If you did not even had legacy tray icons, you probably installed just Gnome on Kubuntu with the wrong package and did not even try to install `ubuntu-desktop` or whatever the metapackage is called that has all the default stuff. So you probably did a double "Doing it Wrong" TM. 15 years and still clueless, of course you hate everything.
Why are you babyraging like a petulant child because someone said something slightly mean about your favorite toy? Do you ever take a step back and wonder how you got here? It doesn’t even affect you if my computer doesn’t work. How do you function in society with this little control of yourself?
You are using it on the server, and/or you refuse to learn some basics. Go back to whatever shitty OS you are really using if you think Linux DE are broken or "not even worth" looking into. Linux DEs offer more than any other OS, specifically Gnome and KDE the ones you claim people should avoid. And they are perfectly stable and usable. But if you use them for 50 years and refuse to do a 2-minute search for something that is not the way YOU want to be out of the box, then I guess ALL DEs are broken and not worth looking into from your perspective.
It never fails to amaze me how much the average Linux fanboy hates themselves and other users. I get that 99% of the Linux crowd are normal people but boy do those 1% make themselves known
