20 Essential KDE Applications - Review

Amarok (audio player) In my opinion, the best audio player ever. Excellent collection management and dozens of other features, like Last.fm song submission, scripts, cover manager, Wikipedia tab and lyrics fetching, Magnatune music score. I just can't wait for 2.0 to be released! Official Website

KTorrent (BitTorrent client) This is a complete BitTorrent client for KDE. Together with Deluge, it is said to be one of the best BitTorrent clients for Linux. I use it for over two years now and love it. Official Website

Kate (text editor) The KDE Advanced Text Editor, this application can be used both as a text editor and IDE (Integrated Development Environment). It benefits from plenty of features and options and is highly configurable, yet being very fast and intuitive. Official Website

K3b (CD/DVD burner) A complete KDE CD/DVD burning application. You can burn ISO images on CD or DVD, create ISO images and audio CDs. Integration with Konqueror is also available through the Settings dialogue, together with other features like OSD (On-Screen Display), notifications or themes. Official Website

Konversation (IRC client) An IRC client is a must-have for a true community member, if you ask me. Konversation is a user-friendly client, highly configurable through the Settings dialogue. It doesn't benefit from event-based scripting, but supports scripting like an Amarok now playing script or stuff like that. Comes with several useful scripts. Official Website

Kopete (IM client) Kopete is the KDE IM (Instant Messaging) client. It supports protocols like Yahoo!, MSN, ICQ, Jabber or IRC. See the complete list in the screenshot below. Can be expanded through various scripts, many of them come as default in the default package. One script I find very useful is the Now Listening announcer which supports 5 KDE media players, with the option to show the message 1) in place of status message 2) appended to status message 3) automatic announce in chat window 4) manual announce via /media command. A complete IM client, but don't expect to be fully compatible with protocols like Yahoo!, for example (there are problems sending files to users of the closed-source Yahoo! client for Windows). Official Website

Kaffeine (video player) A KDE audio player, currently at version 0.8.6. Plays pretty much everything, from AVI movies to Theora video and DVDs, including ISO DVD images. Good support for subtitles, with encoding and size options. Uses the Xine engine as a backend. Work is also in progress on Kaffeine for KDE4. Official Website

KPDF (PDF viewer) This is a simple and small PDF reader. Not very complex, but you can decently view your PDF files. It also supports text extraction by selecting a certain area of the PDF with your mouse. Official Website

KOffice (office suite) KOffice is the complete office suite for KDE, completely cost-free. Including many applications, like KWord (word processor), Krita (image editor) or KSpread (spreadsheet application), this office suite is a good alternative to OpenOffice.org. Official Website

Gwenview (image viewer) As for image viewing, Gwenview does its job perfectly. It's light and fast, includes all the options one needs from an image viewer, and can be expanded through scripts so you can make basic editing on your images. Also includes a file browser and thumbnail viewer. Official Website

Konsole (shell-like application) A complete terminal-like application, with the possibility to use custom backgrounds, customise the encoding and font, use transparent background, and much more. I use it embedded in the system tray with KDocker. Official Website

Konqueror (web browser and file manager) Konqueror is mainly a web browser and file manager, but can also be used for viewing images and PDF documents, or previewing films. It's so many things, you can try to do stuff you would never expect it to do and yet be surprised when it succeeds. Official Website

KGet (download manager) In my opinion, the nicest features KGet has is the integration with the Konqueror web browser and system tray integration. It supports resuming files and an 'Expert' mode, which auto-closes KGet once all downloads are finished. KGet is part of the kdenetwork package. Official Website

KCalc (calculator application) A calculator for KDE, supporting many modes, like the Scientific one. A great small tool to have around and quickly fire it up when need arrives. KCalc is part of kdeutils package. Official Website

Kid3 (audio tag editor) Currently at version 1.0, this lightweight tag editor supports many formats, like OGG, MP3 or FLAC. Very useful for audiophiles who like to have the tags for their songs impeccable and edit them all the time. Official Website

KSnapshot (screenshot application) This helps you take screenshots and save them to many formats, like PNG or JPG. Besides the fullscreen mode, you can also take a snapshot of the window under the cursor, or a selected region on the screen, or a window section. It has an option to delay the screenshot (in seconds), so you will be able to also capture menus. This application is part of the kdegraphics package. Official Website

KDocker (docker application) Very useful docker application which works with both KDE and GNOME, and, according to the official website, probably with Xfce too. The screenshot below shows Konsole embedded in system tray using KDocker. Official Website

Klipper (clipboard tool) The KDE clipboard tool, proves very useful when you need to paste several lines and want to have the content around all the time and only select what you need. Part of kdebase module. Official Website



KDevelop (IDE) This is the KDE complete development environment. Recommended mostly to programmers, supports many programming languages. Official Website

KFind (file search application) KFind is part of the kdebase package and provides a GUI to the GNU find utility. Official Website

Addition: Akregator (RSS feed reader) Part of the kdepim package, this application provides all the features one needs in order to access their favourite feeds. It can be embedded in system tray, can open articles in an external browser (default is Konqueror but you can change it), and can keep all the articles archived, for later use. The HTML browser can also be configured, separately from Konqueror's settings. Official Website

Addition: DigiKam (photo management) DigiKam is a photo management application for KDE, featuring the possibility to organise your photographies and images in albums, import and export albums, create MPEG slideshows (you will need the imagemagik package for this), apply several effects to your images, and many, many other. DigiKam has a wealth of options and it is highly configurable via the Configuration dialogue. A fine and complete photo management application.

Full Story