their future is uncertain now). Then I think there is maybe one kde-games developer who is working some (but not exclusively) on getting KDE games compatible with touch interfaces.

I may be missing a few people, but the truth is that most projects don't have anyone working on touch interfaces, and those that do only a very small fraction are working on them. The overwhelming majority of effort in KDE is going into desktop interfaces. However, the desktop interfaces and applications have been around a while now and are relatively mature. It is harder to find new and exciting things to talk about when you are dealing with incremental improvements, bug fixes, and polishing.

The touch interfaces, on the other hand, were only started a very short while ago. This means the changes are much more visible. You are going from something that doesn't exist to something that does, so the improvements there are going to be much more radical. It is also a big departure from what KDE has been doing for its entire history up to this point. Touch interfaces are also in the news a lot in general. These three factors work together to give touch interfaces very high visibility relative to the amount of man-power actually allocated to them.