I've been running Ubuntu 8.10 (the latest) here all week (well, the final Release Candidate, more or less identical).

On the whole, I like it very much. The 3D desktop itegration is simply amazing, and parts of it are actually quite useful -- eg. the desktop zoom function is handy for youtube videos and for Chris's photography website, as otherwise images look tiny on my 1920x1200 notebook screen!

The networking "just works" perfectly. And, a first for Canon, I plugged in my Pixma 8500 photo printer, and was greated by a simple little bubble stating that it had been detected and configured.. sure enough, it "just worked" without any interaction or driver discs. Way cool -- Canon printers have hardly ever been supported before now.

Kubuntu-8.10 ships with slower-than-winter KDE4 as the only "choice". Problem is, KDE4 is *not* KDE -- it's some newfangled desktop system that shares the same first three characters ('K', 'D', 'E'). The similarity and usability ends there.

As does my affinity for Kubuntu. Real KDE ("KDE3") is no longer offered even as an option, so now I'm learning GNOME and gconf-editor in particular. With the latter, the desktop can be made somewhat usable, though it does still lack nice essentials like toggle keys for maximize vertical/horizontal.

But I cannot live/work with GNOME's poor excuse for a terminal app, so I've grabbed Konsole from KDE3 (Kubuntu Hardy) and use it for all of my text windows on GNOME.

I think I'll survive the demise of KDE, and the new Compiz-Fusion eye candy tricks are great time-consumers.

Ubuntu-8.10 is going onto both of my notebooks, and its sweet young sister, Xubuntu, is going to end up on the PVR with Mythbuntu running on top of it.

Cheers