What follows is a brief description of a few of the base KDE applications. For more information on any of the applications you should check the links recommended with each respective entry.
KDE's file manager, web browser, FTP client and much more. Konqueror is the canvas for all the latest KDE technology, from KIO slaves (which provide mechanisms for file access) to component embedding, allowing it to be a universal viewing application, capable of displaying various image files as well as documents.
Website: http://konqueror.org
View the handbook by typing help:/konqueror
in Konqueror's Location Toolbar, or by selecting it in KHelpCenter.
KDE's advanced multi-view text editor. Kate is excellent for things such as viewing the HTML source of a webpage to handling advanced coding in C++, PHP and XML with its powerful syntax highlighting engine and code folding capabilities. Kate is a very speedy application, being capable of opening huge text files in a matter of seconds, as well as allowing you to view a hefty amount of multiple views in order to see more instances of the same document and/or more documents at any particular time.
Website: http://kate.kde.org
The X terminal emulator for KDE. Konsole, like many KDE applications, is extremely customizable; while you can create your own user sessions, you can also of course open Linux® console sessions, shell sessions, as well as standard root
and sudo sessions.
Website: http://konsole.kde.org
User Guide Chapter 13, Konsole Introduction
The KDE Panel, used for handling your currently running applications, a pager allowing you to switch between desktops, quick launch buttons to act as application launchers and much more.
See Chapter 3, The Panel and the Desktop for altering some of its settings.
A GUI front-end to the powerful DCOP (Desktop COmmunications Protocol). DCOP provides a comprehensive protocol for interprocess communication between KDE applications. While this is increasingly useful to KDE programmers, it is also beneficial to the ordinary user who would want to create a script, or, say, a SuperKaramba theme.
In the User Guide the section called “Scripting the Desktop” and the section called “KDialog”
Other Documentation: http://developer.kde.org/documentation/library/kdeqt/dcop.html
The control center for the K Desktop Environment. You can alter a myriad of different things, ranging from themes, fonts and screensavers, to Internet, security and system administration.
The KDE help system is used to provide access to the base UNIX® help pages (man or info) as well as the native KDE documentation provided by the KDE documentation team or the application authors. You should be able to access all of the KDE application handbooks from here.
For information on the KDE Documentation team, how to possibly join and help KDE, see: http://kde.org/documentation
Related Information
http://kde-apps.org -- The largest directory of third-party KDE applications.
As you may have noticed, a wealth of information is accessible from the respective handbooks themselves, which can be accessed either by using the help KIO slave in Konqueror (that is, type help:/
in the Location toolbar), or by selecting it in the KHelpCenter.application
You can also likely find out quite a bit of information from the KDE website, itself, at http://kde.org.