KDE still has this mentality, though they try to somewhat sweep it under the rug. Toolbars aren't overflowing anymore... usually. But the menus and dialogs still have those hundreds of options and it definitely gives a feeling that the developers can't commit to decisions themselves.
Really, KDE just has a maximalist philosophy. Shove everything into users' faces all at once because of all possible opinion variations.
Part of why I like GNOME is that it's the exact opposite: minimalism. The options it does offer tend to be the options you actually might want to tweak, and there's not many of them. (In the GUI anyway; GNOME still has lots of options available via dconf-editor/gsettings, basically the GNOME equivalent of the Windows Registry)
Really, KDE just has a maximalist philosophy. Shove everything into users' faces all at once because of all possible opinion variations.
Part of why I like GNOME is that it's the exact opposite: minimalism. The options it does offer tend to be the options you actually might want to tweak, and there's not many of them. (In the GUI anyway; GNOME still has lots of options available via dconf-editor/gsettings, basically the GNOME equivalent of the Windows Registry)