Comment 3 for bug 243616

Tricky one--many of the problems people are having with KDE 4.0 are supposed to be solved in KDE 4.1, so from that point of view you should upgrade to get the latest. On the other hand, KDE 4.1 is still in beta, and is not an official part of Ubuntu (I don't know if 4.1 final will be released for Hardy or not. I hope so, but I doubt it.). As I say, you may be best heading to bugs.kde.org to discuss your problems with KDE 4.1.

If you're interested in testing beta software, then you might want to test the betas of Intrepid when they come out--these will include KDE 4.1 when it's released. Of course, it comes with the usual caveats about being beta software: don't use it unless you're comfortable testing something that may be unstable.

I don't know about the graphics thing, I'm afraid. Linux graphics is rather a minefield. Best suggestion is that you try googling things like "Compositing on " + the model of your graphics card, and see if anyone else has made it work.