Updated: December 10, 2025
When I first tested Kubuntu 24.04, I was rather dismayed. The system felt like one giant regression. Since, I tested the distro multiple times. Each review revealed improvements, alongside various old and new bugs and problems. Even a fresh install of the 24.04.2 release, the second LTS bundle, wasn't as pristine as it could possibly be. But it was a lot better than the early attempt, for sure.
Then, I upgraded my Slimbook Executive, going from 22.04 to 24.04. Boy oh boy was this a rough experience. There were sooooo many upgrade issues, as outlined in my tenth long-term usage report for this laptop. Never before have I had a Linux upgrade with so much cruft and noise. Some of these are Kubuntu-specific, but some, like the format change for the apt sources files, it's 100% Ubuntu, and it's 100% nonsense. Anyway, in today's article, which I hope won't be too acerbic, I want to share some fresh findings from my 24.04 usage, across several physical and virtual systems, all of which serve a different, unique purpose. Let's begin.
System notification spam
Ah yes. You use your Kubuntu normally. You do nothing. Above all, you don't do any updates. All of a sudden, you see a volume of system restart messages from the KDE Daemon. Not one message. Three, seven, ten of these. And all of them weird, because you didn't do anything, so why would your system ask for a reboot. Has it updated itself in the background? How come? Should you be worried something has possessed your machine?
I talked about this issue at great length just recently. It's an example of nannying, plus the fact the Kubuntu desktop is not truly an independent thing. It carries the bulk of Ubuntu weight under the hood, but said Ubuntu and its Gnome desktop have NO awareness of the Plasma environment. And thus, if you want to get rid of stupid update notifications, or have the system not do any updates without your explicit approval, you need to tick no less than THREE different boxes in three different places to sort this out. Absolute nonsense.
Broken color management
As it happens, I discovered this issue at about the same time someone emailed me about this. Kubuntu colors are messed up. For example, a cover of one of my own books. One example, GIMP. Another example, GwenView. Side by side. Notice the difference?
A wee zoom, if you can't see the details:
Why? No idea. But it exemplifies the wild nature of the Linux desktop, and shows what sort of silly, unnecessary problems you might have to contend with. I don't know what happens in Ubuntu proper, or how Fedora does that. However, if you recall my articles from the past, this was a significant problem with Nouveau drivers (not the case here). For example, Fedora 27 from 2017. So yeah, almost a decade later, we have a rather similar issue. That was Gnome back then, but the logic checks out.
SSD disappeared
Oh, what, you say? I recently rejuvenated my ancient G50 laptop with a slab of solid state, which makes it relevant and useful for modern era. It runs Kubuntu 24.04, and after a seemingly ordinary update plus a reboot, the boot menu read: "Checking media". Then, it threw a PXE boot error. What. Twice.
I went into the BIOS menu, and lo and behold, my SSD wasn't recognized anymore! I powered off the machine, powered it on, and this time, everything was fine. But for some reason, probably another blob of zero-test firmware or who knows what, my SSD briefly stopped working. I've never seen this before. Or since.
Kate never shows the last opened document
Try it yourself. Create a new file. Name it something like test.txt. Close it. Now, in Kate's File menu, look what's shown under Recent Documents. It won't be there. Close the text editor, open it. Still not there. Reopen the file, and now it will show up correctly. Why, beats me.
Lots of weird errors in the system log
Then, there's stuff like this:
warning: `kded5' uses wireless extensions which will stop working for Wi-Fi 7 hardware; use nl80211
Or this:
plasmashell[1928]:
file:///usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.plasma.taskmanager/contents/
ui/Task.qml:286: Unable to assign [undefined] to QString
Or this:
plasmashell[1928]: file:///usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5/qml/org/kde/plasma/extras/
PlaceholderMessage.qml:238:5: QML Heading: Binding loop detected for property
"verticalAlignment"
I occasionally go through system logs to see what gives. The worrying problem is the accumulation of errors. There is more and more of them. It's blatantly obvious the "modern" "fast" development model does not scale. It simply does not. But we have more and more code being churned out, all the time. The quality and the stability factors are the living proof that things don't work as well as they could.
System logs should be meaningful. The fact it's all bundled into a single file, with almost no distinction between simple warnings, segfaults, kernel oops, and firmware errors is yet another major issue. There's also no nice way to categorize or parse the messages. KDE has a tool to view system logs using a GUI, and it's reasonable, but it could still be a lot better.
Conclusion
The brittleness and the inconsistency of the Linux world kills me. It saps the essence of my optimism, and I've got plenty of it, despite what you may think. The fact I don't walk around with a fake Californian smile plastered on my face doesn't make me into a curmudgeon. Bad software makes me into a curmudgeon. And the funniest part is, with ALLLLLLLL its problems, Ubuntu (and friends) is still PARSECS ahead of all other distros when it comes to general usability, security, updates, and availability. But that gives me no solace. I have no desire to aim down and feel smug about it. I want operating systems to shine, and get out of my way when I use them.
This has become harder as time goes by, especially in Linux. Ubuntu 14.04 was the peak. Since, it's been a downhill slide, with occasional extra jumps in the direction of gravity. My goals have never changed in the past two decades. I want stability and predictability. Nothing more. If something works, it must work forever. The torture of things going on off randomly, to the whim of casual development disconnected from any concept of product, is awful. Kubuntu 24.04 is okay, but nothing more than that. As hard as I try to like it, it just keeps sabotaging my goodwill. Anyway, this brings us to the end of another mega-happy article.
Cheers.