It's still absolutely wild to me that KDE4 got released in the state it was in. I loved KDE3, maybe it had some issues but it mostly Just Worked as a Windows XP-like desktop environment. KDE4 was unusably broken for years and years, it's basically why I stopped using a Linux desktop.
I had strong opinions about KDE 3 & 4, and have been using KDE 5 exclusively for over a year now. I love it and couldn't imagine going back to a different DE or operating system.
> I loved KDE3, maybe it had some issues but it mostly Just Worked as a Windows XP-like desktop environment.
But Windows XP had way more polished look&feel (as did any other Windows version). KDE 3 looked ugly. KDE 4 looked OK but kind of wasteful in terms of screen area.
> KDE4 was unusably broken for years and years, it's basically why I stopped using a Linux desktop.
I just went to XFCE which has hardly changed at all since then. XFCE is always a perfect fallback DE for weird times. I also went XFCE (for about a year or 2 every time) when Unity was first introduced and when it got retired. I just disabled the standard XFCE panels and added a 3-rd party dock instead.
If KDE5 is finally good, I'll give it a shot.