Today, I am reviewing KDE 4.4.
Well, I couldn't. Before you tar and feather me (appropriate, no?), hear me out. (This is also why I have no screenshots for you, dear readers, today.)
I installed all of the KDE "standard" (not "full" or "minimal") packages in Synaptic. That said, I had installed some packages like KolourPaint and KPackageKit already. This may have contributed to the issue.
After all that was said and done, I closed all of my applications, logged out of GNOME, and logged into KDE. I saw the beautiful KDE splash screen followed by...a really messed up background and no Plasma Panel. The KDE Migration Assistant opened and froze. I tried to do something — anything — to no avail. Frustrated, I logged out, logged back in, and found the same problem. I restarted and tried again, finding myself again with the same problem.
I have come to the conclusion that maybe I should have installed all of the KDE packages at once instead of installing isolated ones first before installing the "standard" collection of packages. That said, I am very disappointed at what has happened today. Hopefully this does not occur on other computers.
On a related note, desktop effects work on my computer now! Yay!
UPDATE: I searched for my problem on the Internet and found out that I hadn't installed the "kubuntu-desktop" package. Sadly, fixing this didn't fix the problem. I tried installing all of the other related KDE packages as well, to no avail. KDE 4.4 seems to be (at the moment, on my computer) a lost cause.