What will happen to KDE in Linux distributions?

If you’re a Linux user, you have probably heard the news by now — Nokia acquires TrollTech. Yup, Trolltech the company who is responsible for the QT library that serves as the foundation of the KDE graphical user interface found in Linux distributions like Ubuntu, RedHat, OpenSuse, Debian and others.

Trolltech also owns a mobile solution called Qtopia which is an application platform and user interface for Linux-based mobile phones, embedded devices and recently Windows CE (Windows Mobile).

What will now happen to KDE? Will it still continue to be a viable alternative to Gnome on the Linux platform? KDE is known for it’s very coherent development library that enables easy development of GUI-based linux applications. The QT library which has been the base of KDE has had a lot of available applications that have become very useful to a lot of Linux users.

Now that Trolltech has been acquired by Nokia, I hope that Nokia will continue to support the QT software. Maybe even use the library in its Maemo platform (the OS for its Nokia ultramobile devices).

Whatever the plan of Nokia is, I do hope that it will be for the benefit of not only the Linux users but also the mobile industry as well.