OSNews

Edgy or Feisty? Unless you've updated your apt sources to include Feisty repositories, you're still running on Edgy (which, if you're just a regular user, is what you should use anyway).

I am on feisty. The system has been quite stable but I still feel that Kubuntu somehow lags behind Ubuntu in many ways regarding the polish and feel of the system. That is why I asked since I have not noticed any obvious changes on upgrading.

KDE has had a control center since what, 10 years? So Gnome is catching up here, though they still launch an extra window instead of embedding the configuration.

And automatic codec installation has been in Amarok on Kubuntu for quite a while, I think it was already in edgy - so catching up again.

Tracker is better than beagle, but I think neither will be in Kubuntu. KDE 4 will feature strigi, which is better in many regards than beagle and tracker combined (esp with the Nepomuk stuff which offers analysis and contextual linking and stuff). Anyway, KDE is behind on this, you just have to wait for integration - unless you install strigi (in the Kubuntu repositories) by hand, it has a taskbar applet and a KIO slave. But for now, these indexing tools are too heavy on resources and not extremely usefull, imho.

Network manager is also in Kubuntu (Knetworkmanager as frontend).

Compiz/beryl are pretty desktop independent, you can install and use them on Kubuntu. And of course Kwin (the KDE window manager) already has support for composite since a few years, though it hasn't seen much work lately. It is getting a complete overhaul, offering beryl/compiz like features for KDE 4.

Dunno about the integration tool, and there are new things in the new Gnome. But the Gnome changelogs generally give a big deja-vu feeling due to all the 'new' features which have been in KDE for years, so I guess not much you won't have in Kubuntu - even though KDE development on 3.x has been stalling for a year now...

KDE as a project also started long before Gnome did, not to mention that Gnome completely scrapped everything going from Gnome 1.x to 2.x.

Gnome also (as already pointed out) has had a control center for ages. This is an entirely new paradigm of control center (which I hate anyhow, but I digress. Control panels in general suck. The KDE one does as well).

The problem with both KDE and Gnome right now as far as the control centers go, is that their control center applets aren't converged as well as they should be. Though Gnome is a bit better here, since not every possible configuration that could be done is shown right there in plain site which makes it a pain to configure anything in your theme at all. Baghira is a perfect example of something that could be a lot simpler with it's configuration.

Gnome has always had a control centre just not like what's being put in now. It's very similar to OS X system preference.

It's a balance between what you need and don't and IMHO KDE goes to far in that respect, gnome does little features bit by bit that make a nice touch. GNOME devs could easy put KDE features but it's not their way.

KDE 4 will feature strigi, which is better in many regards than beagle and tracker combined (esp with the Nepomuk stuff which offers analysis and contextual linking and stuff).

Inaccurate, Tracker provides today a cut down semantic web storage that offers all that but using far simpler code and performs considerably faster. And its available now and being used for tagging.

Currently tracker is the best system by a long way because its a highly optimized database that avoids the massive complexity and hideous performance of a full RDF semantic web engine.

Yeah thats true. KDE does feel more feature complete than Gnome _For ME_. Having said that Ubuntu puts a lot of polish into Gnome which I feel is not put into Kubuntu as much.

Basically every iteration of Ubuntu gives something new in Gnome which is obvious to the user. Not so much in Kubuntu & KDE.