KDE Bloated? (Windows was winning)

Today, I was surprised to discover something that makes me rather unhappy. I have in my possession a Compaq Armada 1700. I just put Windows XP Pro (SP3 beta 3264...) on it, and wanted to see about Linux. So, I grabbed Kubuntu 7.04, slipped it in, and got angry. It didn't load KDE! It sat there for an hour after displaying the KDE load screen... Distressed, I loaded up Knoppix 4.2 and it did just fine. I'm sad to say, KDE's newer versions are less compatible than Windows XP... Depressing.