It's one of the biggest gotchas for alternative operating systems -- at some point in the middle of one project's release cycle, some other component that's tied in some way to the original project's functionality gets a whizbang new update that's significant enough that full-fledged integration has to wait until the next release. Of course, there are ways around this for those who just can't wait, but these work arounds might not always be as straightforward as one would hope.
The KDE team continues to roll out updates, enhancements and new features for the KDE 4 desktop environment. The sticking point here is that different users on different machines might find the updates are neat little improvements -- or absolutely vital. And a distribution needs to balance stability and utility of its official packages with the needs of its userbase.
The openSUSE community recently took charge of this particular situation in the form of the openSUSE 11.1 KDE4 Reloaded respin. The installable liveCD, masterminded by Stephan 'Beineri' Binner, incorporates the openSUSE 11.1 image (complete with updates issued since its release) and the KDE 4.2.2 desktop.
