I have a machine with kde4 and another with plasma 5, and I agree with you Eric, my experience is the same as you ;)

"New" is not always better, one, and, two, from a personal point of view, as you mentioned, kde-5
is flat out ugly as compared to kde-4. It is purely subjective, I know, but how anyone can call kde-5 better looking than kde-4.... is..... well, as I said, it is subjective.
OTOH, kde-5 does seem to make better use of the hardware resources, but I don't see how all the clutter from the dozens and dozens of configuration files helps.

Everything was better in the past, even the future ;-)

Would you care to elaborate what made you come to this conclusion? I have been using FVWM for over a year now but I do not follow the development closely.

That is my experience as well. KDE 5 is very responsive compared to KDE 4. In my opinion it's time to retire KDE 4 from Slackware. If it happens KDE 5 will be a welcome addition to the -current branch.

KDE v4 was the Vista of the Linux world.

I'm one of those dinosaurs that hates change. However, there's nothing nicer than Plasma 5 appearance wise. I've had that looking incredibly nice. I have used it in kubuntu (kubuntu backports PPA), arch, manjaro and slackware-current (Alien Bob, of course) and when I set that up for other people I take the time and configure it to blow their minds before I give it to them.

While I don't want that anymore, preferring something a bit simpler yet having enough functionality, I do have to say that the alien build of Plasma 5 that I had was one of the best builds of it that I've ever had. Absolutely everything worked, which is more than I can say for most builds. The last time I had one where absolutely everything worked was the first time I tried it, Plasma 5.12 in kubuntu backports. After that there was always some styling function, or effects that didn't work.

Just a sense from occasionally following the forums that the developers are very knowledgeable but also a little possessive about their baby.

With regard to dropped modules, man pages at fvwm.org will show you they have deprecated an awful lot in recent versions. Things like the Fvwm taskbar, for example. I haven't followed Fvwm development closely enough to know whether it was really warranted or just the whim of a developer.

The future isn't what it used to be...

... and it never was :D

Interesting that XFCE seems to be an almost default go-to when people get fed up elsewhere. I was a die hard Gnome user for a few years and never did 'get' KDE. When I switched to Slackware I just fell into a comfort zone with XFCE for years.

I'm at the point now where changes in my workflow have made tiling very attractive. Starting with terminals and tmux, my frustrations finally lead me to i3[-gaps] and I'm quite happy with it. I might give DWM a run if it proves more flexible. But overall my days of caring about eye-candy appear largely over (though I never say never).

Xfce largely "Just Works." It comes with everything most users would ever need, and allows for enough customization to keep most users happy. I don't run Xfce proper, but I use various Xfce applications: Thunar, xfce4-terminal (sometimes), xfce4-panel (and several plugins), and xfce4-power-manager.

I wouldn't say dwm is more flexible than i3, but it's arguably easier to set up.

Funny that you mention looks Eric.
I like Plasma 5's Breeze very much (except for small things such as scrollbars which I find atrocious), but I like the old industrial look of KDE1/Win95 much more. Just recently a window decoration and look and feel package known as "Reactionary" was launched at the KDE Store and I was really happy. Now I alternate among the two looks: Breeze and Reactionary, and I'm a happy camper :)