# Frequently Asked Questions About &kde;

Batman Animated Series

What are you?

I'm your worst nightmare...

There are some questions that are always raised on the &kde; mailing lists. To keep the traffic as low as possible (making the lists more readable), we have included them in this section. So please be kind and do not ask them in the mailing lists anymore - think of the quote above!

What does &kde; stand for?

Originally the K stood for Kool, nowadays the K has no meaning and &kde; simply stands for the K Desktop Environment. &kde; is intended to be a collection of small tools, a window manager, a file manager and tools that bring all this together. It is created to make your life with &UNIX; easier.

I cannot compile package xxx

Always be sure that you have the newest version of the &kde; libraries installed. The software is in constant development, so the dependencies can change from one day to another if you are using CVS. For most users, using a released version is much more practical.

Another problem could be that you are using a program written for a very old version of &kde;, which depends on outdated include files. Check in the source archive's `README` to see if it explains which version of &kde; the application is looking for. If that file doesn't exist, check the file dates. They should be more recent than your current &kde; version.

What version of &kde; should I use for a stable desktop?

One can, in general, obtain &kde; in many ways. Obtaining pre-compiled binaries in a package format (rpm,deb,tgz) labeled with a particular version (⪚ 3.2) is the best way to encourage stability on your &kde; desktop.

But I heard that my problem/wishlist item is already in CVS. I want to get my hands on the new features, why shouldn't I try CVS?

The price of stability is that one must wait for each release to get new features. Conversely the price of being the first to see new features, is that you risk stability. &kde; has a fairly frequent release schedule, and stability of released versions is a particular focus. For the majority of &kde; users, unless you are planning to help develop &kde;, there is little advantage to running development versions of &kde;.

However, there is always a place for experienced users who know what they are letting themselves in for, and are willing to report bugs found. If this is you, then there is no reason not to try the CVS versions. Be prepared for things to break occasionally, CVS gives you a snapshot of source code that is currently being worked on.

These are daily snapshots of whatever the developers are working on, and some things are guaranteed to be broken.

Do not rely on CVS snapshots to maintain operational desktops. You will get burned eventually!