KDE is an acronym for K Desktop Environment. It is a graphical desktop environment mainly used for Linux and Unix workstations.

The main features of KDE includes: ease of use, contemporary functionality and outstanding graphical design with the advanced Unix operating system.

KDE can be viewed in two ways:
• it can be viewed as a user desktop
• it can also be viewed as a development platform for applications

The major features of both the sections is described below:
Konqueror Browser: It is KDE’s next generation web browser,file manager and document viewer.It combines the features of Internet Explorer,Netscape Communicator and Windows Explorer.It supports almost all current technologies, which includes JavaScript,Java,HTML 4.0 etc.
KOffice Office Suite:This suite consists of a spreadsheet application, a vector drawing application(Karbon), a word processing application(KWord), a presentation program(KPresenter) and a chart and diagram application(KChart).

Besides this, the other features are: Network Transparancey, Customizability, and Standards Compliance.

KDE offers developers a variety of technologies such as Desktop Communication Protocol(DCOP),I/O Libraries,the component object model,an XML based GUI class and a standard compliant HTML rendering engine.

The most important feature of this environment is interoperability of its components.