KDE 2.0.1 was released on December 5, 2000. Read the official announcement and the list of changes compared to 2.0.
For a high-level overview of the features of KDE, see the KDE info page
For a graphical tutorial on using KDE 2, see this tutorial page from Linux Mandrake
Meanwhile, KDE 2.1 has been released. It contains many new features and bug fixes, so we strongly encourage to upgrade to 2.1. This page will no longer be updated.
Qt 2.2.1 conflicted with libpng 1.0.8. Either downgrade libpng to version 1.0.7 or update to Qt 2.2.2 which contains a proper fix for this (and other) problems.
The environment variables KDEDIR, KDEHOME, PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH, if set, must point to the correct KDE 2.0 locations. RedHat users should make sure to change their kde.csh and kde.sh scripts.
In some installations the KDE program kbuildsycoca fails to properly create a file called ksycoca. This file is needed by KDE to operate properly. Depending on the environment variable $KDEHOME this file should either be found in ~/.kde/share/config/ksycoca or ~/.kde2/share/config/ksycoca.
Make sure that your $KDEHOME environment variable is always set to the same value. Leaving it empty is ok, it will then assume ~/.kde in which case you should have a recent ksycoca in ~/.kde/share/config/ksycoca.
Run kbuildsycoca from a command line to generate the ksycoca file.
You need to have at least Qt version 2.2.1. Version 2.2.0 is NOT sufficient, no matter what your RPM says. Qt 2.2.2 is recommended, though.
Make sure that you included support for them while compiling
Qt.
Upon certain action KDE does a lookup of your hostname. If you rely on DNS for resolving and the network is slow or down this will lead to a immense slowdown.
Fix: add your host with name and IP address to /etc/hosts and make sure that /etc/host.conf contains order hosts,bind (or similar).
If you want to compile from sources we offer instructions and help for common problems in the Compilation FAQ.
NOTE:This section is no longer maintained. Please refer to the 2.2.2 Info page instead.
Please check the bug database before filing any bug reports. Also check for possible updates that might fix your problem.
There is also info on the architecture and the programming interface.