Kubuntu 8.04 will mini-fork for KDE 4. I’m not sure I like the way this is going. The commercially supported, stable, feature-complete Kubuntu-KDE3 may draw users away from the still-experimental Kubuntu-KDE4, denying KDE 4.0.1 the extended testing that it needs. But then what choice do they have? Not many people are going to use KDE 4.0.1 anyway if it’s not finished.

The 3-to-4 transition is going to get worse before it gets better. KDE 4 won’t be properly stable until at least 4.1 in July, and won’t reach feature parity with KDE 3 until at least 4.2 in November or later. That will be 3 years since the first release of KDE 3.5, and 3 years is a long time for ordinary KDE users to wait for a new release.

The same thing happened to GNOME back in 2002 when they stripped all functionality from 1.4 and effectively started again with 2.0. I switched to KDE back then. I’d now be tempted to switch back to GNOME - and with it, the more polished Ubuntu - if it wasn’t for apps like Amarok and the promise of future awesomeness from what KDE 4 will still hopefully become.