I returned to Linux when Microsoft started aggressively pushing Windows 11 and phasing out 10.

I admit I previously had only a vague idea about KDE's existence - mostly through my know-it-all friend claiming that the Windows Vista/7 look was inspired by it.

Anyway, I installed it as GNOME is not to my taste and indeed it was the Windows experience without the Windows issues, save for some weirdness like e.g. Open In Terminal taking its sweet time to actually open.

Initially I was missing HDR, but Plasma 6 supports it and both Chromium and Firefox (though the latter in developer edition only and behind a flag at that) appear to have shipped their implementations, though I haven't managed to get it to work yet - the important part is that there's no indefinite delivery timeline any more.