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Regarding my earlier comments on whether anyone has tried KDE4 recemtly, I downloaded a KDE 4.9 testing LiveCD with OpenSUSE 12.1. While the boot sequence was slow and the default graphics are as bad as I remembered, the killer was that the entire virtual machine locked up as soon as I clicked the Kicker menu icon. I think I'll wait until OpenSUSE officially releases a LiveCD with KDE 4.9 before trying again. :-)
Tim
Quick update. I burned the image to a CD, which resolved the crashing issue. While I note that KDE4 has drastically improved since the early days, it still is not something that I would choose to use over TDE/XFCE. Even after "reverting" to folder view and other KDE3-esque settings, I found myself not only using many more mouse clicks than under TDE but also it seemed like I did not have full control of the environment. Setting a screen saver? Not intuitive (actually I was not able to find the control at all within a reasonable time). Opening a terminal? All the lines were cut in half. Run a custom command? Could not find a way to launch the minicli from a menu. Press the power button (e.g. to power off)? The screen corrupts itself.
In short, I think KDE4 needs a lot more work to be useful for people like me who want to hybrid an old-school terminal and modern GUI experience.
Tim