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Since a couple of days ago, I have a fresh Kubuntu 9.04 installation on my notebook. I've waited a few weeks after its release, cause I wanted to see if there were comments on its performance from the first users adopting it. Unfortunatly I have to say that the internet is full with comments on Ubuntu but fewer resources are, instead, devoted to Kubuntu. So I decided to write this post...
The main reason that pushed me to move to the 9.04 version is the promise to have KDE 4.x installed and configured without the need to use an external repository. So, now that Kubuntu is installed, this promise is a reality. Having KDE 4.x already installed and configured since the very start is really nice. For the rest the new version of this distro (of which I am a loyal customer now, I have to say, since I have been using it for more than 2 years) seems quite ok. At first look the menus, the applications, the plasma widget, the system tray, everything seems to be in the right place. So, everything is fine? Well, not exactly, since there are a couple of issues I am going to discuss now. First of all, the graphics is all but fluid. I have an integrated Intel 3D chipset, not the fastest in the world of course  , but at least in the previous version, it was able to run KDE 4.x 3D effects in a decent way. With the 9.04 version everything is really unusable, so much that, before fixing it, I have to disable 3D effects at all. After a bit google searching activity I have discovered that this is due to a bug in the Intel chipset driver. Reverting to the previous version of the intel driver solved the problem. Now I have the same level of usability that I had with 8.10. But problems are not over yet. Kmail has also some problems: two in particular. The first problem is again the speed. The kmail composer is quite slow, and gets slower and slower the longer the text of the e-mail you are writing is. The second problem is again related to the composer. When I reply to an e-mail, normally I would see the text of the e-mail cited in the composer windows, and my signature postponed at the end of the message. This is not the case with the kmail that comes with Kubuntu 9.04, as the composer always shows an empty screen with my signature. I have to admit that I had these problems with Kubuntu 8.10 too, where I installed (with others repositories) KDE 4.x. I remember that the problem was happening only with KDE 4.2.2, and disappeared once I have upgraded to KDE 4.2.3. Unofrtunatly Kubuntu comes with KDE 4.2.2 version, and packages of KDE 4.2.3 version have not been released yet  . I hope they will make it soon. Finally, let's come to the third problem: VirtualBox. Of course this program does not come pre-installed with Kubuntu, but I have installed the Open Source edition, directly for its repositories, since I use VirtualBox a lot. And so, the problem is that, with my virtual machine, when I enable the VT-x/AMD-v extensions, the system freezes completely when I boot up the virtual machine. There is no way to wake it up... only an hard reset would do. Of course, disabling VT-x/AMD-v extension will let VirtualBox work perfectly but... I would like to have them. I googled the problem again, and it seems to be a bug alreadyopened... I hope they will fix it soon. Is it over? Not yet, let's come to the last one, a very nasty one that forced me and overnight effort yesterday to restore all my KDE environment that got wiped out due to a problem in the package manager system. That's the situation, when I tried to install koffice the package manager warned me that a requirement was not satisfied. Koffice required kformula (>= 1:1.6.-7ubuntu6), and it was not going to be installed. Strange!!! Without paying to much attention, I just installed kformula by hand and answered yes to the apt request, not noticing that it would have completely uninstalled KDE!!!  I repaired everything with my hands but... this is very weird... Finally, two minor things: the KDE Bluetooth daemon crashes very often and each time that KDE loads an error message warns me that the daemon for the protocol trash:/ died unexpectly. These are small thinkgs, but at the end, they turn out to be annoying.
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