I don't know whether this is known bug. It is the first thing I come
across when installing KDE3, so I can imagine it is.
kubuntu-desktop-kde3 depends on ttf-bitstream-vera but it's not
available anymore in karmic as you can see here:
http://packages.ubuntu.com/nl/jaunty/ttf-bitstream-vera
Here is a patch:
http://haar.student.utwente.nl/~julius/patches/no_ttf-bitstream-vera.patch
I just removed the package from the dependencies. This allows me to
install everything, but somehow also brings in some KDE4 packages on my
system. Another option would be to add this package to the KDE3 repository.