Supporting KDE

KDE is a very large project and depends on people volunteering time, code, money, and energy to keep it going. If you are interested in supporting KDE in any way, this page will help to direct you to the right place.

The page is split up into sections depending on what you are willing to do and how much you are involved with KDE already. Read the introduction to each section and pick what suits you the best:

Donating: [ Linking | Money | Material | Sponsoring ]

Contributing: [ Artwork & Icons | Enterprise Reports | Usability Studies ]

Participating: [ KDE News | KDE Traffic | Promotion | Bug Hunting / Suggestions | Documentation | Translation ]

Coding: [ Patches | Code | Maintenance ]

Joining the Team of Volunteers

Other

Donating

Donating is the easiest and fastest way to efficiently support KDE and its developers, and everyone regardless of any degree of involvement can do so. There are different ways and forms for donations:

[ Linking | Money | Material | Sponsoring ]

Linking

The KDE project, just like any other project, lives mostly through attention of many active and passive fans. You can help increasing the attention of our audience by linking to KDE and its subprojects.

[ KDE Logos, Buttons and Banners | KDE Screenshots | More information on KDE ]

Money

KDE itself may be totally free, but there are some things that it needs that require money, like hardware upgrades to servers as well as financing regular developer meetings. One can donate money to KDE e.V. using PayPal? , personal check or money transfer.

[ More information on donating money | Past monetary donations ]

Material

KDE would not exist without the help of many developers who work on it in their spare time. In many cases these developers work on underpowered computing setups. Compiling programs often takes quite some time for them, time which could be used for improving KDE instead. Support KDE by donating old or new hardware to a KDE developer near you, in the "adopt a geek" scheme.

[ More information on Adopt-a-Geek ]

Sponsoring

The KDE project could not work as well as it does today without the large network infrastructure of servers and regular support for KDE booths at exhibitions sponsored by many companies and individuals. You can therefore sponsor KDE at one of the upcoming events.

[ Upcoming KDE events | Past and present sponsors ]

Contributing

Everyone can contribute to KDE, even if you know little about it. In fact, some tasks may be better accomplished by those who know little about it:

[ Artwork & Icons | Enterprise Reports | Usability Studies ]

Artwork & Icons

The KDE project is very enthusiastic about new artwork and icons. After setting up an account at KDE-Look you are free to upload and present your works to the public. If your artwork is popular or an addition to a formerly incomplete icon set you can also suggest your artwork for inclusion in official KDE packages at the KDE-Artists mailing list.

[ Visit KDE-Look.org | More information on the KDE-Artists mailing list ]

Enterprise Reports

As of late more and more companies are considering or switching to FOSS (Free/Open Source Software) like KDE. If you are working at or living near an enterprise which makes use of KDE on their computers you can write a report about it including usage statistics and interviews. Contact the KDE-Promo mailing list for more information about enterprise adaptations and KDE promotion. The resulting articles will be published on KDE-Enterprise.

[ Visit KDE-Enterprise | More information on the KDE-Promo mailing list ]

Usability Studies

KDE is a graphical desktop environment used by many different individuals. The KDE project strives to be usable for as many people as possible. For this purpose we need usability studies about how KDE is usually used by non-expert people and which areas of KDE are unintuitive. So if you are interested in usability or even studying HCI (Human Computer Interaction) then please consider joining the KDE-Usability mailing list and researching your relatives', friends' and strangers' reaction about KDE. The resulting studies will be published on KDE-Usability.

[ Visit KDE-Usability | More information on the KDE-Usability mailing list ]

Participating

Participating is the right thing to do for everyone who considers to get seriously involved with the KDE project. There are many places where to start:

[ KDE News | KDE Traffic | Promotion | Bug Hunting / Suggestions | Documentation | Translation ]

KDE News

KDE News is a much frequented place for KDE users and developers, which provides insightful articles that promote the features and broaden the audience of KDE. There is information about new or updated applications, or find information about developers such as interviews.

[ Visit KDE News | Contribute an article ]

KDE Traffic

KDE Traffic is a regularly published summary of discussions and decisions about latest KDE developments. There are many mailing lists and message boards, KDE Traffic brings the news that matters together in small articles. If you are subscribed to a mailing list or following a discussion on a message board and there's some news KDE Traffic should report about don't hesitate to contribute it to the KDE Traffic mailing list so others get to know the news as well.

