I’ve been using Ubuntu for a few years now but came to the realization that KDE apps were better. Unfortunately Kubuntu is more of an after-thought by Canocial thus am going to try openSUSE.
My question is this, which environment should I use?
I don’t like the idea of installing older software (3.5), I’ve heard all the problems with regards to 4.0, and I’m told not to try 4.1 even though it supposedly fixes a number of errors from 4.0.
I’m confused.
start with kde 3.5
add 4.1 later
I agree. KDE 3.5.9 install will let you know what hardware you need to wrestle with, once that’s sorted out (hopefully nothing to see at this point) then go ahead and put on 4.1.
My limited* understanding is that 4.1 is a bit conceptually different than 3.5.x. Maybe after playing with 4.1 you’ll prefer 3.5.9 - this way you’ll already have it installed.
*I haven’t tried 4.x yet.
Good luck whichever way you go!
I have found that KDE 3.5.9 with OpenSUSE 11.0 is the most productive and trouble-free environment. I have another partition with KDE 4.0 (and soon to be 4.1 when the dependency problems on x86-64 are sorted out) but that is just for experimenting. Even KDE says the 4.1 is for early adopters and casual use and that production use should wait for 4.2.
From the release announcement:
While KDE 4.1 aims at being the first release suitable for early adopting users, some features you are used to in KDE 3.5 are not implemented yet.
3.5 it is if I can ever get this darn disc burned 
should add that it would be a good idea to add this repo after your install is done:
Index of /repositories/KDE:/KDE3/openSUSE_11.0
run kde updates from this repo
you might want to have good look here too:
NEWBIES - Suse-11.0 Pre-installation – PLEASE READ - openSUSE Forums
That should be temporarily fixed now (real fix has to be an online update of the package management).
The devs state that KDE4 has been included in Suse to aid development. It’s not ready for the mass market yet. But you have years of experience, so if you want to help, you might install it as a philanthropic gesture. But you wouldn’t IMHO do any critical work with it.