I'm giving kde a run with the latest release of 12.04

As the kde forum seems to be offline. Thought I'd ask here:

1. The kernel in the 12.04_3 release is not an updated version as in Ubuntu- why is that? - Will I have to toggle backports to get the kernel updates?

2. If I add the kde ppa, will muon pick all the upgrades up or should I do dist-upgrade?

Any pointers welcome