Matthias Ettrich

Matthias Ettrich (born 14 June 1972 in Bietigheim-Bissingen, Baden-Württemberg) is a German computer scientist and founder of the KDE and LyX projects.

Matthias Ettrich
Matthias Ettrich at LinuxTag, 23 May 2005
Born (1972-06-14) 14 June 1972
Bietigheim-Bissingen, West-Germany
OccupationSoftware engineer
EmployerHere
Known forKDE and LyX

School

Matthias went to School in Beilstein, as he lived with his parents in Oberstenfeld, not too far away from the place he was born. He passed the Abitur in 1991. Ettrich studied for his MSc in Computer Science at the Wilhelm Schickard Institute for Computer Science at the University of Tübingen.

Career

He currently resides in Berlin, Germany. Having seen many poor technology choices, resulting in catastrophic business failures, he is currently focused on advising start-ups and corporations on digital transformation and in sound technical decision making.[1]

Free software projects

Ettrich founded and furthered the LyX project in 1995, initially conceived as a university term project. LyX is a graphical frontend to LaTeX.

Since LyX's main target platform was Linux, he started to explore different ways to improve the graphical user interface, which ultimately led him to the KDE project. Ettrich founded KDE in 1996, when he proposed on Usenet a "consistent, nice looking free desktop-environment" [sic] for Unix-like systems using Qt as its widget toolkit.[2][3]

On 6 November 2009, Ettrich was decorated with the Federal Cross of Merit for his contributions to Free Software.[4][5]

gollark: I mean, in Windows, anyway.
gollark: * Samba
gollark: Isn't Sambda kind of insecure, generally?
gollark: I have a DVD drive, but I never used it because it apparently doesn't work on Linux.
gollark: LIES! Wood is made out of something something dead plant cells something something lignin cellulose.

References
  1. "Matthias Ettrich". LinkedIn.
  2. Ettrich, Matthias (14 October 1996). "New Project: Kool Desktop Environment (KDE)". Newsgroup: de.comp.os.linux.misc. Usenet: 53tkvv$b4j@newsserv.zdv.uni-tuebingen.de. Retrieved 4 December 2010.
  3. "Matthias Ettrich: The KDE-Man!". EFY Enterprises Pvt. Ltd. EFY Times.com. 15 March 2008. Archived from the original on 30 October 2015. Retrieved 30 April 2011.
  4. "KDE founder Ettrich receives German award".
  5. Boehm, Mirko (6 November 2009). "Matthias Ettrich Receives German Federal Cross of Merit". KDE. KDE.NEWS. Retrieved 30 April 2011.
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