After adding the beta PPA, I opened Software Settings > Add and Remove Software (KPackageKit), refreshed the update list, selected all updates, and clicked apply. A few minutes later it was installed and I rebooted, but… there was a problem. After logging in, plasma-workspace immediately crashed. I could still bring up the run-command interface and launch a terminal, but this frustratingly blank screen was not what I was hoping for. After trying several reboots and trying to log into KDE recovery mode (to no avail), I launched a terminal and did ’sudo apt-get install dist-upgrade’. It downloaded some more kde-base and kde-workspace packages. I rebooted and… WOO HOO! KDE 4.4 RC desktop!

I still don’t know if some of the packages broke or didn’t install correctly the first time or what, but it is working now, and I am enamored.

Here are some screenshots:

[View with PicLens]

Update 1: I have so far been unable to get the smooth-tasks plasmoid to not crash the plasma workspace. I am hoping that a fix is on the way soon. I miss my smooth-tasks

Update 2: I installed the KDE development packages through apt-get, including kdebase-workspace-dev and used Mercurial to checkout the latest source code from bitbucket. After building and installing, smooth-tasks works great!