KDE 4.0 - which introduced plasma - was released in 2006, and it was awful and wasn't supposed to be generally available (blame the distros and/or poor version naming). By version 4.5 (2010), KDE had stabilized. By the time Gnome 3 and Windows 8 were released in 2011/2012 respectively, KDE plasma was pleasant to use and rock-solid

It felt great to watch Gnome stumble after all the shit-talking, some schadenfreude was in order. I didn't care much for Windows 8; Vista was a the bigger mess of a release.