[ Visit KDE Traffic | More information on the KDE Traffic mailing list ]

Promotion

Promote KDE in your local area. You could create a live CD running KDE and showcase it to your relatives, friends, journalists, politicians, and LUGs (Linux User Groups). You can talk about KDE at conferences, or other events. The KDE-Promo mailing list can be used to share information on how to promote KDE to different audiences, and how to create professional KDE promotional materials. Other possible tasks include:

• reporting any KDE-related stories to the local media
• researching email addresses of local technology journalists
• reporting local businesses and other organizations in your local area that are using KDE to the local media and the KDE news web site (dot.kde.org)
• creating promotional materials

[ More information on the KDE-Promo mailing list | Visit KDE-Events ]

Bug Hunting / Suggestions

KDE's Bug Tracking System is more and more becoming the project's central place for both users and developers organizing and promoting their feature requests ("wishes", or "suggestions") and bugs. After setting up an own account every user can vote for his/her favorite feature requests and bugs, confirm others' reports, post testcases and patches, discuss possible solutions to every report and follow the development. Everyone can make this system even more efficient by:

• voting for reports which need a higher attention
• confirming reports which are reproducible
• ensuring that every report contains reproducible testcases by asking for additional information
• referring to duplicated reports which can be closed
• suggesting solutions or attaching own patches

[ Visit KDE's Bug Tracking System ]

Documentation

KDE is already a huge project with many programs, each of which has its own documentation. But you might have noticed that not all of them are complete or even sufficient, and texts like tutorials and use cases would be useful for all of them. Pick up your favorite application, look at its documentation, read the guidelines at the KDE Documentation Team's site and think about improvements and extensions you could write for it and suggest them to the KDE-Doc mailing list or to the coordinator Lauri Watts.

[ Visit KDE-Documentation | Visit the KDE Documentation Team | More information on the KDE-Doc mailing list | Contact Lauri Watts ]

Translation

KDE is available for many languages, every language is represented by an own team. All teams are organized at KDE-Internationalization where you can get all information related to translating KDE. Join your language team for ensuring a complete support for your language in KDE.

[ Visit KDE-Internationalization ]

Coding

Being a software project the KDE project naturally has a steady need of developers. If you are a programmer, preferably with knowledge of at least C++ and Qt, there are many jobs you can choose from:

[ Patches | Code | Maintenance ]

Patches

KDE's Bug Tracking System is a good starting point for any programmer looking for relatively small works. Especially check out the "most hated bugs" and "most wanted features" links there in the "Bug Hunting Tools" section. Small bugs and feature requests give the opportunity to write small patches and posting them in the respective reports. There are also several web-based systems giving easy access to the necessary source code.

[ Visit KDE's Bug Tracking System | Visit KDE Source Cross Reference | Visit KDE SVN Repository ]

Code

When you want to do some serious programming in KDE you can rely on a huge library of information. KDE Developer's Corner is the traditional place for KDE development related information.

[ Visit KDE Developer's Corner Documentation ]

Maintenance

There is a list of KDE applications open for maintenance at the Open Job page for those who are interested and have the necessary skills.

[ Visit Open Jobs ]

Joining the Team of Volunteers

If you want to join the team of volunteers, the KDE Quality Team website is a good place to start, as it offers support and coordination for all volunteers, being programmers, enthusiasts, testers, writers, etc. While the programmers work is a necessary condition to build a desktop environment, there are many other important tasks in a project of this magnitude that can be performed by contributors who know little about programming. In order to support volunteers with different degrees of knowledge, the Quality Team offers step by step guides for common development tasks such as building KDE from source, and working with SVN. You will find several newbie development guides as well: the Documentation HOWTO, the User Interface HOWTO, the Bug And Wish Reports Management HOWTO, the KDE Programming HOWTO, the

Communication And Promotion HOWTO, and the Media HOWTO

If you don't know where to start or what to do, check the Quality Team tasks page, which offers a list of possible tasks, and requirements to complete them. Tasks include testing KDE, testing patches, managing bugs and wishes, providing screenshots, reviewing documentation, writing documentation, writing whatsThis, writing articles, programming, maintaining license and copyright information, and maintaining developer documentation.

Other

If, after reading this page, you still want to help but don't know where, feel free to email howtohelp@kde.org for some more individually tailored tips.