Ronnie,

That is not correct.  Natty is not bleeding edge--it is released.
Maverick is not leading edge--it is the previous, outdated version.
An alpha release would be bleeding edge, and a beta would be leading
edge.  But semantics are irrelevant, anyway.

The point is that Kubuntu has been released, once again, with a
showstopper bug.  This is far worse than the bug a few releases back
that had PulseAudio, and all sound, broken out-of-the-box, because
this breaks networking out-of-the-box.  That means that the "average",
non-technical users that Ubuntu has stated as its target will be
unable to even get online to find the solution.  They will almost
surely give up on Ubuntu, and perhaps Linux as a whole, and go back to
Windows.  Even aside from the technical problem and the frustration
for individual users, surely you can recognize the long-term damage
this kind of problem does to Ubuntu's reputation.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with being "cooler" or "flashy."
This should be a release-critical/blocker bug--Natty should have been
held back until it was completely fixed.  There is NO EXCUSE for
releasing a distro that has fundamental functionality like networking
that is just plain broken.  The sad truth is that this is not a rare
kind of problem with Ubuntu: after six and a half years and fourteen
releases, new releases are still being pushed out that are
fundamentally broken.  On top of that, this particular bug has been
filed for two and a half years, and is triaged as "High," yet Natty
was pushed out anyway.

SABDFL filed Bug #1 as his #1 goal, but that is nothing but a joke as
long as Ubuntu is released with these kinds of problems.  Or is it
just Kubuntu that is pushed out half-baked?  (Which I don't get, since
he has stated he likes and supports KDE--actions speak louder, though,
don't they?)

Ubuntu is not a piddly little distro with 20 users.  It's one of the
top three Linux distros on the planet.  It's been leading the way
forward on the desktop since it was begun.  It's unacceptable for it
to be released with such major bugs!  What happened to pride in
quality and engineering?

The solution is so simple: just MAKE THE DECISION to not release a new
version until it's ready.  You know, like Debian has always done.
Now, now, slow down: it's entirely possible to push out releases on a
fairly-regular schedule like Ubuntu does while still not allowing RC
bugs to be ignored--it doesn't have to mean delaying releases for
years.  It just means DECIDING to put quality first, and PRIORITIZING
issues, and DECIDING to fix them before making a release.  And yes,
you bet I'm using capital letters, because this is a serious problem
that continues to go unnoticed and unfixed for YEARS.
Out-of-the-box-broken networking needs to be SHOUTED FROM THE ROOFTOPS
until it's taken seriously enough to never again be released this way.
 Otherwise Kubuntu will quickly shrivel and die.

I'm afraid your apologetics simply make no sense.  If I accept your
reasoning, then I must conclude that Kubuntu has become nothing but a
joke or an experiment, and is wholly unsuitable for general usage.  Is
this how you see Kubuntu?  Is this the goal Kubuntu should be striving
for?

If your aspirations for Kubuntu are so low as to gladly accept
completely broken releases and to happily release them into the wild
for the world-at-large to utterly waste their time on installing and
discovering complete failure on the part of the Kubuntu release
process, then I suggest you unsubscribe from these bug reports.
What's the point of being involved in bug reports if you don't care
about their being fixed?  You might as well use Windows if you're
willing to put up with such absurd bugs that go unfixed for years.