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 exploring different ways to improve the
graphical user interface, ultimately leading him to the
KDE project. Ettrich founded KDE in 1996 when he proposed on
Usenet a
"consistent, nice looking free desktop environment" for
Unix-like systems using
Qt as its widget toolkit. On 6 November 2009, Ettrich was decorated with the
Federal Cross of Merit for his contributions to
free software.{{cite news == References ==