stalebrim Lots of utilities and software for various use cases. Not just home desktop usage.
The menus don't reflect a lot of difference, comparing the menus from Kubuntu 22.04 LTS and Kubuntu 22.10 to Solus Plasma. Kubuntu includes VLC and a half dozen K-games, and a few additional utilities (e.g. KDE Connect SMS in addition to KDE Connect, for example) but I do not see what I expected to see, a lot of additional apps.
stalebrim (Was there an alternate install option that allowed one to choose what to install? Or was it a separate image?)
Kubuntu offers three ISO's to download and install -- 20.04 LTS, 22.04 LTS, and 22.10. 22.10 is 4.0 GB, 22.04 LTS is 3.5 GB. I don't know about 20.04 LTS.
Installation is normal Ubuntu. User is given a choice between "Normal Installation", which is the DE and installed apps, and "Minimal Installation", which are browser and utilities.
Nothing seems any different from Ubuntu or Ubuntu Budgie installation options.
On the whole, Kubuntu 22.04 LTS seems a normal Ubuntu and KDE Plasma distribution. Kubuntu 22.10 seems to have bugs/issues (expected of a development release, I guess) so I removed that VM and will use Kubuntu 22.04 LTS for purposes of comparison with Solus Plasma and Quark OS.
Edit/Update: I looked at the software center, going through all the installed apps, application add ons, and Plasma add ons and it rapidly became clear that Kubuntu has a ton of stuff included in the build that Solus didn't include. I think that the build motto must have been "If in doubt, stick it in." Reminds me of a bad attic.
Kubuntu is a well-designed Plasma implementation. But for the Ubuntu base, I like it.
Edit/Update: I installed Kubuntu's minimum installation this morning. Much more to my liking than the cruft-laden normal installation. All the Kubuntu utilities seem to be present, along with Firefox. No games, and LibreOffice and other apps will need to be installed, but a functional version of Kubuntu, albeit less than most home desktop users would need. Snap support is native, as expected given that Kubuntu is a Ubuntu flavor. Flatpak is not installed in the minimal installation, but can be installed using the command sudo apt install flatpak. A small thing, but the Discover software center identifies applications installed as Snaps, allowing removal and substitution in cases where that makes sense.
The exercise of comparing Kubuntu's normal and minimal installations reminded me of how good a job the Solus Plasma team did in creating a trim but cruft-free working environment. I particularly want to mention that the "Solus Dark" theme that Solus Plasma uses is outstanding in comparison to the washed-out grey-ish default theme used by Kubuntu. Kubuntu offers an Oxygen theme that is close, but not quite. Crisp is good.