Has Kubuntu dropped the ball?

I understand the reasons they are valid and make sense. I can’t help but get the feeling that the Kubuntu developers would be crying that they can’t roll out KDE4 officially until next year.

It’s all Mark Shuttleworth’s fault of course, recently committing Ubuntu 8.04 to long term support has put Kubuntu in a unfortunate prediciment.

The late October release of KDE4 means Kubuntu wont be available for Gutsy 7.10, that was always to be the case, the big problem comes during the next release 8.04 LTS.

It’s no secret that KDE4 is an ambitious project, and some would say even that is an understatement. It is however well worth the effort. QT4 is a fantastic API, and much improved from QT3, the improvements will take KDE4 to the next level. I predict many Distro’s will switch to KDE4 as soon as mid next year.

I digress, it’s an ambitios project with initially little new features. Nearly all the changes are backend stuff no one will ever notice, and therein lies the problem. There is a serious danger that early versions of KDE4 could be reminicent to Microsoft’s original Windows XP release, full of bugs and quite unstable. This doesn’t bode well for a Long Term Support release of Kubuntu. So 8.04LTS will need to continue with KDE 3.5.

It’s an unfortunate set of circumstances, there are rumours of a seperate Kubuntu release being offered with KDE4, and I’m sure it wont be long before an official or not repository will spring up with KDE4 release.

OpenSuse will most definitely release with KDE4 as soon as possible, which realistically could give them a 12 month head start. That is unacceptible, and would be the main reason I think Kubuntu developers will be weeping in their sleep.