the last screenshot I saw of "new, shiny" KDE looked NOTHING like what I was accustomed to seeing, all 2D and FLATSO and "Gnome 3-ish"... like they drank the 2D FLATSO coolaid or something.
It's a theme you're looking at. You can change that in a few seconds!
I was "talking" to someone the other day (on a forum) about how he had tried to get people interested in Linux (Xfce), and they rejected it out of hand when they saw it. That amazed me-- do people really not realize that you can change the appearance of things, particularly something like Linux (where product branding doesn't matter and choice has always been a priority)?
The KDE distros I've tried come with several widget themes (Oxygen, Fusion, Redmond, Breeze) and several icon themes, along with many color schemes (and you can make your own). If that's not good enough, install the QtCurve widget theme (really a theme engine), and you will have nearly limitless control over every element of the UI appearance-wise without having to touch a config file.
You've been poisoned by too much iOS, MacOS, Windows, or something that has made you forget that you can change the appearance in Linux. The rest of the world may have concluded that options just confuse the poor little brains of the end users, so nearly every customization option has to be removed to keep their precious little heads from exploding, but KDE isn't a part of that world. Even the more minimal DEs like LXDE and Xfce use GTK+ themes and whatever icon scheme you wish. We're not using iOS here.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
