Q: Why does Kubuntu exist?

[A. Rothman]

For me, Kubuntu filled a very well defined goal: migration away from 
Windows to a FOSS/Linux environment. This environment includes several 
facets: server (http,smtp,svn,etc.), desktop (for family use), 
development environment, and media center (music/movies), all running on 
one machine. I had been running all of this on winxp for years before 
that, and as a growing FOSS supporter/developer, I figured it's time to 
take the plunge. I actually started off by trying this migration on my 
day-job development box at the office, which mostly worked but didn't 
entirely play nice with an all-windows shop. At home this was less of a 
problem. I had briefly tried out other distros, and pretty quickly 
settled on kubuntu. First few releases I tried were close, but not quite 
ripe for full migration (e.g. no built-in NTFS support at the time), but 
around Intrepid I saw it might finally be ready to Just Work. Why Kubuntu?

1. Support. Most of the issues I encountered and expected to encounter 
were not KDE specific (drivers, servers, power user utils, networking, 
etc.), and Ubuntu, with 30% linux market share at the time, seemed to 
have by far the widest community support, so finding answers to the 
little problems and questions (and unfortunately there were many) was 
made easier, or at all possible, thanks to all the existing forums, 
wikis, etc. This answers 'why Ubuntu-based?'.

2. A familiar (for a windows user), highly customizable, good looking 
and does-what-I-need desktop environment. The usual GNOME/KDE trade-offs 
apply (I did some research on this at the time). Given the previous 
reason, this answers 'why KDE?'.

And so, for me, the existence of Kubuntu serves as a great answer to the 
question 'What is a good migration path from windows to Linux for a 
power user?' It's not perfect - there are still some glitches and 
inconveniences, but it's nearly so. After a year of using, learning and 
tweaking, it does everything I want the way I want it, and I never 
looked back at windows. Well actually I did, but with a giggle :-)

Amichai