I only recently found out Blackberry still make phones and they still have the physical keyboard! One of my coworkers has one and I did a double take when I first seen it.
Have you been able to update the flatpak version yet? I also get the pop-up when launching Vesktop telling me there's an update. But when I when I try update through flathub it says I'm on the newest version already.
Yeah same here I got zero tolerance with spyware/telemetry and it's one of the main reasons I switched to Linux in the first place.
Do I believe KDE would misuse my data? Nope not really but it's not something I want to promote no matter how anonymized the data is or how nicely they ask.
Same rule goes for any project even ones I've donated money to.
Only modern Ui trend I've enjoyed is dark mode, I remember using WindowBlinds back on Win7 to make my own dark mode but it still keeping the Aero look.
KDE with Volatile + Avalon icons have been the closest I've gotten to the look I really want on modern systems.
The obvious answer is people who grew up using Macs tend to like the Ui and workflow.
Even though I've never enjoyed my times using MacOS, I'll still sell being able to perfectly clone it's desktop as a feature of Linux for those who do.