KDE Software Compilation 4

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KDE Software Compilation 4

KDE Plasma Desktop 4.10
Developer(s)	KDE
Initial release	11 January 2008; 16 years ago (2008-01-11)[1]
Final release	4.14.38 (November 7, 2017; 7 years ago (2017-11-07)) [±][2]
Written in	C++ (Qt 4)
Operating system	Whole desktop: Unix-like with X11 and also Windows XP–7.[3] Applications only: Mac OS X v10.4–10.6
Available in	Multilingual[4]
Type	Desktop environment
License	GPL, LGPL, BSD license, MIT license and X11 license[5]
Website	kde.org

KDE Software Compilation 4 (KDE SC 4) was the only series of the so-called KDE Software Compilation (short: KDE SC), first released in January 2008 and the last release being 4.14.3 released in November 2014.^[1][6] It was the follow-up to K Desktop Environment 3. Following KDE SC 4, the compilation was broken up into basic framework libraries, desktop environment and applications, which are termed KDE Frameworks 5, KDE Plasma 5 and KDE Applications, respectively.

Major releases (4.x) were released every six months, while minor bugfix releases (4.x.y) were released monthly.^[7]

The series included updates to several of the KDE Platform's core components, notably a port to Qt 4. It contained a new multimedia API, called Phonon, a device integration framework called Solid and a new style guide and default icon set called Oxygen. It also included a new, unified desktop and panel user interface called Plasma, which supported desktop widgets, replacing K Desktop Environment 3's separate components.

One of the overall goals of KDE Platform 4 was to make it easy for KDE applications to be portable to different operating systems. This was made possible by the port to Qt 4, which facilitated support for non-X11-based platforms, including Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. Versions 4.0 to 4.3 of KDE Software Compilation were known simply as KDE 4 – the name change was a component of the KDE project's re-branding to reflect KDE's increased scope.