K Desktop Environment 2 was the second series of releases of the K Desktop Environment (now called KDE Software Compilation). There were three major releases in this series.

Major updates

K Desktop Environment 2 introduced significant technological improvements compared to its predecessor.

DCOP

DCOP

DCOP, which stands for Desktop COmmunication Protocol, is a light-weight interprocess and software componentry communication system. The main point of this system is to allow applications to interoperate, and to share complex tasks...

 (Desktop COmmunication Protocol), a client-to-client communications protocol intermediated by a server over the standard X11 ICE library.

KIO

KIO

KIO is part of the KDE architecture. It provides access to files, web sites and other resources through a single consistent API. Applications, such as Konqueror which are written using this framework can operate on files stored on remote servers in exactly the same way as they operate on those...

, an application I/O

Input/output

In computing, input/output, or I/O, refers to the communication between an information processing system , and the outside world, possibly a human, or another information processing system. Inputs are the signals or data received by the system, and outputs are the signals or data sent from it...

 library. It is network transparent and can access HTTP, FTP, POP

Point of presence

A point of presence is an artificial demarcation point or interface point between communications entities. It may include a meet-me-room.In the US, this term became important during the court-ordered breakup of the Bell Telephone system...

, IMAP, NFS, SMB

Server Message Block

In computer networking, Server Message Block , also known as Common Internet File System operates as an application-layer network protocol mainly used to provide shared access to files, printers, serial ports, and miscellaneous communications between nodes on a network. It also provides an...

, LDAP and local files. Moreover, its design permits developers to "drop in" additional protocols, such as WebDAV

WebDAV

Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning is a set of methods based on the Hypertext Transfer Protocol that facilitates collaboration between users in editing and managing documents and files stored on World Wide Web servers...

, which will then automatically be available to all KDE applications. KIO can also locate handlers for specified MIME types; these handlers can then be embedded within the requesting application using the KParts technology.

KParts, a component object model

Component Object Model

Component Object Model is a binary-interface standard for software componentry introduced by Microsoft in 1993. It is used to enable interprocess communication and dynamic object creation in a large range of programming languages...

, allows an application to embed another within itself. The technology handles all aspects of the embedding, such as positioning toolbars and inserting the proper menus when the embedded component is activated or deactivated. KParts can also interface with the KIO trader to locate available handlers for specific MIME types or services/protocols.

KHTML

KHTML

KHTML is the HTML layout engine developed by the KDE project. It is the engine used by the Konqueror web browser. A forked version of KHTML called WebKit is used by several web browsers, among them Safari and Google Chrome...

, an HTML

HTML

HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....

 4.0 compliant rendering and drawing engine. It supports many Internet technologies, including JavaScript

JavaScript

JavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....

, Java

Java (programming language)

Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...

, HTML 4.0, CSS

CSS

-Computing:*Cascading Style Sheets, a language used to describe the style of document presentations in web development*Central Structure Store in the PHIGS 3D API*Closed source software, software that is not distributed with source code...

 2, and SSL for secure communications. It is compatible with Netscape plugins such as Flash

Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...

. KHTML also has the capacity to embed components within itself using the KParts technology.

K Desktop Environment 2.0

Konqueror

Konqueror

Not to be confused with the Conqueror web browser.Konqueror is a web browser and file manager that provides file-viewer functionality for file systems such as local files, files on a remote ftp server and files in a disk image. It is a core part of the KDE desktop environment...

 was introduced as web browser, file manager and document viewer. It used KHTML for displaying web pages.

K Desktop Environment 2 also shipped with the initial release of the KOffice

KOffice

Calligra Suite is a graphic art and office suite by KDE created from KOffice in 2010. It is available for desktop PCs, tablet computers, and smartphones...

 suite, consisting of a spreadsheet application (KSpread

KSpread

Tables is a free software spreadsheet application that is part of Calligra Suite, an integrated graphic art and office suite by KDE.Among Tables's features are multiple sheets per document, assorted formatting possibilities, support for more than 300 built-in functions, templates, chart,...

), a vector drawing application (KIllustrator), a frame-based word-processing application (KWord

KWord

Calligra Words is a free word processor, part of Calligra Suite and developed by KDE.The text-layout scheme in Words is based on frames, making it similar to FrameMaker by Adobe. These can be placed anywhere on the page, and can incorporate text, graphics and embedded objects...

), a presentation program (KPresenter

KPresenter

Calligra Stage is a free presentation program that is part of the Calligra Suite, an integrated office suite for the KDE Platform....

), and a chart and diagram application (KChart). Native file formats were XML

XML

Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....

-based. KOffice included a scripting language and the ability to embed individual components within each other using KParts.

K Desktop Environment 2.1

The K Desktop Environment 2.1 release inaugurated the media player noatun

Noatun (audio)

Noatun is a media player of KDE. It supports various formats, including Vorbis and WAV.Noatun is available as free software under the terms of a BSD style license.The Noatun player is very modular and uses aRts as backend....

, which used a modular, plugin design. For development, K Desktop Environment 2.1 was bundled with KDevelop

KDevelop

KDevelop is a free software integrated development environment for the KDE Platform on Unix-like computer operating systems. KDevelop includes no compiler. Instead, it uses an external compiler such as gcc to produce executable code....

.

K Desktop Environment 2.2

The KDE 2.2 release featured up to a 50% improvement in application startup time on GNU/Linux systems and increased stability and capabilities for HTML rendering and JavaScript. A number of new plugins were included in Konqueror. KMail received the addition of IMAP support (including SSL and TLS), while KOrganizer got native iCalendar

ICalendar

iCalendar is a computer file format which allows Internet users to send meeting requests and tasks to other Internet users, via email, or sharing files with an extension of .ics...

support. Other improvements included a new plugin-based print architecture and a personalization wizard.

Release schedule

Date	Event
2.0
23 October 2000	KDE 2.0 released
5 December 2000	2.0.1 Maintenance release.
2.1
26 February 2001	KDE 2.1 released
27 March 2001	2.1.1 Maintenance release.
30 April 2001	2.1.2 Maintenance release (kdelibs only).
2.2
15 August 2001	KDE 2.2 released
19 September 2001	2.2.1 Maintenance release.
21 November 2001	2.2.2 Maintenance release.