I’ve been using it sinve 2016 (or whenever the Windows versio first came out).
It was also around the time that Adobe stopped selling perpetual licenses (which I was ready to buy a license for) and switched to monthly/yearly. I loved using Premiere on the few school computers that had it, but their new licensing strategy left a bad taste in my mouth.
Anyway, I tried every free video editor that I could get my hands on, and Kdenlive is the one that stuck. It felt like the closest to Premiere, and offered the most features. Over the years, they’ve added a ton of amazing features, and I’ve learned how to maximize its capabilities.
Kdenlive was my entry point into open source software, and I’m now a huge advocate. I’ve also learned so much about troubleshooting issues myself and working with a community of devs and users.