Date: Fri, 19 Mar 1999 21:51:59 +0000
From: Andreas Pour <pour@mieterra.com>
To: KDE PR <pr@kde.org>
Subject: KDE Wins Top Honors at CeBIT

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


March 19, 1999

(Hanover, Germany)  The K Desktop Environment (KDE)
(http://www.kde.org),
an advanced and user-friendly desktop for the increasingly popular
Linux/Unix operating system, was awarded top honors at CeBIT,
the worlds largest computer trade fair, as "Innovation of the
Year 1998/99" in the category "Software".

According to anarticle published by Ziff-Davis
(http://http://www.zdnet.de/news/artikel/1999/03/19011-wf.htm), sponsor
of the award, the criterion for granting this award of technical
excellence was not commerical success but creativity behind the
product's design, an exceptional solution for a specific problem
or a completely new concept. The other two finalists for the award
were Lotus eSuite and Microtest Virtual CD.

In announcing the winner, KDE was described as "a real alternative
for the desktop" having "all of the functionality of Microsoft Windows".

KDE developers were extremely pleased by the award.  In announcing
receipt
of the award to the collaborative KDE community, Kalle Dalheimer, a
KDE developer, beamed, "This award is a great achievement for the
whole KDE team!  Congratulations to all of you!"

A high quality and mature desktop is considered a
key software requirement for enterprise and home use of Linux. Several
large
software vendors have announced support of KDE in recent weeks,
including Red Hat Software, Inc. and Corel Corporation.

ABOUT KDE

KDE released version 1.1 of its desktop on February 19, 1999.
KDE runs on Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, HP-UX and other Unix variants.  It
is
available in all major Linux and BSD distributions, and is also
downloadable
free of charge from KDE's web site (ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde).

KDE's major contributions to Linux/Unix are related to the ease
of installation, configuration and use.  KDE provides users
with an attractive, functional desktop, applications that
provide a consistent look-and-feel as well as internationalization.
KDE offers also a consistent user interface across all Unix systems
and numerous hardware platforms, from PCs to powerful Internet
servers, thereby permitting organizations to freely switch
hardware without incurring the costs associated with switching
operating systems.

The KDE project was launched in October 1996 by a small group of
developers.  The project immediately adopted the open source model
and grew quickly.  Today, it is one of the largest open source
development
projects, with several hundred contributing developers, 1.2 million
lines of
source code, hundreds of translators who translate KDE into 32 different

languages and thousands of interested users assisting
in testing and debugging.

___________________________________________
NOTICE:

If you have any questions regarding this press release or would
like to arrange for an interview, please send an e-mail to
pr@kde.org and a KDE representative will contact you.

You have been included on a mailing list for official KDE press
releases.  If you have received this announcement in error or if
you no longer with to receive such announcements, we
apologize for the inconvenience.  You may be removed from this
mailing list by sending a request to pr@kde.org