I get where Dave is coming from. KDE is very hard to beat as an 'Office' Desktop Environment. KDE attempts to create a common UI look and feel, and a broad breadth of integrated applications out of the box.
KDE, Gnome, OSX, Unity, Window *, all are successful because they appeal to a large enough group of someones, and not always for the same reason.
KDE, Gnome, Unity and OSX have all enjoyed increased success because they provide an out of the box usefulness that Microsoft is pulling away from...and some people just dislike the M$ 'evil empire' so much they will go out of their way to boycott them, on principal.
I personally have been using NetBSD since 0.8 ... technically before at 386BSD 0.1! Over the years I would try out "Linux" and found it chaotic, fragmented, and inconsistent. I've stuck with NetBSD because it is planed, designed, well thought out, consistent, modular, stable, and I'm very comfortable with the environment. Most all the tools I need to do my work.
I'll use KDE Desktop, but most often WindowMaker, and KDE apps under it. Yeah, weird combo, but I've never quite gotten over NeXTStep. ;-)
It seems to me, the issues with KDE stem form the Linux hack and patch mentality. The very attitude, which G.N.U. community laughs at every time Microsoft releases patches on Tuesday.
I have/was running Ubuntu, to cross compile some code, and the rate of Ubuntu patch/security update is worse than Microsoft!
- jam
This is definitely NOT directed at NetBSD developers, but rather at the Linux brained KDE developers who seem to fail to understand the idea of software usability and continuity.
I stopped using KDE a while ago. Rather than ranting perhaps you just need to look at the options. I am just trying IceWM and am liking it a lot. It let's me set up a desktop my way and is quite configurable.