My family flew over to the USA to visit my wife's family in October 2011, and I couldn't pass up an opportunity to buy something technological for a lower price than I can get it in South Africa. One of the things I'd been wanting to buy for a long time was a netbook.

With this in mind, I did some searching and some research and decided to buy the Toshiba NB505 from Amazon.com. A number of the reviews on Amazon mentioned using Linux (usually Ubuntu) on the netbook, and they all said that it ran well. With this key piece of information, and a friend's recommendation of a similar model from Toshiba, I decided to save up some money and buy the NB505.

As any other freedom-loving geek, I was rather excited when I heard about the first beta release of Ubuntu 11.10, the next release of Ubuntu. This also meant that Kubuntu would have their first beta out as well. I figured that the 3 of you who read my blog would probably like to see a review of Ubuntu's less well known sibling.

I initially only installed Kubuntu in a VirtualBox virtual machine, but realised that without actually using it, this review wouldn't be worth it. So, not being averse to shiny new software, I decided to upgrade my desktop to Kubuntu 11.10 as well.

Beta 1 of Ubuntu and Kubuntu 11.10, aka Oneiric Ocelot, has just been released. This is the first really big release of the next version of Ubuntu. Since I am a KDE/Kubuntu guy, I thought I'd do a review of the Kubuntu release.

Ubuntu folks don't need to feel left out, OMG! Ubuntu! has done a review of the Ubuntu release, so head on over there to read what they've said about Ubuntu, while I see what the new version of Kubuntu is like.