It’s always been just KDE to me. In the past year or so, I’ve noticed people calling Plasma KDE or even just Plasma. What happened? Why do people insist on making the name longer? Why the word Plasma? What is Plasma referring to? And, are they trying to move away from the KDE name to just Plasma?
Well KDE used to stand for K Desktop Environment as a rif off of CDE Common Desktop Environment. They named kde 4 plasma when kde was overhauled during that release. Since kde does much more than just the DE they moved to just be KDE stands for KDE like how KFC no longer stands for Kentucky Fried Chicken.
The “K” stood for “Kool”
Yeah I think that was dropped to just K before the release of 1.0.
Was it 4? I thought it came around for the 5 release. I think I switched DEs for almost the entire 4 debacle then switched back at 5 when it stopped sucking.
Edit: NM, I see I just missed it by skipping 4: https://dot.kde.org/2009/11/24/repositioning-kde-brand/