Kubuntu Karmic: OK, but sometimes like uncontrolled horse (Was: Switching a friend to Ubuntu)

[Bas Roufs]

Hello everybody

It's a good moment for a midterm review of Kubuntu Karmic, with which
I work at my main PC. The  system is functioning quite well -
especially ever since a recent backport upgrade to KDE 4.3.3, which
contains several bug fixes; ever since that specific upgrade, the
system has become more predictable and stable. In general, I observe
an interesting general progress ever since Kubuntu 7.10 - especially
in the realm of connectivity. Printers, camaras and mobiles I recently
connected to the PC, communicate with the system 'out of the box'. In
general, I do manage to collaborate with users of other operating
systems and distros without serious complications. Text, graphic,
image, photo, video, sound, spreadsheat, language aids, easy typing of
diacritics, easy switch between Latin and Cyrillic, ...... every major
point of attention works smoothly.

However, sometimes  Karmic  has some rough edges, because of which it
sometimes behaves like a uncontrolled horse. With "uncontrolled horse"
I mean in this context: the sudden appearance of complications
apparently beyond my control, which I do not manage to fix easily. In
such circumstances, the only option which seems to remain is some
artificial, provisional bypass. I mention a few examples.

After each revision of the configuration at the screen and in the
panel in the bottom, I  "lock" the widgets. When I forget to do so,
the screen and panel simply become a terrible mess. The only way to
effectively deal with this problem seems to replace via the terminal
the old .kde configuration with a new one as follows:
* I rename the .kde to .kde.old
* afterwords I restart the PC as soon as possible; the restart
procedure generates a new .kde automatically.

Sometimes, I simply restart the PC if the system really behaves like a
uncontrolled horse. (Control-Alt-Del, alt-r).This happens e.g. when
the screen and/ panel appear in such a way that I can simply not work
with them. This has happened a few times beyond my control, sometimes,
even immediately after a first start-up. The only way to deal with it
seams to restart again.
Such tricks and bypasses enable me to continue working in a KDE environment.

However it may be, I am looking forward to Lucid, which seems to
contain several bug fixes.

Respectfully yours,

Bas.