Hello there, I am a long time linux user and have used KDE off and on throughout the years.
These days I use both KDE and Gnome but more or less use Gnome (I know, I know Boo! Hiss! Boo!)
But thats mainly because of my feelings towards KDE right now.
KDE has really gotten bad with its 4 series, just when KDE3 was fine tuned enough it seems it was ditched by most distros because KDE4 was "hip cool and the wave of the future"
Of course I blame those distros who have ditched KDE3 for 4 more then the KDE development team but still KDE4 still feels lacking to me.
KDE4 needs to focus less on flash and more on stability, I mean fancy effects are one thing but stability and reliability should be more important.
I mean look at Vista, it made the mistake of focusing on flash and ditched a lot on functionality.
It should have taught the lesson of more doesnt mean better.
Also certain bugs must be patched sooner and should have been more checked like the audio CD bug that so many had.
I also want to see some features added hopefully by the next release, KDE3 had a media manager so when you inserted a DVD or something it would play it with say Kaffiene.
The only one I see come up in most is Dragonplayer and well Dragonplayer... sucks.
Sorry to say it, but Dragonplayer sucks.
I wish Kaffiene's development on KDE4 wasnt belated, but I do understand its not officially a part of the KDE team...
It should have been, as has K3b.
I really wish the main KDE team would merge these applications that I find very important.

Look I am not trying to be down on stuff here, I just wish there was more collaboration between the projects.
In Gnome Totem, Brasero and stuff like that are maintained by those behind gnome and maybe this here is the main weakness of KDE.

The developers of both Kaffeine and K3b have placed them in KDE Extragear, which is decision by them to exclude themselves from the main release system. In KDE 4.3, a control module will ship that will allow you to confgure the actions available when a new device is connected

KDE is developing nicely; I tried KDE4 when it first came out over a year ago and it was promising but it then seemed to regress for a time with things which had worked with KDE4.0 no longer working with later releases. I came back on board with KDE4.2, albeit with KDE3 as the backup in openSUSE, and I have stopped using KDE3 though having KDE3 apps like Kontact and Kaffeine available appears to make things easier as they continue to work as they always have.

Though there was a debate in openSUSE about whether to carry on with KDE3 in 11.1, they decided to and that I think may have contributed to my far more positive experience of the transition.

bcooksley wrote:In KDE 4.3, a control module will ship that will allow you to confgure the actions available when a new device is connected

That is really good to hear