I find it very interesting to read this. I too am currently taking my first steps with Linux, and for this I'm using Suse 11 with KDE 4. I liked what I saw (for one reason or the other, I absolutely hate Gnome, and I can't stand that orangy-brown theme in Ubuntu), but now it seems KDE 4 is not even 'the real thing'.

In other words: it's intriguing to hear that KDE 3.5 was even better. Maybe I should install that instead.