Not a major problem, but I wonder how the hell can something like that even make it into an LTS.
That's the root of all your issues.
LTS means they take packages form Unstable and release them on day X no matter the actual state, and than you don't get any updates or fixes for the next 2 years… That's how LTS "works".
I'm using KDE on Debian Testing. Since many years now. It's the most stable and bug free desktop by a large margin compared to any other Linux desktop or the two mayor commercial offerings.
Just don't use any Ubuntu or derivative. They deliver always broken KDE packages. That's a know issues since at least a decade.
KDE Neon (their own self-released hallmark distro) is based on Ubuntu..
Neon is nice to try out bleeding edge stuff right form development. But it's buggy and unstable. Even more than the regular Ubuntu stuff.
Settings reversion is a constant peeve. Seriously, how many times to I have to set the height of the task manager. I have one screen that runs at the same native resolution it's always ran at. Tell me how hard it is to preserve the fucking setting? That's just the most recent annoyance but it's constant things like that where an update reverts a setting or two. No, it's not a distro thing. No, my package manager is not walking all the /home/*/.config trees--I checked.
Less annoying is the constant "how to turn off new intrusive feature" quests that occasionally you have to do. Setting something once and forgetting about it is tolerable. It's having to do it more than once that sets me off.
File indexing, a feature that I never asked for, seems finally under control. It's finally not sending me looking for the off button. Although, the number of times I've had to turn it off again after a new release? I really wish there was more respect for my preferences. Why is it on again??????? Good job fixing it but, jesus christ, why is it on again?
I'd like to not have to constantly set my audio output back to "Analog Surround 5.1 Output", turn the Mic off, and then turn the subwoofer back down. But this is Linux. If the last 20+ years have taught me anything it's that audio will always suck on Linux. Always. Forever. When someone replaces pipewire, in a few years, it will still suck. (BTW, bluetooth touches audio... connect the dots.)
But crashes? For me, they seem rare now. Fantastic job there.
But honestly, I'm not sure those are valid points.
KWin remembers windows settings. If it doesn't for you, you maybe used a switch that disables that (even I would not know where this switch could be). If you have some apps that try hard to use their own placing policy (which KDE apps don't do), there is always the override in the window rules right there to be turned on…
Configured settings never change randomly on updates. It may be that new defaults are set, and in case you've never touched the affected setting it will use its new default thereafter. But once you set something by hand, it will stay so. Forever.
Audio just works. Since many years now. At least if you don't touch it to hard… It of course automatically remembers settings OOTB. I have a setup with Bluetooth speakers, build in audio, and headphones, internal and external mic, and I had never issues since years. Powering the Bluetooth speakers on or off automatically switched profiles, and also always restores the profiles flawlessly. It's still PA, as I'm not going to switch until Debian does so by default. (That's actually always a very good strategy regarding any new shiny things in Linux! It will save you a lot of trouble.)
All the described broken things sound like "a distri thing", to be honest. If it's a Ubuntu derivative I would not even wonder…
OTOH, who really needs a menu bar? You can have nowadays a "command palette" like app menu in KRunner. Much better usability than remembering or searching a menu structure imho—in case you don't need the discoverability of a menu, of course.
And I didn't realise KRunner could do everything in the app menus. I'll definitely look into that.
Cheers
I’ve been on Ubuntu / KDE for the last 2 years, I keep it all patched an up to date. The other week I was playing around with the task bar widgets and somehow managed to delete or hide the text menu from top of every single app window. It drove me nuts, I could alt + f to bring it back for a second but I still can’t figure out what setting it is that I’ve screwed up. I’ve got a work around in place of a little hamburger widget on each window which expands out to the full menu but it’s still annoying.