Does Kubuntu have what it takes to become the ultimate KDE distro?

[Alexander Antoniades]

After reading the discusion on Hoary Kubuntu defaults I was glad to
see that we were all along the same lines of making Kubuntu easy to
use and having sensible defaults.
However what has bothered me since the release of Hoary and somewhat
since the Mark Shuttleworth's interview on Slashdot is where does
Canonical see Kubuntu fitting in to the Ubuntu family?
Currently, as per John Riddel on #kubuntu a couple of days ago, there
are no Canonical employees working on this project and Mark basically
equated it with XFCE/ubuntu which I can't see having anywhere near the
level of interest as Kubuntu.
This and the ambient KDE sucks junk from ubuntu regulars (see the
Gnome or KDE thread on ubuntu-users) makes me wonder if I shouldn't
look elsewhere for the ultimate KDE distribution.
I like the Debian system, and I like a lot of what Canonical stands
for, but it's my feeling that KDE is a friendlier more focused desktop
environment, and I want a free as in beer KDE desktop distribution
that I can recommend and install on people's machines when they want
to know about linux.
If Kubuntu is just going to be an afterthought to the ubuntu maybe I
should look elsewhere.

Just my $0.02,

Sander