I've been putting it off long enought, its time to upgrade to Karmic fully rather than woosing about running just the kernel. So today I bit the bullet and let update-manager move me up to Karmic. So far ... well I am able to post this so things aren't all bad. In fact so far things are pretty good. As I have an all Intel box here I have Kernel Mode Setting (KMS) goodness. Rather unexpectedly I have full compositing of opengl apps!?! What does that mean, well it means that I can move an glxgears window around without it making a mess, and even 'tilt' my compiz cube desktop and see those applications running on the surfaces of it. Most impressive.
On the negative side I have had a couple of odd moments. When quitting some full screen 3D games I have ended up with my main desktop resolution changed, in one case to 640x480 which was a challenge to sort out. Also my sensors config was dropped on the floor. Most oddly I had to remove my twitter and identi.ca accounts from gwibber and readd them before they would do anything other than error on me.
Its probabally a bit early to recommend you come and join me in the wild-lands, but at least some of the wild animals out here are friendly!