YES! It took me long enough with all of the work that was going on at the same time, but I would like to present you the ability to test out KDE 4.1 Beta 1 in Kubuntu Hardy right now! It seems we have worked out a majority of the quirks, but I can’t promise you that you may not get an overwrite issue with dpkg just yet. I do think we got them all covered, but you may have something nobody else does, so we didn’t catch it. We have been testing these packages since Saturday/Sunday and I have updated them as people reported issues.

To top it off, I have also included the KDE 4 PIM packages that contain applications such as Kontact, KMail, KOrganizer, Akregator, and more! The package name to get all of that is kdepim-kde4.

So, to install and test these new packages, please add the following to your Kubuntu Hardy /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-members-kde4/ubuntu hardy main

Once you have done that and you already have a previous KDE 4 version installed, type the following in Konsole:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Otherwise type the following:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install kubuntu-kde4-desktop

Note you may need to install kdebase-runtime-data-common in order to get Application directory icons under the Kickoff menu.

To install the KDE 4 PIM packages, type the following in Konsole:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install kdepim-kde4

I would recommend that you backup your ~/.kde4 directory if there is anything that you might need, and then delete the ~/.kde4 directory to limit any quirks you may receive. After you have done this, update away, reboot for good measure, select KDE 4 from KDM, and enjoy!

I ask that you join us in #kubuntu-kde4 on IRC (Freenode) to discuss any issues that you may have. We can all work together to see if the issue we are seeing is a packaging/Kubuntu only/KDE 4.1 Beta 1 only issue and if not, file some reports on bugs.kde.org.

Thanks everyone for your patience! I will continue to work on the extragear packages and roll them out within the next day or so. Those should be fairly easy 🙂

Have fun!