I have been reading a few posts here and am seriously thinking of moving from Ubuntu to Kubuntu -- a good idea as, at 71, the learning curve will help keep altzeimers at bay

The reason for this quirky question is that I run a community newspaper FinchleyArrow and use Google a lot - gmail, calendar, contacts, Google Apps, Finance and a lot more.

I gather the laest version (RC just out) will be a better bet and wonder whether I should "go for it" now or wait until Canonical updates their Kubuntu with it. There are political reasons for staying with this brand.

I have a feeling that 11.04 will have it and that is only three months away.

A question, if your advice is, go for it now, I have my home file on a separate partition and wonder if there is any danger in pointing Kubuntu at that when I load it, or should I weed out all the dot files first and just leave my data on?

I would be very appreciative of a detailed reply rather than a "wait" or "do it now" reply.

1) "Users of 10.10 can install from the Kubuntu Backports PPA." http://www.kubuntu.org/news/kde-sc-4.6 - no idea why you can't just add the kde packages to your current install

2) not knowing *buntu's - but the diff between them is pretty much just the desktop environment used so once kde packages are installed you should be able to load at login which de (gnom, kde, etc) you wish to use

3) what are dod files?

4) Google stuff is all browser based so as long as you continue using the same browser that will all look/act the same

5) if both gnome and kde are both installed applications from either will run on whatever de you're running ie you won't have to switch applications used to kde ones, of course kde ones look better under kde but you can set gnome apps to look more akin to kde ones (that's a diff thread viewtopic.php?f=66&t=92927)

6) /home should always be a separate partition

7) alway backup your data to be safe

to 3 - typo, should be dot files?

Anyway, If I were you I'd wait for initial problems to get ironed out. I am having issues and whichever forum I frequent people are experiencing the odd unexpected quirk.

I reckon 4.6.1 or 4.6.2 might be a safe bet - not sure what kubuntu's plans are, though. BTW, you may enjoy www.kubuntuforums.net

Though I have been running 11.04 safely and successfully for a while now (as my main OS), I do recommend waiting until Final, or at least the Release Candidate if you want to do some testing. Right now there will be too many changes in in xorg, and in general if you use the proprietary video drivers, these usually don't even work until much closer to the release date. The new xorg stuff is just beginning to be added at the moment, and there even is a new kernel version to deal with as well.

I second toad's recommendations. However I find that Natty's combo of kernels/drivers/KDE SC 4.6 is MUCH snappier, smoother, and feels even more stable than simply running 4.6 in 10.10. There is one common upgrade bug users have experienced
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/index.p ... =3115441.0

I think 11.04 will be quite the nice release for Kubuntu