[jwsolomon]

As other have pointed out, the main issue with KDE 4 is one of terminology. Instead of beta 1 and 2 for "feature release" 4.2, KDE 4.2 should itself be called a beta release, with a series of builds.

Then of course, there is the question as to whether KDE 4-4.2 meet a reasonable standard for beta quality. In opensource software development alphas aren't internal, but the alpha label serves as a warning. Personally, I think Opensuse (and other distros) should have waited until kde 4.3 and then even labeled that as beta software, keeping 3.5 as the default. A working environment for a packaged "operating system" should be really stable. Crashes with plasma and dolphin file transfers, for example, should have been approaching extreme rarity before KDE 4 was included as a default desktop option. Likewise, yet to be updated versions of knetworkmanager and kmix visually glitch, but an operating system should have fit and finish, to avoid comparison with Windows Vista.