Audacious and fearless is an apt description of the Intrepid release for kubuntu. The KDE flavor of ubuntu 8.10 feels like a beta release, largely because of the immaturity of KDE 4.1. Here's my take on kubuntu 8.10, tested on a Thinkpad x61s with ultrabase dock:
I chose to upgrade from 8.04to 8.10 online instead of a fresh install in an attempt to keep as much of the personalized settings that sold KDE for me as possible. And, that's the first thing i found lacking from the new Plasmid desktop management system in KDE 4.1. Without a doubt Plasmid looks smooth and flashy coupled with the new Oxygen theme in 4.1, yet runs beautifully even on integrated graphics, but i found customizing the "plasmoids" limited and very buggy. The number of plasmoids to choose from were decent but few, the large yet hollow and spacious layout of the KDE menu overwhelmed my 12" laptop screen, and Plasmid crashed 2 times in less than 2 hours of use. There is also added needs to click and select for menus to open, and a select/deselect option in Dolphin that i found took away from the original usibility and simplicity.
KDE 4.1 aside, 8.10 solved two key issues in hardware support for me; external monitors and internal screens can now be configured on the fly and docking/undocking is now bug free. However, the middle mouse button still required additional configuration, this time in Hal and not xorg.conf.
I realize it comes down to personal preference, but i when i first booted into KDE 3.5 on kubuntu edgy i had no regrets leaving windows or gnome behind. KDE 4.1 on the other hand shows promise, yet leaves much to be missed and more to be desired. I just switched back to a backup of hardy, the added hardware support did not match up to the lost usability of KDE 3.5, but even if i had the time to get used to and to play around with KDE 4.1, i would install Compiz/fusion over Plasmid for the standard effects i rely on.
Now if only i can get Intrepid to run KDE 3.5........
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