Where Gnome crashes, and runs poorly if at all. When it runs, functionality is, well, reduced.

KDE is rock solid, never crashes, and I have NEVER SEEN the crash wizard thing you are talking about... And I got KDE3.4 by updating from 3.3 via apt.

Perhaps it is the less vetted/experimental things that Ubuntu uses? You know the focus is NOT on KDE there. I don't go over the 'unstable' branch, myself.