Thank you for taking the time to check out my review and comment.

I agree that KDE4 looks nice as it is, however I still believe that polish is needed for Kubuntu in terms of its artwork. It shows that the developers care to go the extra mile. The general consensus is that Kubuntu doesn’t get the attention that Ubuntu and Xubuntu gets, and this latest release shows that statement is correct. Ubuntu, Xubuntu, and Kubuntu are each members of the same family, and each need the same respect. If one derivative gets a new feature, so should the other two. If one member of the family gets a new default theme, then they all should. Having the same default theme in Kubuntu as KDE4 itself makes it look the same as any other release containing KDE4.

Now, I want you to keep in mind that I’m a huge Kubuntu fan, and I have been since the distribution debuted. I also have extremely high expectations for Kubuntu as well, but then again I have high expectations of all releases. I can understand and respect your standpoint as a developer, however you also need to understand the viewpoints of your users. Appearances are everything, and if it appears that the product doesn’t get the attention it deserves (which may or may not be the case) it makes the user feel that their product isn’t appreciated. Look around at the comments all over the net regarding Kubuntu (as I’m sure you do) and you’ll find that quite a few people agree with me on this one.

Kubuntu is a wonderful distribution and is my default and will probably remain so, but releasing another release with no attention paid to polish whatsoever and coupling that with shipping a broken network manager on release day, shows that this release of Kubuntu nowhere near the expectations of virtually anyone. As a huge Kubuntu fan myself, I look forward to the opportunity to review Kubuntu 9.10 and give it the 5/5 it deserves, and it’s up to developers such as yourself to make that happen. Add new features, polish it, and make sure everything works. That’s all I could ever ask. I’m sure you can understand the viewpoint of the end user, if you looked at this release through their eyes.

You also complain about the lack of artwork over KDE. We really love the KDE 4 artwork which is world class, and see no reason to change it. Kubuntu hopes to bring out the best from KDE, we don’t change parts where KDE is already the best.

The network management is an ugly problem. As you’ve noticed in your follow up article we are working on an update. If you are having network problems install the update from the kubuntu-experimental PPA and comment on the bug, thanks

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/plasma-widget-network-manager/+bug/339313/comments/32

Thank you for your comments. My laptop has an intel video card, and everything is working fine here. While I’m sure you are referring to a definite bug, I can only report on the things I experience first hand.

I believe that you have missed an important bug and that is that there is an serious performance regression on intel graphic cards. All my friends have sufferd from this. And it is a known issue. I know what some may say it is not canonical developers to blame, but why did they put new drivers, everything worked fine on 8.10, and now even with old drivers there are still problems. This is not only my opinion read more here:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReinhardTartler/X/RevertingIntelDriverTo2.4