How To Install/Upgrade KDE 4.6.4 in Kubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal?

Although Kubuntu wasn't there with Ubuntu when it first launched. First it used to be just Gnome. I remember reading a post (few years ago) from a fellow KDE/Qt developer saying that how much he loved the stability of Ubuntu and etc. It was all good to him but being a KDE fan... he missed Konqueror (which is one of the most advanced File manger + an advanced Web browser, etc) and other aspects of the KDE desktop. So he decided to "grab" few others and started KDE "ing" the Ubuntu OS.

Like most of you I too tasted the first editions of Kubuntu. It wasn't that stable at that time. Bugger gave me errors and crashed most of the time and I actually liked that. This didn't concern me much because I think when you have an OS that crash a bit more than others, it's either because the developers don't know what the heck they're doing or they've put some hard work that just isn't there, yet. That's what I felt with Kubuntu.

It may have crashed a bit but I did feel something unique about it. Anyway the times has passed and boy... Kubuntu seems to be pretty good (with the help of the beautiful KDE/Qt4 desktop) these days apart from all those issues it had. Seriously if there was a beauty content, Ubuntu is certainly way behind :P.

Okay let me come back to the story, recently KDE released their desktop to the next version which makes it 4.6.4. Although with the already installed version in Kubuntu KDE packages you won't be getting a lot of new features yet it'll bring minor updates and bug fixes nonetheless.

The always awesome Plasma Desktop/Workspace...

And the best thing about Ubuntu is its ability to let the users update/upgrade their entire operating system with one or three commands!. Although the 4.6.4 builds aren't available in the official Kubuntu repository but as always you can install it using the Kubuntu Launchpad PPA.

You can do this using two main methods. One way is to use the GUI tools which are "very user-friendly" yet it's a bit of a long process which is gonna take some time Or you can use the "non-user-friendly" Terminal and do it in three steps!. So, let me humbly present you how to install or upgrade to the KDE 4.6.4 desktop in Kubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal.

Open your Terminal and enter the below commands in your Terminal and when asked confirm. The rest will be taken care of. Long live the Launchpad :).

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:kubuntu-ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

Enjoy while it's free (just kidding :D).