I had a few days to kick back and relax, so I thought that I would upgrade my Kubuntu from hardy to intrepid, thus KDE3 to KDE4. My dist-upgrade crashed, leaving my system hooped, so--lacking faith--I downloaded an iso of hardy w/KDE4. That install was smooth, but I have some issues with the resulting KDE4.

Before I describe my issues with KDE4, let me say that I'm delighted that my lcd panel was recognized and X properly configured for it without manual intervention. Excellent. Also, the new look is great.

The issues:

• No sys admin login in "System Settings"
• No user management module in same
• No system services module in same
• No SysGuard "widget" for the panel (watching the cpu meter is great for monitoring builds & rendering & ID'ing browser insanity)
• Seemingly fewer controls available for configuring environment (screensaver, desktop slideshow, panel behaviour [no hiding; no mechanism to rearrange components])
• How do I get rid of the gizmo in the upper right corner?
• No nav trees in Dolphin
• No konsole launch from Dolphin (the "t&rminal" works rather differently and I'm a bit impatient with having to learn the controls for a konsole replacement)

Admittedly, I've gotten lazy and can do much of this on command line, or in other apps, or with a bit more time to change my work habits, but I've grown to see that these were amongst the advantages of KDE. What I'm seeing now is a more controlled user experience in which the user has less access to UI configuration unless they are willing to go to command line. So, is this due to Kubuntu's packaging of KDE4, the not-yet-mature state of KDE4, or a shift in philosophy in KDE4?