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KDE Plasma 5.9 Released (softpedia.com)
KDE has announced the release and general availability of the KDE Plasma 5.9 desktop environment for GNU/Linux operating systems. While it only took a few months to develop and isn't a long-term supported (LTS) version like KDE Plasma 5.8, the update does have several new features and improving Wayland support. Softpedia reports: Probably the most important one, which will make many KDE users upgrade from KDE Plasma 5.8 LTS or previous versions, is the return of Global Menus, a feature that was available in the KDE 4 series of the desktop environment. Only now, after numerous requests from users, did the KDE developers manage to implement Global Menus again in KDE Plasma 5.9. Quite a multitude of improvements have landed in the KDE Plasma 5.9 desktop environment for those who use the next-generation Wayland display server. These include the ability to take screenshots, support for using the color picker, implementation of borderless maximized windows for full-screen support, and support for dragging apps by clicking on an empty area of the user interface using the Breeze style. KDE Plasma Wayland support allows users to set color schemes for windows, which may come in handy for accessibility, implements auto-hide support for panels, and properly displays the window icon on the panel when using X11 apps. Moreover, there's now a new settings tool for configuring touchpads, which you can see in action in the second video attached below. Wayland users can also set up gestures and relative motions. KDE Plasma 5.9 also adds several cool new tools that promise to enhance your productivity. For example, you'll be able to drag a screenshot taken with the Spectacle utility from the notification pop-up straight into a web browser form, chat window, or email composer. There's also a brand-new drag and drop functionality that lets you add widgets directly to the system tray area, and it's now possible to add widgets directly from the full-screen Application Dashboard launcher. KRunner actions like "Open containing folder" and "Run in Terminal" are now displayed in the application launchers for search results powered by KRunner, of course, and there's now a new applet that lets users group multiple widgets together in a single one. You can read the announcement and download KDE Plasma 5.9 via their website.
Everything on linux desktops was more configurable 15 years ago than today, unfortunately. It's the apple effect, people believe that to make something user friendly means to eliminate all the choices.
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What are you talking about? I run KDE / Plasms 5.x and it is blazingly fast. It is also highly configurable and there is simply no other environment I have found (incl. but not limited to e16, e17, fluxbox, fvwm2, LXDE, Gnome et. Al) that accommodates my workflow(s) so well.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
It's hard to erase something that never existed. The original announcement mentions using windows design features, but not the goal of a perfect clone.
There was another Linux desktop whose name escapes me at that time that had that stated goal, not KDE. Most open source projects in the 90's wanted to avoid being sued by Microsoft.
KDE took ideas from many desktop environments, with a strong influence of Windows. The screenshots of KDE1 show a strong visual similarity. The goal was to make it easy for Windows users to switch. KDE had a start menu and task bar which were the biggest innovations in Windows 95. Even apple eventually copied the taskbar. KDE also had the minimise/maximise/close widgets in the same place as MS Windows, and unlike most other graphical environments at that time. However KDE was never limited to copying Windows and even those early versions had features that were better than Windows 95.