Kan KDE make a Komeback?

Sorry for the “kTitle” – I kouldn’t help myself 

I just spent about an hour poking around the latest Kubuntu Daily build (of the upcoming 9.10 release) on my test notebook, and all I can say is “Wow!”.

I’m simply blown away at what has gone on in KDE since I last “seriously” looked at KDE 4 around 4.1.x – I’m speechless. It’s nearing perfection again. As a long time KDE user who jumped ship to GNOME because of KDE 4, practically swearing never to return, I can’t help but gush a little.

As *great* as I think Windows 7 is, I have my notebook running Kubuntu 9.10 Alpha 6 with KDE 4.3.1 sitting right next to my Xeon workstation running Windows 7 Ultimate and KDE doesn’t feel cheap or 2nd class in comparison. It feels and looks equally as “World Class” as Windows 7.

As for the underlying OS (Kubuntu 9.10 Alpha 6) – great build for an Alpha! I haven’t hit a show-stopper yet. Actually I guess this is past Alpha 6 – I downloaded a “Daily Live” image, but everything is working great. I haven’t installed any updates, but I did install Google Chrome and “kubuntu-restricted-extras” so far, and no packages have broken. I did need to pull in a few dependencies for Chome, but everything installed fine with no errors. I’ll probably be pretty conservative with running updates for a while though – I may not update until the next “milestone” whatever/whenever that is (I need to check the release docs).

I also believe I will (for now) re-think making that M70 notebook a “test box” and leave Kubuntu there for a while – I kinda like having the two platforms side by side. There are always things I like better in one over the other  (such as blogging using Windows Live Writer as I’m doing now) but there hadn’t been a darn thing in the Linux world that “excited” me enough to “live with” as a daily-driver OS on that notebook until I loaded up Kubuntu this evening.

Anyway – just wanted to take a moment this evening to get down these general impressions – I was too blown away to let this moment slip by un-documented. I think this *IS* the return of KDE as we once knew it!

Still gonna keep Windows 7 on this box though – it’s just “too good” (my suggestion for a tagline for MS)