Sorry if I haven't quite figured out what exactly these forums are yet.. (Bug reports? Support? More?)

How do I know what part of my Linux experience is distro territory and which is KDE territory? For instance.. I copied ~15GB of files from a network folder to a storage partition on my hard drive using Dolphin. It gave me the little popup in the corner with the status of the copy (loading bar with % complete), but then it disappeared, leaving me blind to % completeness! (The copy continued on to finish.) On a smaller transfer, I didn't have this problem; The popup stayed to completion. Is this a KDE bug? Dolphin bug? Kubuntu bug?

From where I stand, it just seems like the OS, from my point of view, is KDE. Anyway, help appreciated! ^^;

--Edit--
Okay, not a bug. I can access the window from the system tray. But I'd still like to know about OS vs KDE, please .

This is KDE specific. It is the notifcation system of KDE which has been introduced for KDE 4.2

The Distribution is all the underlying infrastructure including device drivers, low level utilities, package managers, etc.

KDE is the most user visible and includes the Desktop you interact with, the login system ( sometimes ), and the applications that come with it ( such as Amarok, Konqueror, Dolphin, KGet, Okular and Gwenview )

Not all applications available on your desktop may be KDE applications however ( Banshee or Nautlius for instance which are GNOME applications ). KDE applications usually have an "About KDE" entry under the "Help" menu

Okay, what you said makes sense. I'm still not entirely sure, but okay. What I'm most confused about is this: if everything I interact with is KDE, and if my distro is only what I don't see (in the background), and if every distro is still similar enough to be "Linux," then what exactly is different from one distro to another? Seems like, as a newbie, I wouldn't even notice a difference. Anyway, I don't want to take up your valuable time! Consider it a rhetorical question as thanks, unless you just want to answer.

"then what exactly is different from one distro to another?"

when in doubt google
http://www.google.com/search?client=ope ... 8&oe=utf-8
especially this one http://www.thejemreport.com/content/view/215/74/

some points - how and what frequency it is updated (deb vrs rpm vrs tar), what packages are included, what purpose (server, desktop), how often updated, community, etc .....

google01103 wrote:"then what exactly is different from one distro to another?"

when in doubt google
http://www.google.com/search?client=ope ... 8&oe=utf-8
especially this one http://www.thejemreport.com/content/view/215/74/

some points - how and what frequency it is updated (deb vrs rpm vrs tar), what packages are included, what purpose (server, desktop), how often updated, community, etc .....

Thanks! I didn't fully read the article (don't have time), but I took plenty out of it, and your points helped a lot, too. Based on everything, I'd say I chose the right distro (Kubuntu)! Next on the list would probably be openSUSE. :P