KDE Plasma in the context of Shell (computing)

KDE is an international free software community that develops free and open-source software. As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that enable collaborative work on its projects. Its products include the KDE Plasma graphical shell, KDE Frameworks, and the KDE Gear range of applications including Kate, digiKam, and Krita. Many KDE applications are cross-platform and can run on Unix and Unix-like operating systems as well as Microsoft Windows. KDE is legally represented by KDE e.V. based in Germany, which also owns the KDE trademarks and funds the project.

SteamOS is a gaming-focused operating system released by Valve that incorporates the company's video game storefront, Steam. Based on Arch Linux and built specifically to support Steam, it is the default Linux distribution for Valve's line of gaming hardware, including the Steam Deck, Steam Machine, and Steam Frame. Beginning in 2025, Valve expanded official support to include third-party devices designated as "SteamOS Compatible", such as handhelds like the Lenovo Legion Go and Asus ROG Ally. It can also be installed on personal computers without official support from Valve. The core operating system is free and open-source software, while the Steam client remains proprietary.

SteamOS was first released in 2013, with versions 1.0 and 2.0 based on Debian and designed primarily as a client for streaming games over a local network from a gaming PC, with limited support for native gameplay. Valve promoted the platform as part of a broader effort to expand Linux gaming. In 2022, Valve introduced SteamOS 3.0 alongside the launch of the Steam Deck. This version transitioned to an Arch Linux base which used a rolling release model that Valve felt was better suited for hardware support. It has a dual‑mode interface: a console‑style mode powered by Steam's Big Picture UI, and a KDE Plasma desktop environment for traditional computing use. SteamOS 3.0 also incorporates Valve’s Proton compatibility layer, enabling many Windows games to run on Linux.

A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is often obtained via a website intended specifically for the purpose. Distros have been designed for a wide variety of systems ranging from personal computers (for example, Linux Mint) to servers (for example, Red Hat Enterprise Linux) and from embedded devices (for example, OpenWrt) to supercomputers (for example, Rocks Cluster Distribution).

A distro typically includes many components in addition to the Linux kernel. Commonly, it includes a package manager, an init system (such as systemd, OpenRC, SysVinit, or runit), GNU tools and libraries, documentation, IP network configuration utilities, the getty TTY setup program, and many more. To provide a desktop experience (most commonly the Mesa userspace graphics drivers) a display server (the most common being the X.org Server, or, more recently, a Wayland compositor such as Sway, KDE's KWin, or GNOME's Mutter), a desktop environment (most commonly GNOME, KDE Plasma, or Xfce), a sound server (usually either PulseAudio or more recently PipeWire), and other related programs may be included or installed by the user.

KDE Frameworks is a collection of libraries and software frameworks readily available to any Qt-based software stacks or applications on multiple operating systems. Featuring frequently needed functionality solutions like hardware integration, file format support, additional graphical control elements, plotting functions, and spell checking, the collection serves as the technological foundation for KDE Plasma and KDE Gear. It is distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). As of September 2025, the latest stable release is KDE Frameworks 6 (KF6).

KDE Plasma 6 is the sixth and most recent generation of the KDE Plasma desktop environment. It is the successor of KDE Plasma 5 and was first released on 28 February 2024.

freedesktop.org (fd.o), formerly X Desktop Group (XDG), is a project to work on interoperability and shared base technology for free-software desktop environments for the X Window System (X11) and Wayland on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. Although freedesktop.org produces specifications for interoperability, it is not a formal standards body.

The project was founded by Havoc Pennington, a GNOME developer working for Red Hat in March 2000. Widely used open-source Desktop projects, such as GNOME, KDE's Plasma Desktop, and Xfce, are collaborating with the freedesktop.org project. In 2006, the project released Portland 1.0 (xdg-utils), a set of common interfaces for desktop environments. freedesktop.org joined the X.Org Foundation in 2019. Some of the project's servers are hosted by Portland State University.

D-Bus (short for "Desktop Bus")is a message-oriented middleware mechanism that allows communication between multiple processes running concurrently on the same machine. D-Bus was developed as part of the freedesktop.org project, initiated by GNOME developer Havoc Pennington to standardize services provided by Linux desktop environments such as GNOME and KDE Plasma.

The freedesktop.org project also developed a free and open-source software library called libdbus, as a reference implementation of the specification. This library is not D-Bus itself, as other implementations of the D-Bus specification also exist, such as GDBus (GNOME), QtDBus (Qt/KDE), dbus-java and sd-bus (part of systemd).