Wow! From the look of this thing you would be forgiven for thinking the Kubuntu team have spent six months spitting and polishing this fine operating system to make it a really smooth user experience. I have just installed the 64bit version onto my aging Acer laptop and it has taken remarkably little time to get everything up and running.

Previously I was running Kubuntu Feisty, which was pretty good but suffered from annoyances like it was quite difficult to get Flash working in Firefox (as no 64bit version is available). Now the Ubuntu team (Kubuntu is Ubuntu with the KDE desktop rather than Gnome) have integrated Firefox more fully with the (K)ubuntu experience by linking Firefox to the package manager. When I went to a site requiring Flash, all I had to do was click on "Install Missing Plugin" and then follow the prompts. Kubuntu then took care of getting 32 bit flash working with 64bit Firefox. So now I can enjoy all of those Flash sites without lots of hassle.

Another aspect that has become a lot easier is getting the wireless to work on Acer laptops. The chipset is a Broadcom one and the Acer units require that the wireless card should be switched on through software before use. So you need a Broadcom driver and a kernel module named acer_acpi to switch it on. This used to involve obtaining the Broadcom firmware and installing it manually. The acer_acpi module used to have to be downloaded and installed. Now Kubuntu's restricted drivers manager includes a way to get the firmware installed in only a few clicks of the mouse. On the acer_acpi side a project has come together to create a package and a repository. It can be found at http://code.google.com/p/acer-acpi-deb/ and despite the beta warnings I can confirm that it is working for me without any manual intervention.

I have been using Kubuntu and Ubuntu for about two years and have always been impressed and how much progress is made in each release. It is proof that Linux is ready for the desktop and can provide a pleasant user experience.