Will the keyboard operation of KDE 4 ever be as good as in 3.5? I am very reluctant to switch to KDE 4 before this is as good as, or preferably better than, in KDE 3.5.

With this vague question, it is hard to give you an answer. What exactly do you miss in KDE4? Talking about keyboard navigation in KDE4 I personally missing nothing, but needs can differ widely. If you miss a specific feature, you should consider filing a wish list item on bugs.kde.org to bring it to the devs attention.

I can mention some:
- shortcuts do not work (you can assign one, but it does not do anything)
- multi media keys do not work. E.g. volume buttons are disfunctional on my HP laptop

Using KDE 4.1.2 on Arch (not KDEmod)

Hello XiniX!

OK, so multimedia keys don't work either. I normally only use standard 105-key keyboards so that was new to me, though not unexpected. I have managed to assign at least some keyboard shortcuts in 4.1 but at the cost of quite a few mouse clicks. I think a user interface should be totally controllable without a special pointing device.

XiniX wrote:- multi media keys do not work. E.g. volume buttons are disfunctional on my HP laptop

My multi-media keys work on a MS natural keyboard.
I had to choose a keyboard layout first and then assign the volume up/down, toggle mute, etc to the correct audio channel in the kmix shortcuts.

KDE 4.2.x still have the following limitations
- Keyboard navigation does not work in folder view widget (even if set as desktop)
- No secondary shortcuts for KWin (I used to have two shortcuts for closing a window in KDE3)