I have been using the Debian's version of KDE2 since the day the packages came out.

I can tell you one thing: There's little I can't blame on Debian's packaging (and since these are supposed to be unstable, this is not meant as criticizing the .deb packager), or on the feature-not-implemented syndrome (say, Konqueror doesn't support this-or-that).

In the last months (including the self compiled KDE2 before the .debs) KDE2 has, au contraire, impressed me with the overall stability it has. I still use the catchy phrase "I reboot windows more often than I reinstall linux" to lure new people to linux. Using a 2.4.0-test11-pre5, on an unstable distro, with, until recently, phase2 .debs for X4 has proven that things ARE working great, IFF you are using a distro that knows what packaging means. (Sorry to all {other-distro} lovers)

In this case, I really feel the RPMs are to blame, or the RPM-packager, or maybe even the underlying distro (RH7 anyone?) for the overall stability of KDE.

Conclusion: Our main competitor out there (Windows) is much worse than we are at stability.

KDE2 performs well when packaged correctly (or self-compiled, from what I know), and is even faster (on my 133mhz computer) than the other *NIX desktop.

Before blaming the KDE guys for unstable software, look deeper to see if someone isn't really the cause of the screw-up...